Best recent education and union reads
Wage rises: Business groups tell workers tough luck
AustralianUnions.org.au
Rather than offering pay rises to attract workers, employer groups want to lock in a real wage cut. It seems there’s never a time for a pay rise according to the bosses and their lobbyists.
Haileybury eyes return to remote learning in state’s first private online school
The Age
High-fee independent school Haileybury is planning to launch the state’s first online private school, offering single subjects, holiday programs and full-time enrolments for Victorian students.
Will more money stop teachers from leaving the profession?
The Educator
According to the NSW Government’s own internal secret briefings, teacher pay has been falling relative to pay in other professions since the late 1980s, making it harder to attract and retain new teachers into the role.
Regional teacher shortage will cause greater disparity between students, psychologists warn
ABC News
Psychologists warn that school staff shortages, particularly in rural, regional and remote areas, will see vulnerable students fall drastically behind, leading to greater disparity between students down the track.
Dumbed-down curriculum means primary students will learn less about the world and nothing about climate
The Conversation
Revisions to the Australian primary school curriculum for geography mean children will learn much less about the world and its diversity than they do at present. They will learn nothing about some significant concepts such as climate.
Victorian teachers being offered financial incentives to work in bush
ABC News
Workforce pressures are plaguing Victoria's teaching sector, with the Department of Education and Training now providing financial incentives for staff to travel to regional areas for relief teaching.
Wominjeka Melbourne! Why we need to teach kids First Nations languages
The Age
Australia should follow the lead of New Zealand and get serious about saving our Indigenous languages, with place naming and schools to play a big part.
Casuals, contractors and gig workers set for 'potentially massive' changes under Labor
ABC News
The incoming Labor government has promised a radical overhaul of an employment system it says is letting workers down.
Remembering Tom McDonald, one of Australia’s great union leaders
The New Daily
On the 16th of April 2022 Tom McDonald, the former leader of the Building Workers' Industrial Union, passed away. His was a lifetime of fighting for workers.
He was a true history maker.
Superannuation. The minimum wage system. Accident pay. Redundancy pay. Paid sick leave. None of these would exist today in the form they do without Tom McDonald.
Bill Kelty and Sally McManus penned a tribute to Tom below.
The enterprise bargaining system is broken, and in terminal decline
The Conversation
Enterprise bargaining is failing low-paid workers lacking bargaining power in particular, and is a big part of the reason for such poor wages in female-dominated professions such as aged care and child care.
The election and the teals: the new social liberalism in a knowledge society
Arena
The rise of the ‘teal’ network is not only a new development in Australia, but in the anglosphere Westminster system, and it should not be underestimated or misunderstood.
Libs crash headfirst into reality with recovery plan to *checks notes* hate the rich
Crikey
It’s clear that the right is pushing for a sort of populism which not only attacks the metropolitan cultural elites but is going further and actually attacking the well-off and the rich for being… well-off and rich. This is the party of free enterprise doing this. It’s the most wack thing I’ve ever seen.
PETITION
Tasmanian Catholic Education Staff deserve better!
We deserve an employer prepared to front up to constructive bargaining meetings - and to recognise that bargaining requires a commitment of more than two hours a month.
We deserve a new Agreement which tackles the schools workload crisis and values our work.
We deserve wage and workload parity with our colleagues in government schools, NOT to have our hours and days of work extended as the TCEO has proposed.