Teachers’ strike postponed to after year 12 exams

State school teachers have backed down on earlier threats to hold a second strike this year, with the union claiming it would wait until after year 12 exams had finished before launching industrial action.

“We will know the date that we will strike when our executive determines that, but we have six weeks before the end of the school year or so, so it will be in that time,” Queensland Teachers’ Union president Cresta Richardson said.

She said the union had been considering walking off the job next Thursday, and a memo sent to members earlier in the week green-ticked plans to strike within three weeks.

However, after several hours of meetings on Friday afternoon, Richardson said the executive decided a strike “won’t be in senior exams” and teachers would instead hold rallies after school hours.

“Our executives have come together today, and we considered what the best way forward is for our members and students,” she said.

A letter from Education Department director-general Sharon Schimming sent to QTU general secretary Kate Ruttiman on Friday said the department was disappointed in the union for considering a strike during year 12 exams.

“It is the view of the department that the QTU’s choice to take industrial action during senior school exams is ill-considered and will bring our profession into disrepute,” Schimming wrote.

Richardson would not clarify whether community backlash had caused the last-minute change, but said the QTU had spoken with the Education Department on Friday.

The decision comes after negotiations on wages and work conditions between the department and union broke down last week, when state school teachers shot down the government’s offer.

The QTU said the majority of members had their say in the poll, which delivered a 67.6 per cent ‘no’ vote.

The union had previously announced the three-week timeframe because arbitration was expected to begin in December, however, QTU and the Education Department had failed to agree on which matters would be up for debate, pushing out the starting date to December 30.

The department suggested the entire agreement should be open to renegotiation, while the union aimed to put forward “only matters that are outstanding and at issue”, and lock in all other areas.

Richardson said a renegotiation of the entire agreement would allow the state to backtrack on terms that had already been green-ticked.

“We’re certainly worried that we would lose some conditions that attract and retains teachers,” she said.

Richardson said a key concern was classroom caps – which currently sit between 22 and 25 students depending on which year level is taught – which she said could conceivably increase beyond 30 students.

“That is not good for teachers, it’s not good for kids, especially when we have a lot of kids in class who have complex needs,” Richardson said.

If the two parties only renegotiated contentious terms – including salaries, overtime, the number of non-teaching hours allowed, and retention and attraction schemes – the union estimated the arbitration period would be shorter than it’s earlier-predicted timeframe of two years.

The union also requested teachers receive a 3 per cent pay increase across the next year – in line with the state’s wage offer of a total 8 per cent across three years – while pay negotiations continued before the Industrial Relations Commission.

Schimming said the state would not agree to the pay rise next year or to narrow the scope of the agreements put up for arbitration, bec the union’s members rejected the offer put forward last week.

She also said the terms the union had said it was willing to negotiate were too ambiguous to be seriously considered, which she said could be to push out arbitration to a later date.

“This is disappointing and only serves to delay a bargained outcome for teachers,” Schimming wrote.

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