Denied the right to strike, Galen staff wear black in solidarity

Independent Education Union Victoria Tasmania (IEU) members at Galen Catholic College wore black to stand in solidarity as their public-school counterparts stopped work on Tuesday for the first time in 13 years. The AEU ran a Protected Action Ballot of members, receiving 98 per cent support - which saw the 24-hour statewide stopwork take place, with an estimated crowd of 35,000 marching on state parliament. Like Australian Education Union (AEU) Victorian branch members, IEU members in Catholic schools are seeking a new agreement that improves pay, currently amongst the lowest in the country, and tackles vital workload and staff wellbeing issues. Galen Catholic College teacher and Union Rep for the Galen IEU sub-branch, Jordi Wells, said they would have loved to have had the right to take industrial action alongside AEU members. “Unfortunately, we don’t have the right to take protected industrial action under our current agreement - so showing solidarity with our AEU colleagues was as close as we could get to standing shoulder-to-shoulder with them,” she said. “The concerns and claims of AEU members are very similar to those of IEU members in Catholic Education. “AEU members, like us, are fighting for long-overdue improvements to salaries, workloads and staff welfare. “Catholic Education staff are paid the same as government school staff - now the lowest in the country.” Victorian Catholic education staff are the only major cohort of educators in Australia who are denied basic bargaining rights and cannot take the same protected industrial action as their colleagues in government schools without risking serious fines. The IEU is currently involved in a legal dispute in the Fair Work Commission to secure those bargaining rights for their members. Until this legal dispute is resolved, staff in Victorian Catholic education are denied the right to take protected industrial action. Ms Wells said they have asked the VCEA for over a year to justify denying fair bargaining rights and still have no clear answer. “We simply want our work valued - but instead, we’re still fighting for the basic right to take protected industrial action while our employers hold the advantage,” she said. “Obviously fair and reasonable bargaining is always our preference, with industrial action a last resort but the fact that we remain the only large group of workers in the entire country without even the right to withdraw our labour is frustrating and feels profoundly unfair.”

Denied the right to strike, Galen staff wear black in solidarity

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