From the VP: A difficult conversation, but one worth having…

Our Union is strong because our membership is big, informed and well served by the honorary and full-time officials of the QTU. In most schools across the state, at least nine out of 10 teachers and school leaders are members of the QTU. This year, QTU membership has pushed past the 44,500 milestone for the first time and is well on the way to 45,500.

As we often say, recruitment of members is everyone’s business. Union Representatives and QTU members in schools are best placed to invite their colleagues to join the Union. This is how most of us were recruited, as new or beginning teachers joining the profession, either converting from associate/university student membership or being invited to join upon commencement with the department.

But there are some other recruitment conversations we need to be having. And they can be difficult, but are essential and ultimately worth the effort. We need to be inviting our colleagues who have, for some reason, resigned from the Union, to reconsider and re-join us. And we need to approach those colleagues of ours who have never been members to come on board.

What’s the worst that can happen? They might respectfully tell you they are not interested in joining. This opens up an opportunity for a conversation about their reasons for not joining. In some cases, a lack of understanding about the Union and its work is the reason, and these misconceptions can be addressed. In other cases, it is as simple as no-one having asked and explained the Union dues structure and the capacity to pay in instalments. For others, it is that financial pressures mean that Union membership has not been prioritised, which opens up the opportunity to discuss the importance of the QTU legal service and the many thousands of dollars a non-member may have to pay should they find themselves the subject of a complaint or allegation.

For anyone who claims that they “don’t need the Union” or that the Union has “done nothing” for teachers, the QTU website and Journal offer a wide range of detailed information about exactly why we need the Union and what the Union has done over many decades and is doing right now for our profession.

QTU members have every right to ask their colleagues to join their Union. After all, they benefit from the herd immunity that Union membership generates. They still get the pay rise that our Union negotiates, they benefit from the entitlements that our Union has won. Every day, their working life is far and away better than it would be if not for our Union.

The QTU can and does advocate for our members in many different situations every day, in locations across the state. We are active at the classroom and school level, the cluster and region level, the statewide and national level, and at the international level. The influence of the Union and things it has won are easy to point to, and of course there is the hidden story of all of the things that may have had a negative impact on the profession if not for the action of the Union. Often the story of the things that didn’t happen can be the most powerful – one needs look no further than the previous LNP government’s plan to introduce performance pay for teachers and contracts for principals.

Asking a colleague who is not a QTU member to join the Union can be confronting and daunting. But I encourage you to rip off the band aid and have the conversation. Non-members of the QTU are enjoying the fruits of your efforts. They are the beneficiaries of current and past Union members. And if we ask them to join and they say no, at least they do so in the knowledge that their workplace colleagues think they should join.

There is power in a union, and we should all be proud to invite our colleagues to join.

Sam Pidgeon                                                                                                                           Vice-President

Queensland Teachers' Journal, Vol 122 No 6, 25 August 2017, p9