Editorial: Meetings offer a chance to have your say on the future 

As this Journal goes to print, QTU Workplace Reps are being asked to conduct workplace meetings around a range of issues vital to Union strategy over the coming year.

The first element will be to reaffirm the results of the ballot conducted in October last year that endorsed industrial action if the Queensland government proceeded with a number of proposals contained in either the GT=GR action plan, or in the recommendations of the Commission of Audit.

The vote of over 20,000 members for all resolutions, with support in excess of 90 per cent on each question, has been vital to preserving teaching and learning conditions.
Those votes have borne their first fruit with the finalisation of an agreement on an amended teacher performance review process after many months of patient and painstaking negotiations. The final agreed model is a far cry from the notions of performance appraisals first touted with the announcement of the GT=GR action plan in March 2013. The performance review process will commence in 2015 after a period of induction and professional development concerning its implementation.

The key to negotiating the new process was the ballot result supporting taking industrial action if the department attempted to proceed unilaterally with an unacceptable model. Ten months later, it is important to reaffirm those ballot decisions on industrial action around things like performance bonuses, principal contracts and performance review, and the potential abolition of class size targets.

The other purpose of the workplace meetings is to invite members around the state to nominate issues that they would like to see incorporated in one of three agreements proposed by the QTU:

• professional issues
• industrial and resourcing conditions
• EB8 claim.

Legislation passed by this government has placed restrictions on the conditions that can be contained in enterprise bargaining agreements and negotiations. We may not be able to maintain some existing conditions in an agreement.

Also, the government’s award stripping process, under the guise of modernisation, will potentially remove some existing conditions. Certainly, in a recent letter to another Member of Parliament, the Minister suggested that the conditions no longer allowed might include class sizes, the transfer system, remote area incentives and workload management provisions. Ultimately, it will be the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission that will decide what is removed.

Irrespective of industrial relations legislation, there is no reason why these conditions cannot be maintained in non-industrial agreements between the department and the QTU. That was after all the basis of secondary non-contact time for the first 20 years of its existence as an entitlement from the early 1970s. In the lead up to the next state election, which is due no later than June next year, the QTU will be seeking commitments from the government, and from political parties and independent candidates, that they will enter into agreement with the QTU in relation to these and other non-allowable matters. Hence, the need to develop claims and seek agreement now.

In addition to industrial conditions and resourcing issues, there is also a range of professional issues that might be the subject of an agreement. These include induction and mentoring for beginning teachers, access to professional development and consultation at state and local levels concerning the implementation of educational initiatives to name but a few. This also sits neatly with the government’s Education Accord process.

I encourage as many members as possible to participate in these meetings to have a direct say in the Union’s direction over the coming 18 months.

Graham Moloney
General Secretary

Queensland Teachers' Journal, Vol 119 No 6, 22 August 2014, p5