From the VP: Know your rights, and feel empowered!

QTU members have provided hundreds of responses to our call for “time wasters” – the things that you are expected to do in your daily work that you feel have little or no impact when it comes to improving student learning outcomes.

Some of these relate to compliance and administrative tasks. Some relate to meetings and an overload of professional development sessions. Many addressed what could be described as generating data/collecting data/discussing data/displaying data. You also described feeling the weight of external pressures on your daily work. These ranged from multiple observations or walk-throughs where the purpose of the collegial engagement might not be very clear, to prescriptive demands regarding your planning and pedagogy. Thank you for participating in these conversations in your staffrooms across the state and for taking the time to share your thoughts.

Identifying and acknowledging the range of things impacting on your time, workload and wellbeing is the first step. The next step is to ensure that you know what is a reasonable expectation, and what is unreasonable.

The QTU website is a good place to find that information, including in the QTU fact checkers, joint statements, information brochures and position statements (look out for a new one addressing data to be published this term). These online documents set out what the QTU has negotiated on behalf of its members and their professionalism.

By knowing their rights, members can feel empowered to assert their professionalism and work with colleagues to resist unreasonable pressures.

These pressures can come from a central level, a regional level or at the school level - and it can be frustrating when there is a clear mismatch between what the QTU and the department have agreed to and what is happening in schools. This is why it has never been more important to have knowledgeable, assertive Union Representatives in every workplace. And the best forum for Union Representatives in schools to tackle any matter impacting on workload is the LCC (local consultative committee).

If you don’t have an LCC at your school or workplace, you need to set one up. Consultation around new initiatives or changes that will impact on your workload is one of your fundamental industrial rights. And the LCC is the forum for this to occur.

QTU Biennial Conference delegates from all over Queensland gathered on the first three days of the mid-year break. These dedicated professionals came to talk about how we are continuing to reclaim the space and reassert our ownership of our work as teachers and school leaders. But they did more than that; they expressed confidence and hope that they can make things better for themselves and their colleagues. They explored current and emerging issues and discussed how to not only respond to them but how to take the lead and grasp hold of the agenda and steer it. And this is what union activists do all over the state. The QTU is as good as its members – and that’s why it’s a great Union.

Sam Pidgeon
Vice-President

Queensland Teachers' Journal, Vol 120 No 5, 17 July 2015, p9