Latest news

COVID delayed our first negotiating meeting until August 2020 after which the project fell into a game of 2 halves. The negotiating of content with full teams around the table for 19 meetings and then hundreds of hours of drafting meetings involving rewriting, fine negotiations and drafting with 2 from each side.

That work is all over, bar the shouting, and soon the proposed EA will be put to an independently run online vote (rather than a paper-based school-by-school system). The proposed Agreement and an explanatory memorandum will be issued in Week 1 of Term 3 for a 7 day access period before voting opens.

As explained at the start, the parties decided to use “Interest-based” rather than “Claims-based” bargaining to avoid the trap of becoming locked into specific demands at the expense of other potential win-win solutions.

What was the outcome I hear you ask? .. read on

The IEU Interests were

• How can we enhance industrial fairness at work?
• How can we enhance safety at work?
• What is the best use of individuals’ time?

The CEO Interests were

• How do we enhance outcomes for children and young people (academic performance and wellbeing)?
• How do we ensure real choice for families (accessibility and affordability)?
• How do we recognise the professionalism of our workforce (enhanced salary and conditions)

Negotiating Outcomes

Pay

• The three DfE interim increases of 2.35% as already paid are recorded and future increases will be at the same undetermined % rate as for DfE Step 9 teachers
• CEA pay rate increased from $25 to $28.50 per hr
• HAT & Lead rates increased to $7k & $12k
• AST allowance will cease in 2025, but with no reviews or increases
• ESO casual loading increasing from 20% to 25% over the life of the agreement
• Casual ESOs eligible for overtime as well as casual rate

Teacher Workload will generally kick in next year where averaged over a year

• OPA reduced from 4.5hrs to 4hrs pw in 2023
• Relief lessons reduced from 20hrs to 16hrs (Sec) & from 15hrs to 10 hrs (Prim)
• CEA reduction of 10hrs pa for Secondary
• 40 hours of School Directed Non-contact Time to be taken from SCT
  • A reduction of 40 hrs Contact Time over the year sounds good …. but the employers get to use that for their own purposes eg PD, meetings, report writing, early term dismissal
  • means a lower average (not actual) SCT of 21.5 hrs (Sec) & 23 hrs (Prim) pw
• Other reductions in Contact Time can be by transferring hours to other areas eg CEA or OPA (but CEA & OPA cannot be transferred back to SCT)

Other issues

• Parental leave available to primary carers (not just women)
• Parental leave for temporary & replacement staff codified
• Paid parental leave not overlapping with annual and term leave
• 5 days paid Family & Domestic Violence Leave (plus 5 unpaid days)
• New teacher classification scale with new staff requiring full registration to progress
• With-holding of salary for short notice reduced and subject to narrow conditions

Changes to process

• Reduced detail in dispute resolution, incapacity, performance
• ESOs’ TOIL on hour for hour basis
• HAT & Lead payment on reduced sliding scale for APRIMs as well as PORs
• Clarification of country conditions, travel for PD, teacher in charge
• Annual leave description for Boarding House Supervisors clarified but not reduced
• Annual leave for teachers reconceptualised, but not reduced
• Staff on over 2 years leave can be required back for paid PD
• Teachers to be onsite 10 minutes before & after last duty
• Limits to other work during parental leave
• Removal of limitations on situations for assigning relief lessons
• Clarification of how hours on camps count to OPA
• Year 7 now secondary conditions
• Clarification of redundancy and partial redundancy mechanisms
• Annual Leave Loading pro-rated if FTE changes
• Allowing simultaneous POR at POR1 & POR2 only
• ESO role review at mutually agreed time rather than biennially
• ESO progression for new ESOs under 0.5FTE requires 900 hrs work
• Codifying common law rights to be suspended with or without pay under certain circumstances
• Travel allowances capped until ATO rate catches up
• Temporary & Replacement teachers for less than 1 term may be employed as casual or with entitlements (ie. no 25% loading)
• New concept of “Additional hours Loading” so as to not confuse with true casuals
• Part time teachers can be called back for 2 parent teacher sessions per year
• Casual ESOs OK for 12 months for bus drivers, OSHC and curriculum where funded

Changes to formatting and arrangement

• Reorganising arrangement of clauses to be more connected
• Overlapping conditions streamlined & not repeated where possible
• Removing redundant clauses
• NES section now separately itemised in index
• ESO & IEO merged where possible
• Formatting consistency improved
• There will be no direct alignment of old and new clause and appendix numbers

Conclusion

The resulting document is much more usable than the previous which had grown in a disjointed fashion over its iterations.

There are positive outcomes from this process and even some of the more nuanced “losses” have been managed to be less detrimental than if left to the employers to draft unaided.

The final phases of the negotiation process were concentrating on removing ambiguity and contradiction.

The document, whatever its content, needs to be clear and usable for the avoidance of unintended disputation.

Your IEU negotiating team has done its best and recommends acceptance.

Glen Seidel
Secretary