Catholic Enterprise Bargaining Update
Members may (or may not) recall that the IEU and the Catholic School Employers agreed to undertake negotiations under the ‘Interest Based Bargaining’ approach, rather than the traditional ‘Positional’ approach.
At the table last year, we determined the broad areas of ‘Interest’ for each party and started to explore possible ways of achieving mutually agreeable outcomes through the lenses of the identified interests.
The IEU has broad interests in achieving:
- Enhanced industrial fairness
- Safety at work
- Best utilisation of employee time
The employer interests were aligned to achieving:
- Better outcomes for students (academic and wellbeing)
- Choice for families (accessibility and affordability)
- Recognition of professionalism (salary and conditions)
A raw ‘dump’ of issues and proposals was produced and we are now at the stage of drafting proposals and taking ideas back to our respective constituents (IEU members and Principals).
We are starting to get to the pointy end of some issues and hopefully consideration through the identified interest ‘lenses’ will provide a more logical pathway to resolution.
Members need not be concerned that specific and concrete outcomes are being lost in the process.
As much as nothing (including pay rises) is agreed until the whole package is agreed, we are having constructive and surprisingly broad reviews of issues relating to the fundamental components of teacher workload (SCT, OPA and CEA) and conditions for ESOs at our fortnightly meetings.
The IEU is ensuring that any proposals also pass the ‘industrial fairness’ test and are in line with general market conditions.
The IEU Bargaining Team is appreciative of the prompt response to surveys from members. Often we do need to have rapid turnaround of information before the scheduled fortnightly meetings.
Details of resolved and unresolved positions will soon be sent to members in Catholic schools as the issues now start to crystallise.
Glen Seidel on behalf of the rest of the IEU Bargaining Team, Nick Agnew, Louise Firrell, Brian Horan, Loana Lieu, Bruno Sartoretto and Jon Shriver.
(Jenny Johnson has stepped down from the IEU Bargaining Team for now due to her temporary absence from the Catholic Sector. We thank Jenny for her input to-date).
