What we’re asking for public education in WA
From the President
By Pat Byrne President
The upcoming state election is critical for public education in WA. Irrespective of which party is in office, our goal must be to ensure that public education is funded properly and is accessible to all students, no matter where in WA they choose to live. This is even more important given the crucial role public education will continue to have in underpinning Western Australia’s economic recovery – not just in the immediate aftermath of COVID-19, but beyond that. Ahead of the state election the SSTUWA has released a paper with a series of asks for the political parties. It begins, unsurprisingly, with the question of salaries. Educators recognised the need for restraint when the current Labor government came to power. We were not happy but, along with the whole of the WA public sector, educators did their bit and accepted the flat $1,000 pay rise per year. In the first round, the 2017 agreements, any negotiated changes were required to be cost neutral. This changed in the second round where some extra costs were allowed. We were told the policy was for four years. Now COVID-19 has changed everything – and once again it is public servants asked to sacrifice pay rises. In Queensland public sector pay rises have been deferred for six months, even for pay rises that have been negotiated in registered agreements. However, they have a commitment from their government to pay the agreed pay rises from the date of deferral. In New South Wales, while there is no wage freeze, their Industrial Relations
Commission has set pay rises for nurses and public servants at 0.3 per cent. Teachers have had the 2.5 per cent already agreed to in an EBA simply cancelled, with a new wages policy fixed at 1.5 per cent. The NT government has learnt from WA and set its future pay rises at $1,000 per annum. Victoria, on the other hand, will pay at around three per cent. In WA all public sector employees are yet again being asked to accept $1,000 per year for the first two years of a re-elected McGowan Government – followed by a review and potential adjustment for the second two years of government. The union believes that this will hinder, rather than stimulate economic growth in WA, and will further distort wage relativities and see permanent reductions in superannuation growth. It is quite clear from many pieces of research that suppressing public sector pay has a negative effect on private sector pay as well. This is especially the case in private sector areas which are closely related to the public sector – private school teachers for example, many kinds of health workers, childcare workers, VET employees, to name a few, meaning that low wage growth will continue to be experienced much more widely than only in the public sector. This has a flow on effect in depressing the amount of money being spent in the community. It also runs the risk, if WA is indeed returning to a boom economy, of teachers leaving the profession to work in more profitable private industries and exacerbating existing shortages. It will also act as a major disincentive for
prospective teacher education students. The SSTUWA is calling for a return to percentage-based wage increases and genuinely negotiated outcomes through bargaining processes. In addition to wages, the SSTUWA will also be asking for a number of other things in the lead up to the election.
A guarantee of the state’s SRS component The union is seeking a written commitment from the major parties guaranteeing they will provide a minimum 85 per cent of the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS) for Western Australian schools. The current funding model adopted by federal government legislates that the federal government will contribute 20 per cent of the cost of the SRS for public school students and 80 per cent of the SRS cost for private school students, while state governments must contribute at least 75 per cent of the total SRS cost for public school students. The bi-lateral agreements, between each state/territory government and the federal government, specify how much money state governments must contribute to private schools. The WA agreement sees the private school share drop from 26.30 per cent in 2018 to 20 per cent in 2023. That’s a good thing. However, the WA agreement also specifically states that the WA government retains the flexibility to fund nongovernment schools above the minimum requirements for all or part of the term of the agreement. (Continued on page 6) Western Teacher January 2021
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