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by Sue Simpson
A full page ad in just one Sunday newspaper costs nearly $27,000 - the same as an entire Sky Channel broadcast. Over the past two weekends the Independent Education Union (IEU) and Federation placed full page ads in the Sunday newspapers.
The IEU's ad was printed on March 26 in the form of an open letter to the Premier and preceded their successful 24-hour strike. It exposed the gap between the Government's support for the profession before the election and the maltreatment received by teachers after the election.
Federation's ad the following weekend was in the form of an open letter to the community with the heading: "Teachers are underpaid and unfairly attacked." It pointed out that teaching is "a career to be proud of" and that "teachers do some of the most important work in our society".
It called on the Government to address the low morale of teachers ("the most experienced and highly trained teaching service in history"): "At a time when most teachers are reaching the peaks of their careers, we find not a sense of satisfaction in a job well done but morale at an all-time low." It went on to say that there are increased expectations on our schools and colleges, that teachers are working harder and better than ever and that literacy standards are high. It exposed "irresponsible and opportunistic politicians and tabloid commentators" for repeating "lies and distortions about teachers salaries and conditions... until they are widely believed and teachers vilified as lazy and greedy".
The ad explained why they can get away with it: "Teachers do not have access to government funds for public information campaigns. The media are not obliged to print our side of the story."
The ad put the responsibility for supporting the teaching profession at a time of teacher shortage firmly on the community: "The community cannot expect teachers alone to fund the promotion of teaching as an important role in society." Governments need to make a substantial investment in teachers' salaries to attract and keep the best teachers.
Why has the salaries dispute been so bitter and so difficult to resolve and why has the Government been unwilling to make this substantial investment?
The key to any negotiated settlement of the salary dispute rests with the Government. The second term Carr Government has a substantial majority, much larger than in 1996 when the last awards were negotiated. With the Opposition divided and ineffective, NSW is practically a one party state. The Premier is said to dominate the ALP Caucus. Following the election he declared that he wanted to make the NSW ALP more like Tony Blair's New Labour by appealing more to the "aspirational" class and business and away from the ALP's traditional supporters in the union movement. This caused problems with the union movement last year and the Government has moved to fix the rift with some unions. But not so the Teachers Federation.
The Teachers Federation is not affiliated to the ALP.
Our February 9 strike before the last election particularly angered the Government.
The Government seeks to control the very nature of our work in a way they cannot with others. For instance, it does not try to tell nurses how to administer medicine but it will try to tell teachers how to teach spelling.
The Government takes the view that its popularity increases whenever it is seen to be taking on the Teachers Federation. And despite the reasonably high representation of former teachers in the Caucus and in the Cabinet, few have been prepared to speak out publicly against the way this dispute has been handled.
The agreement between the Government, the Labor Council and three public sector unions has been a constraint on our negotiations. It depresses wages around the time of the Olympics and increases them around the next election period. It is cynical politics but the pay deal does not tell the whole story. It is an attempt to impose an Accord style arrangement between the Government, NSW public sector unions and workers.
The teaching profession is not helped by elements in the senior levels of the Department who dislike, or at the very least, mistrust teachers. Teachers are to be controlled, supervised and managed and abused in the media. Just because a handful of teachers do the wrong thing or a couple of schools have major problems, then all teachers and all schools need to be supervised in a heavy handed manner. No employer has engaged in the public abuse of its employees the way the Department has in this dispute. There have been the paid advertisements, the direct mail letters, the feeding of lies and distortions to the media.
It may be tempting to think there is a magic quick fix. Some teachers advocate a bans strategy, the indefinite strike, rolling strikes. Others say that political lobbying will finally break the Caucus or that we should all join the ALP to influence it from within. Others favour forming public education parties of our own or think that advertising will win the day. Some still support purely rational argument - as though explaining that there is a teacher shortage will somehow win the day. Well our campaigning has consisted of sustained political and industrial campaigning and I can assure you that our negotiators have used rational argument. Through paid and unpaid publicity, teachers' views have been heard. This Government will learn at the next election that the voice of the teaching profession cannot be taken for granted.