Teachers at the Canberra Institute of Technology met on Wednesday, 20 September to vote on whether to take industrial action. Members of the AEU ACT Branch TAFE Council unanimously resolved that insufficient progress had been made on bargaining and that the union should seek permission from the Fair Work Commission to conduct an industrial action ballot.
The Australian Education Union and CIT have been bargaining since early 2022 to set new pay and conditions for teaching staff at the institute. As Canberra’s only TAFE, CIT plays a key role in ensuring that our region has the skilled workforce that it needs.
Salaries and workloads are the key concerns for CIT teachers who say that, while programs like JobTrainer and Fee-Free TAFE are a welcome investment in the sector, they have not been matched with additional resourcing for teachers and administrative staff, leading to a surge in workloads to meet the new demand.
Karen Noble, CIT teacher and AEU ACT TAFE Vice President, spoke to the workload pressures teachers are facing:
“Also increasing is the need for complex support as many students in these programs need additional learning support, career guidance and counselling. Teachers are carrying a heavy load for CIT and this community. Teachers need some good news from this bargaining campaign. Recognition of their daily workload challenges and pay improvements are called for, urgently.”
In addition to workload concerns, CIT teachers report difficulty recruiting and retaining staff when industry salaries have increased. In some instances, teachers report that CIT teacher salaries are lower than those for their students, including some who are on apprentice wages. AEU ACT Branch Secretary Patrick Judge said:
“Teachers tell us that the salaries currently on offer from CIT will not fix the problem of some teachers earning less than the students or apprentices they are training.
CIT members had also raised the comparison with teacher salaries in the school education sector:
“Where CIT teacher salaries were once comparable to their school teacher counterparts, they now stand to be thousands of dollars behind, with the gap between the two growing.,” said Mr Judge.
Mr Judge also highlighted that CIT’s spending on consultants had been far more generous than spending on teaching staff:
“Our analysis indicates that the reported $8.5million spent over 5 years on one consultant alone, Think Garden, would have been sufficient to fund the salaries of more than 100 beginning teachers or to provide 450 CIT teachers a pay increase of more than $3,000 a year over the same period. While CIT teaching staff have won national and international recognition for their outstanding work, it’s not clear what value (if any) CIT received from its largesse on consultants. We think CIT and the Canberra community would be better off investing in teachers and support staff.”
Teachers were already contemplating action ahead of a bargaining meeting on Thursday, 14 September. Mr Judge wrote to CIT’s CEO on 12 September seeking an improved position by close of business on the 15th of September. In his letter, Mr Judge said that “AEU CIT members have told me that they reject the current package on offer from CIT. They are frustrated to have been consulted on workload proposals and to have nothing come of it. They feel disrespected by the failure to come to a meaningful resolution on pay and workload claims.”
Mr Judge’s letter also referenced staff concerns about proposed working conditions at the CIT Woden campus, noting that:
“CIT persists with contemplating ill-considered and unworkable arrangements for staff accommodations at the Woden campus. This includes the absolutely insufficient provision for staff parking spaces and CIT’s inability to confirm whether it proposes to implement hotdesking for teaching staff, a long-discredited management fad which is untested and inappropriate for education workspaces.”
For comment:
Patrick Judge, Branch Secretary
aeuact@aeuact.org.au, (02) 6272 7900