More than 50,000 Queensland school teachers will strike for the first time in 16 years today, after negotiations with the government over pay and conditions broke down last week.<\/p>\n
The Queensland Teachers’ Union (QTU) has asked roughly 570,000 students at the state’s 1,266 public schools to be kept at home where possible.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The 24-hour strike is the first since 2009, when teachers across the state walked off the job demanding better pay from the Beattie Labor government.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Striking Queensland teachers vote on a resolution during a meeting in Brisbane in 2009. (Dave Hunt: AAP)<\/p>\n
QTU President Cresta Richardson said a live stream from the main meeting in Brisbane would be broadcast to union gatherings around the state.<\/p>\n
“In our meetings tomorrow we will note the progress of where we’re at, and then, from there, consider where to,” she said.<\/p>\n
Union members are expected to vote today on whether to take further industrial action, including more strikes.<\/p>\n
After the meeting, teachers in Brisbane are planning to march from the Convention Centre to Parliament House, where state budget estimates will be underway.<\/p>\n
More money, more resources<\/p>\n
The union said the government had so far offered a pay rise of 8 per cent over three years, and had put a second offer on the table that included a boost in allowances, but not more money.<\/p>\n
“What’s on offer actually brings us into being the lowest paid teachers and school leaders in the country,” Ms Richardson said.<\/p>\n
“If we accepted salaries alone, that places our members in a pretty dire situation.”<\/p>\n
Queensland Teachers Union president Cresta Richardson says money alone will not solve the teacher shortage. (ABC News: Mark Leonardi)<\/p>\n
Ms Richardson said addressing the “well-documented teacher shortage” would require an improvement in both conditions and pay.<\/p>\n
“We really want our workplaces to be safe \u2013 because if our schools are safe for adults, then they are safe for students,” she said.<\/p>\n
“We know our teaching conditions are student learning conditions, so they do intertwine.”Loading…<\/p>\n
Negotiations over a new Enterprise Bargaining Agreement (EBA) for the state’s teachers were referred to the Industrial Relations Commission (IRC) for conciliation by the government last week when no deal could be reached.<\/p>\n
Ms Richardson said a conciliation meeting had been moved forward by five days and would now be held on Thursday, August 7.<\/p>\n
Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek said the government had negotiated in good faith.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We have held 18 formal meetings over the past five months and remain at the table to finalise an agreement that supports and values our teachers,” he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek had been hopeful last week a deal would be struck with teachers soon.\u00a0 (ABC News: Lucas Hill)<\/p>\n
Parents asked to keep kids home<\/p>\n
Ms Richardson said in flagging the strike in advance, the union had hoped to give parents time to sort out “alternative arrangements for their kids”.<\/p>\n
She added it would be “up to the department and the minister to ensure students [were] appropriately supervised”.<\/p>\n
“There will be some supervision available at school. However, it is not going to be business as usual,” she said.<\/p>\n
Mr Langbroek said schools will “remain open and students will be safely supervised”.<\/p>\n
Teachers who participate in the strike will not be paid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than 50,000 Queensland school teachers will strike for the first time in 16 years today, after negotiations…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,1480,20705,3786,44,23918,39935,15878,39936,29914,28210,28208],"class_list":["post-46273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-budget","tag-conditions","tag-government","tag-news","tag-pay","tag-qtu","tag-queensland-government","tag-queensland-state-schools","tag-queensland-teachers-union","tag-strike","tag-teachers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}