Protest: Teachers gather outside Notre Dame College Shepparton calling out lack of progress on a new pay deal.
Photo by
Anna McGuinness
Catholic school teachers gathered outside Notre Dame College Shepparton on Wednesday morning to call out a lack of progress on their new pay deal.
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It has been about 470 days since the enterprise agreement determining pay and conditions for all Catholic school staff in Victoria expired, and many have had enough.
Jacinta Cosgriff is an English and religious education teacher at Notre Dame College and has been in the profession for more than 35 years.
“At the moment I actually feel really undervalued,” she said.
“Education as a whole and particularly in Sandhurst is in dire straits.”
‘Undervalued’: Con Chrys and Jacinta Cosgriff at the gathering outside Notre Dame College Shepparton.
Photo by
Anna McGuinness
“There’s a massive teacher shortage and we’re doing nothing to attract people to the profession because of the workload and pay conditions.”
Members of the Independent Education Union were triggered into action when the Sale diocese split off from the rest of the employer groups and reached an in-principle agreement.
The deal matched most of the improvements in pay and conditions that government school teachers won earlier in 2022.
Now those in other dioceses are feeling left behind.
In a statement, Catholic Education Sandhurst executive director Paul Desmond said it respected the decision of staff to take action on Wednesday.
“CES Ltd is committed to negotiating in good faith in a responsible and transparent process as we work together towards a just agreement with our valued staff,” he said.
“We aim to allocate resources in ways that deliver the best outcomes for students and families, while fairly and responsibly rewarding our staff.”
He said CES Ltd looked forward to formalising an outcome “as soon as possible”.
Notre Dame College maths and science teacher Con Chrys said sustainable workloads were high on the priority list, as well as time-in-lieu and pay parity.
On top of face-to-face teaching, he said tasks such as curriculum development and marking students’ work piled up and were often done on late nights, weekends and holidays.
“Our workloads are really killing us,” Mr Chrys said.
“It’s almost a culture of volunteerism.”
The rally in Shepparton followed similar action by IEU members in Bendigo, Ballarat and Melbourne in late July.
“What we’ve been hearing from our members is that they’re burnt out, they’re exhausted,” IEU organiser Orlando Forbes said.
Staff from Notre Dame College were also joined by teachers from St Brendan’s Primary School and St Anne’s College.
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