NSW TAFE teachers win four per cent pay boost in Minns government negotiations

New NSW TAFE teachers will start out on salaries over $92,000 under a deal inked between the Minns government and teachers’ union.

New NSW TAFE teachers will start out on salaries over $92,000 under a deal inked between the Minns government and teachers’ union.

A new one-year enterprise agreement will see teachers’ wages and work-related allowance lifted by four per cent, a pay rise the Minns government says is the highest in two decades following the abolition of the previous government’s public sector annual wages cap.

Once rubber-stamped by the Fair Work Commission starting salaries for TAFE teachers will go from $88,842 to $92,396, and from $105,362 to $109,576 at the top of the scale.

Unlike the three-year pay offer put to public sector unions on Sunday, which lays out subsequent wage increases of 3.5 per cent and three per cent in the second and third years, a multi-year deal for TAFE teachers is still to be negotiated later this year.

Minister for Skills, TAFE and Tertiary Education Steve Whan said the pay rise was “rightly deserved” and would help resolve the shortage of teachers in vocational education by making their wages more competitive with industry.

Coffs Harbour MP Gurmesh Singh, Skills and TAFE Minister Steve Whan, Minister for Skills, Coffs Mayor Paul Amos and TAFE NSW Executive Director Jason Darney turn the sod for a new Coffs NSW TAFE campus. Picture: Supplied

“It really was head-in-the-sand stuff from the previous Government,” he said.

“How on earth do you attract and retain teachers to teach vital trades like building, when the gap between teachers’ pay and the amount they could earn working in the sector grew so much?”

TAFE NSW's $80m Institute of Applied Technology in Kingswood. Teachers will now earn up to $109,000 a year.

NSW Teachers Federation president Henry Rajendra said the pay rise is a “substantial improvement”, but negotiations to uplift TAFE’s status would continue.

“The Federation will continue to call upon the state government to deliver on its promise to restore TAFE as the centrepiece of vocational education, not just another provider in the training market,” he said.

It comes after the federal government announced it will invest nearly $89 million over the next three years to fund 20,000 fee-free places in construction courses through TAFE and other registered training organisations, in addition to a further 300,000 fee-free places in skills shortage courses across the country.