Victorian teachers gearing up for pay fight with the Allan government

Victorian teachers are preparing for a fight with the state government over demands for a “crisis catch-up” pay rise of up to 30 per cent which could add $1.5bn to the state’s public wage bill.

Victorian teachers are gearing up for a fight with the state government over demands for a “crisis catch-up” pay rise of up to 30 per cent which could add $1.5bn to the state’s public wage bill.

Three-year agreements covering 52,000 state and 25,000 Catholic teachers are expiring at the end of 2025, with talks about the next deal about to kick off.

Union members are already discussing the possibility of teacher strikes next year, with Catholic staff cleared to take industrial action for the first time.

Hefty pay rises awarded to TAFE teachers (21 per cent over four years), nurses and midwives (28 per cent over four years), construction workers (21 per cent over four years) and ambulance officers (16 to 33 per cent over four years) are adding weight to the teachers’ claims for higher pay.

Fed-up Victorian government teachers, who are now the lowest paid in the country, want pay parity with NSW as a bare minimum, with the gap now stretching to $10,000 for graduate teachers between the two states.

Victorian government teachers are now the lowest paid in the country. Stock image.

One teacher wrote a public rallying cry last week, arguing that real wages have fallen by 11 per cent under the current agreement.

“If we want to win our claims, we’ll need an even more sustained campaign of strike action,” they wrote.

Other teachers are already raising the prospect of strikes on social media forums. “If the Nurses get 28% and the Police get 33% what do teachers get 3% WTF … We need to STRIKE, NO MORE ‘what about the kids?’,” one wrote.

Teachers last took strike action in 2013.

State and Catholic teachers feel they bargained away pay rises in the last three-year agreement struck in 2022, which delivered two per cent a year in addition to time-in-lieu provisions and other conditions.

It comes as new industrial contracts signed by private schools are delivering pay rises of up to $15,000 a year over three years. This is raising leading private school teacher salaries to as much as $180,000 at Toorak College by 2028.

In comparison, senior teachers in the state system earn up to $118,000, reaching $129,000 for leadership roles (excluding principal positions) in 2025.

Catholic teachers at the top level will get $118,000 by the middle of this year.

Three-year pay agreements covering 52,000 state and 25,000 Catholic teachers are expiring at the end of 2025.

The pay disparity is contributing to teachers deserting the state system in droves and posting some of the highest levels of stress, anxiety and dissatisfaction with their jobs in the nation.

Australian Education Union Victorian president Justin Mullaly said: “AEU members need significant pay increases that reflect the importance and value of their work, and conditions to match”.

David Brear, general secretary of the Independent Education Union, said that “in the grip of a cost-of-living crisis and a teacher shortage, we must ensure that Victorian Catholic schools offer salaries which attract and retain quality staff”.

A Department of Education spokesman said it “values the important work of our teachers and education support staff and looks forward to commencing negotiations for a replacement agreement later in 2025.”

Professor Elizabeth Labone, CEO of the Victorian Catholic Education Authority, said her organisation looks forward “to working constructively with school staff and the union during 2025 to negotiate the next agreement”.

Opposition education spokeswoman Jess Wilson said the government was “choosing to prioritise building the Suburban Rail Loop over fair pay deals for our frontline workers.”