The State School Teachers’ Union will seek urgent talks with the State Government about its plans to set a pay ceiling of $1,000 per year on all public servants, including teachers and TAFE lecturers.
The government announced the new public sector wages policy today, replacing the existing wages policy of capping pay increases at 1.5 per cent.
SSTUWA president Pat Byrne said:
“Everyone knows the state is in a precarious financial situation, created by the Barnett Government and exacerbated by the planned cuts to education under the Turnbull Government’s inequitable schools funding proposals.
“However, to impose this sort of ceiling is not the right way to take things forward.
“The 1.5 per cent across the board pay rise for public servants was already a hard sell. This new policy will mean teachers earning more than $70,000 will receive pay increases of less than that.
“For teachers to get a rise of $19.20 per week just months after many had their Government Housing (GROH) rents pushed up by at least $30 a week by the Barnett Government is of no help to them at all.
“This is going to be particularly harsh on senior teachers and school leaders, who will be looking at increases of less than one per cent at a time when their workloads have been vastly increased as a result of over $200 million in budget cuts suffered under the Barnett Government.
“Everybody is going to feel the pain of fixing the previous government’s financial mess, but it needs to be done in an equitable way and the burden should not fall solely on the public sector.
“Principals, teachers, lecturers and other public servants should not be pay-packet punching bags in the fight to balance the state’s budget.”
