Progress at last - Catholic systemic schools

Following 15 months of negotiations that have been stalled since late last year, the IEU is finally seeing progress in the bargaining for a new enterprise agreement for teachers and support staff in NSW and ACT Catholic systemic schools.

The IEU notified a bargaining dispute to the Fair Work Commission in February about the slow progress of the negotiations for a new Catholic Systemic Schools Enterprise Agreement. After two preliminary conferences before the Commission, our dispute was listed for conciliation before the Commission on Friday 17 March 2023.

Left: The IEU team after negotiations at the Fair Work Commissions More details P3

Let’s put the industrial relations back into industrial relations

The notion that a salary cap is a useful device has been discredited. Indeed, a full bench of the Fair Work Commission (in awarding rail workers pay increases) indicated that the NSW State Government has no “logical basis for its public sector wages cap”.

They ruled that Sydney Trains and NSW Trains failed to put forward “any rationale, let alone a persuasive one” for the limits (the cap) imposed under its 2022 wages policy.

The ‘cap’ has been a disaster for education and will take some years to remedy. It won’t be a quick fix. Meaningful and independent industrial relations is the way forward.

Mark Northam Secretary

(vol 43 #2) March 2023