"Good faith" one day, arbitration the next

by Simon Johnson

April 16, 2008

LESS than a day after announcing the government was negotiating in “good faith” with the State School Teachers’ Union, WA’s education department applied to the Industrial Relations Commission to arbitrate the long-running teacher pay dispute. 

Speaking at a teacher rally outside Parliament House on April 8, education minister Mark McGowan said he wanted to make sure WA teachers were among the best paid in Australia, and was negotiating “in good faith” to achieve this.

“Our pay offer would have made Western Australia’s teachers amongst the very highest paid in the country,” he said.

A media statement published on the Department of Education and Training website on April 9, however, announced DET would ask the WA Industrial Relations Commission to determine appropriate salaries and conditions public school teachers and administrators.

Asked why the department had applied to the IRC for arbitration, Mr McGowan’s media secretary Kym Coolhaas said that it was due to “increasing frustration with the union executive”.

“There is a feeling that negotiations are not going anywhere,” she said.

In a seven-month dispute punctuated by petitions and stop-work meetings, there has been a blurring of the actual pay and conditions being offered.

The union has said the 13.6 per cent increase offered by the government is insufficient, while the government has countered the increase actually ranges between 13.6 per cent and 22 per cent, depending on teacher experience and location.

Union President Anne Gisborne told eMU News there were “a lot of angry teachers out there now that the situation hasn’t been resolved satisfactorily”.

Responding to the DET media statement, that says going to arbitration is the “best move forward for everybody”, Ms Gisborne said it was “too early to say”.

“Feedback from sister unions say that the time, effort and resources that are tied up in the arbitration process can be far better utilised” she said. “We would certainly put forward a position to the commission to keep the negotiating window open.”