Alice M.
(Above, firefighters in Melbourne take to the streets to protest cuts)
The Victorian Liberal Baillieu government continues to roll out its big business agenda, attacking the public sector workers and public and community services.
The Victorian economy is struggling as manufacturing, the engine of Victorian economy, is being wiped out, taking with it tens of thousands of jobs, small and medium businesses, and people’s spending capacity.
Government and big business borrowings, historically mainly from US and European banks and multinational financial institutions, are now harder to get in a world sinking deeper into a severe capitalist economic crisis. More of the shrinking state revenue (mainly people’s taxes) is being syphoned off from people’s services and the public sector to big business investments, to prop up their falling rate of profit during the economic crisis. Public sector jobs, wages and conditions are targeted. Public health, education and essential services are slashed.
Public sector workers are resisting the big business attacks magnificently. School teachers, TAFE staff and students, fire fighters, health and medical workers and other public sector workers are determined to secure pay increases and to protect working conditions and public services for the people.
Medical scientists in public hospitals have been engaged in state wide rolling stoppages for wages, conditions and efficient medical and health services in public hospitals. For many, this has been their first industrial action, with many joining the union for the first time.
One thousand fire fighters marched through the streets of Melbourne to Parliament House (below), angry with the state government’s severe cuts to the fire fighting essential services.
Teachers refuse to give up the fight
On 5 September, more than 40,000 Victorian teachers, principals and educational support staff closed down 4,000 schools and went on strike in what was the biggest teachers strike in Victorian history. More than 15,000 attended state wide rallies.
The striking state school teachers, principals and education support staff were joined by 5,000 Catholic School teachers and support staff taking unprotected industrial action, defying both Fair Work Australia orders and threats and intimidation from their employers. For the first time teachers and principals from state and independent schools were joined by striking educational support staff.
More than 15,000 striking members from the Australian Education Union and Independent Education Union marched from their respective rallies converging outside the state parliament in a sea of red and purple ponchos. AEU and IEU members embraced and linked arms, roaring their demands on the Baillieu government for proper pay increases, job security, no ‘performance based pay’, and proper government funding for state schools.
After making election promises to teachers that they will be best paid in Australia, the Baillieu government refuses to pay teachers more than 2.5% per annum that doesn’t even cover the CPI. Instead the government wants performance pay increases to the top 10%, or “best performing” teachers, to put more teachers on contracts and increase workloads.
The teachers have wide community support. Parents Associations, School Councils and local school communities are firmly behind the teachers’ demands and actions. Many parents have written angrily to Baillieu, holding the government responsible for the disruptions to schools and their children’s education, supporting teachers’ actions and condemning the government’s contempt of teachers.
Mass meetings of union members voted overwhelmingly to continue implementing industrial actions, including further stop work meetings, bans on some written student reports and a further state wide strike action and refusal to work above 38 hours early next year.
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