Teacher's Strike: Still Going Ahead

Relations between Queensland teachers and Education Queensland have continued to sour over the last week as we approach Tuesday's proposed strike. Education Minister Geoff Wilson is continuing to insist that school's are open with supply teachers, moved teachers and teacher aides providing supervision. This is Education Queensland's attempt to completely negate the power of the strike.

Luckily the miscellaneous workers union has stated teacher aides are not to supervise large groups of children on their own. In our school this has left one non-union teacher running the whole school as a number of people have joined the union over the last few days, and all admin members are also going on strike. There is a possibility that some Special Education teachers will be ordered to attend school that day, which - if they're paid - makes them 'scabs', and if they're not, they are not covered by work cover. Not a good position to be in.

So today I'm engaging in my first union action - standing outside the school gate at 3pm with brightly coloured notes for the parents telling them to keep their children home. We're not allowed to hand them out inside, as that would clash with the minister's letter telling parents to send their children to school.

I personally continue to believe that we're not being unreasonable. As we engage in national testing, as we approach a national curriculum and we add national hoops to jump through like we have to jump through the state hoops - we need to have a national wage.