Teachers agree to stage half-day strikes across Victoria in term 2

Teachers at Victorian government schools have agreed to embark on half-day strikes during term 2 after the government failed to present a new pay offer to the state’s public educators.

The further-planned industrial action will include rolling stoppages across the state, but not another full-day strike.

In a warning to the state government and parents across the state, the Australian Education Union Victorian branch president Justin Mullaly said on Friday the half-day strikes would occur throughout the next school term, which runs from late April to late June.

“They’ll commence in the third week of term, and it will see regions of the state take stop-work action … multiple local schools in a particular geographic area will all stop work at the same time, and then they will converge and rally at a local state Labor MP’s office,” Mullaly said.

The third week of term 2 starts on Monday, May 4.

The half-day strikes mean there will not be morning classes at impacted schools, he said.

There will also be a ban on educators writing comments in school reports, attending meetings, implementing any new Department of Education programs or initiatives and responding to department emails.

Talks between the AEU and the Department of Education over the industry’s push for better pay and working conditions resumed on Friday morning and continue. But Mullaly said the government failed to put forward a new offer after the union previously rejected the government’s offer of a 17 per cent pay rise over four years with a 1.5 per cent overtime allowance.

The government has previously said its offer would bring Victorian state school teachers – the nation’s lowest paid public education workforce – to parity with their interstate counterparts. The union is seeking a 35 per cent pay rise over three years.

Mullaly said the union and the government continued to negotiate “on an almost daily basis”.

When asked about calls from union members who wanted to see more full-day stoppages in a repeat of the March 24 strike – in which 35,000 teachers, principals and school support staff brought the Melbourne CBD to a standstill – Mullaly said nothing was off the table.

“The decisions that are made are done through our democratic processes. Nothing we’ve decided so far rules out further escalation if that’s what’s warranted,” he said.

Premier Jacinta Allan said on Friday the government continued to meet with the teachers union and wanted to see state educators being paid more.

“We want Victorian teachers to get a pay rise and the conditions that support them and their outstanding work they do in delivering great public education to kids right across the state,” she said.

Addressing the AEU leadership, Allan said “the best way to get that outcome is to stay at the negotiating table”.

Education Minister Ben Carroll, also the deputy premier, said he was committed to getting a deal for teachers and was hopeful a deal could soon be reached.

“We are doing everything we can to strike a good deal for Victorian school teachers. They deserve competitive wages with their interstate counterparts,” he said.

There was widespread anger among teachers and high-profile resignations from the AEU in 2022, following the previous pay deal, which was worth 2 per cent a year. A group of unionists running on a “strike now” ticket pulled in 37 per cent of the vote in internal elections in late 2024.

Union membership fell from about 48,000 in 2018 to less than 42,000 at the most recent elections.

But on March 24, organisers told the large crowd at the strike that union membership numbers had grown to more than 60,000 after a sustained recruitment campaign linked to the current round of pay talks.

Opposition education spokesman Brad Rowswell said Labor’s “political dithering” led to the threat of further strikes.

“[That] has real-world consequences for parents who will be impacted, students who will again miss out on face-to-face learning and teachers who rightly feel undervalued,” he said.

Rowswell said teachers deserved a fair pay rise, and the government needed to settle the pay deal urgently.

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