Thousands of Victorian TAFE teachers are on the brink of going to war with their employers, the state's TAFE institutes, over a push to increase their teaching load without a pay increase.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Several of the state's TAFE institutes have collectively applied to Fair Work to tear up their workplace agreements with teaching staff and compel teachers to spend more hours doing face-to-face teaching work.
The Australian Education Union has accused the Andrews government of siding with the institutes and undermining TAFE teachers, despite pledging to "save TAFE", in a rare spat between the government and the Labor-aligned union.
Under the current four-year workplace agreement, signed in October last year, the amount of time a TAFE teacher spends in the classroom is capped at 800 hours a year, while time spent on class planning and assessment is capped at 400 hours.
But the institutes want to block teachers from doing assessment hours in class-time, despite agreeing to this clause just over a year ago.
Teachers argue the change will open the door for the institutes to compel them to take on extra classes, intensifying their workload.
Federation University, Victoria University and RMIT have not joined the other institutes in seeking to rewrite the workplace agreement.
- AAP
