Australian Education Union
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| Australian Education Union | |
| Members | 165,000 |
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| Country | Australia |
| Affiliation | ACTU, EI |
| Key people | Pat Byrne, federal president |
| Office location | Melbourne, Victoria |
| Website | www.aeufederal.org.au |
The Australian Education Union (AEU) is an Australian trade union which is registered with the Australian Industrial Relations Commission as an employee group, and is affiliated with the Australian Council of Trade Unions. The AEU generally has membership coverage over pre-school, infants, primary and secondary school teachers and allied staff in state Government schools. Teachers working in the private schools system are covered by the Independent Education Union of Australia (IEU). The AEU also has coverage over most state Technical and Further Education (TAFE) teachers and allied staff--however it shares this coverage in some states, particularly Victoria, with the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) and also shares this coverage of administrative staff with the Community and Public Sector Union. The AEU is affiliated with the Federation of Education Unions which unites the AEU with the IEU and the NTEU to provide a combined lobby organisation to advocate education funding and standards. The AEU is also internationally affiliated to the Education International, which the AEU claims is "the largest non-government organisation in the world."
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[edit] National organisation
The AEU organises 155,000 workers. The AEU collects about AUD$45 million in dues, and the entire union employs about 450 staff. The Federal Office sees its core business as, "the maintenance of comprehensive industrial protection and representation through industrial awards and agreements in all industrial tribunals in Australia. This involves industrial research, negotiation and advocacy over a wide range of matters including salaries and teaching and learning conditions." This focus on industrial power, the AEU's strong traditional delegate structure, and the militance of Education workers in defending their conditions and the standards of education means that the AEU has maintained its membership while other Australian unions have had declining membership. This places the AEU outside of the current organising model versus services model argument in Australian trade unionism. The AEU's trade union mentality can be categorised as a traditional delegate structure of unionism.
While branches in Victoria, the ACT, Tasmania, South Australia are central parts of the AEU, the NSW Teachers Federation, Queensland Teachers Union, and the School Teachers Union of WA are independent unions that are affiliated with the AEU.
[edit] New South Wales Teachers Federation
The NSW Teachers Federation or Teachers Fed was founded during a period of massive Australian industrial union and trade union militancy in 1919. By 1920 it achieved a membership of 5,600, or 78% of the workforce. From 1968 the Teachers Fed took industrial action to improve teaching conditions, making the first use of union authorised strikes in NSW government schools.
[edit] Current campaigns
The AEU, and the state government teachers unions generally, have been highly militant in Australia since the 1960s. However, as these militant teachers seek to defend education standards, and due to the adverse publicity of strikes, the teachers unions use industrial action as a last resort over occupational health and safety issues or during award or enterprise bargaining periods.
As industrial action is not the preferred method of militance for teachers, the AEU is actively involved in a number of campaigns. The AEU's current campaigns are: indigenous studies for teachers; a refugees campaign; a National Coalition against Poverty; Say No to Racism; a teacher supply campaign; a national TAFE funding campaign; a schools funding campaign; and, the World March for Women.
[edit] History
In the 19th Century the State governments which would later form the Commonwealth of Australia established a variety of state schools. These schools were both demanded by the Australian trade union and labour movement, for the free education of the working class, and also used as a way to control the education and free time of the children of the Australian working class. Schools systems were highly stratified, with most children only receiving infants or primary education. Selection for Technical or Academic high school was highly competitive, and biased towards the children of agriculturalists, industrialists, business owners and professionals. Teachers were low-paid government employees and controlled by a series of moral codes that restricted their professional, personal and sexual conduct. Teachers were primarily educated in Technical colleges, fully funded by the state government, and indentured to Government employment in rural or remote districts for a long period. Buildings and teaching materials were notoriously bad, and often resulted in injuries to teachers or children. University educated teachers were a rarity, and tended to go into the private schools system.
The private school system itself was split between two main groups: a British-style system of schools for the elite, and a massively underfunded Catholic church run system. Religious bigotry in the Australian trade union and labour movement often pitted unions against the Catholic system, but the Catholic education system usually shared the poor working and teaching conditions of the state schools. See the IEU for a history of trade unionism in the Australian Catholic education system.
During the 1950s there was an influx of militant trade unionists and Communists into the state schools system. These women and men had received free University education on the condition that they teach in the state schools system, or had received University training as a result of their status as Second World War veterans and had chosen to teach. These teachers, and those following them, campaigned to increase the salaries ot teachers, to transform the structure of Australian education, and to improve the curriculum. This militancy achieved its peak in the 1970s when teachers won: salaries equivalent to state parliament backbenchers; a massive and systemic initiative for building improvements; and, massive curriculum reform.
Since the 1970s the Australian teacher's unions have managed to continue to improve the occupational health and safety conditions of schools, and to continue to transform the curriculum and assessment system. Their wages have however stagnated, and the state education systems have suffered a series of massive cuts, particularly to rural and remote schools.
