Fire up your flux capacitor and jump in your DeLorean, it’s time to fly back to 1983.*
In our occasional history column, we return to the time when mobile phones were rare as hen’s teeth and as big as a brick, hair was high and shoulders were wide.
Ronald Reagan was Times Man of the Year, the Eels were NSW NRL Premiers for the third consecutive year (will the Panthers match their record this year?) and we were listening to Tim Finn and Midnight Oil. Gandhi won the Academy Award and Robert de Castella was Australian of the Year for running
a lot.
Anyone who remembers the ‘80s recalls living with the ever-present fear of nuclear war, as the Soviet Union and the West slugged it out. Seems like some things never change.
Bob Hawke defeated Malcolm Fraser on 5 March to become the 23rd Prime Minister of Australia. Susan Ryan became the Federal Education Minister, being the first woman in the ALP to serve in cabinet. Ryan was the sole woman to serve in the first three of four of Hawke’s cabinets. So thankfully, some things do change. The NSW Labor government was led by Neville Wran. Ron Mulock was the state Education Minister.
In international union news, no one could forget Lech Walesa and his Solidarnosc (solidarity) movement in Poland, the non-violent struggle for free trade unions and human rights.
In union news closer to home, the Independent Teachers Association (ITA), as the IEU NSW/ACT Branch was then known, had 9520 members. The Independent Schools’ Staff Association in the ACT (ISSA) had 450 members (now 32,000+ combined). There are 139 people who joined in 1983 that are still current members.
The Independent Teachers Federation of Australian (ITFA) had 17,000 members. The Independent Education Union of Australia (IEUA), as it is now known, currently has 75,000 members making it one of the top ten unions by membership in the country.
The pay in non-government schools for a first-year out (two/three years trained) teacher was $14,490; the top step (four/five years trained) was $25,295. Check our website or contact your organiser if you would like to know the equivalent rates today.
In a lengthy article in the March ‘83 Newsmonth, Secretary Michael Raper justifies the ITA’s involvement in the Australians For Nuclear Disarmament rally, saying, “As teachers, we are always dealing with the future. There seems to be little point to our working lives if the future of our students is one of fear and/or destruction caused by massive nuclear arsenals or an outbreak of nuclear war.”
This position was not a unanimous one. The Cumberland Branch passed a resolution against the ITA’s involvement in such “extraneous activities”. The Cumberland position was the minority one. On 27 March 1983 1,300 Teachers Federation and ITA members marched together for nuclear disarmament and peace. The ITA/IEU has been involved in Palm Sunday marches and rallies since that time.
The prospect of corporal punishment being banned from non-government schools was raised in various articles in Newsmonth. Such a ban was still some years away.
Our union was campaigning on the provision of casual relief teachers to cover student absences. It was not accepted by employers at the time that the absent teacher should be replaced by a casual relief teacher. The ITA noted non-government schools were much worse off than state schools in this regard. While employer attitudes have (mostly) evolved, the current shortage of teachers, including casual relief teachers finds many members experiencing what teachers of the 1980’s were campaigning against.
In 1983 the union organised a symposium entitled, ‘Human Sexuality and the School’ to discuss whether sex education should be taught in schools. The Festival of Light, a group claiming to representative of Catholic parents lobbied against the proposal.
It may be difficult to imagine in this age of chronic teacher shortages, but redundancies were a real and present threat for many of our members in the early eighties (and at times since then). What is also difficult to fathom is that there was then a “preference clause” in the award. This meant that absolute preference must be given to an ITA member over a non-member where someone was to be dismissed via redundancy. What made this clause even more critical was that there were no paid redundancy provisions in the award at the time.
The Industrial Registrar supported the ITA in disallowing a group of Catholic principal members who were seeking to establish a breakaway principals’ union. The IEU is proud to represent its principal members who remain one of our highest density sub branches.
The IEU congratulates the 139 members who joined in 1983 and have maintained continuous membership since then. If you have not yet received our token of appreciation for this remarkable service, please contact your organiser.
* We concede that the original Back to Future film wasn’t released until 1985 but time travel permits us stealing this reference prematurely in any event.