St Brigid’s Marrickville is a great place to practice as a professional teacher. This is in part due to members frequently and openly discussing issues that affect our Chapter, the teaching profession and the education community as a whole.
The Chapter has been actively involved in the Catholic campaign since its beginning, demonstrating solidarity and commitment to the cause by being vocally present at the campaign rally at the Sydney Masonic Center in 2014.
In the last week of Term 2, St Brigid’s Marrickville Chapter held a meeting to discuss the outcomes of the recent agreement between the Catholic Commission for Employment Relations (CCER) and the IEU. Assistant Secretary, Mark Northam joined the meeting to help explain the finer points of the agreement.
Chapter members were glad to hear of the improvements to leave entitlements and the progression to standards’ based pay scale for teachers that included pay increases for nearly all levels on the scale. Support staff members were happy that the IEU had reversed the employer-planned deterioration of conditions and pay for future staff.
Our Chapter has been impressed with the efforts of the IEU negotiating team, who have managed to bring a level of respect to the new Enterprise Agreement (EA). An agreement that, prior the IEU’s campaign, had been a document benefitting only employer groups, via a one-way form of ‘flexibility’ that was merely a dressed-up deregulation of the conditions of teachers and support staff.
The members of St Brigid’s Marrickville, would like to urge all IEU members, particularly Sydney metropolitan members, to become active participants in the issues that surround our profession. This is as simple as starting discussions around the lunch table and coming along to IEU Branch meetings.