Editorial

It is wonderful to read about inspirational people and this edition of IE focuses on several. Michele O’Neil is the President of the ACTU and a truly inspirational leader. IE gives our readers the opportunity to get to know Michele and the experiences that have made her who she is today – it’s a great story.

Early childhood educator, Sue Motely has a great story as well. It’s one that isn’t lived in the high pressured national industrial arena, but in the everyday experience of passionate and creative educators. Sue’s story highlights and reminds us all of the great diversity of experience that staff in schools and early childhood centres bring to their work and the rich learning environments they develop for their learners.

This edition of IE continues to focus on key professional issues and how our education unions advocate for educators and strive to improve their working conditions which in turn improve the learning environments for students.

We look at the very important equal pay case for early childhood teachers which is being run by the IEUA NSW/ACT Branch; see what the 25,000 participants in the recent Work Shouldn’t Hurt Workplace Health and Safety survey tell us about their experiences; take a long hard look at the wellbeing and workload issues for our graduate and early career teachers, and unpack the impact of the Nationally Consistent Data Collection (NCCD) process on workloads.

I commend this edition to you.

Debra James

iemagazine@ieu.asn.au