IEU members across Australia welcome three tranches of improved workplace laws, including the right to disconnect and stronger rights for reps/delegates in schools.
The Federal Government has passed three tranches of industrial relations laws in the past 18 months that aim to get wages moving and provide better protections for working people.
But all of these improvements didn’t just materialise in parliament. They follow years of campaigning by union members dedicated to ensuring fair wages, secure jobs and better working conditions.
IEU members have been front and centre during debates on all these new laws – sharing their powerful stories with politicians, in Senate hearings and to the media about the changes needed in our schools, preschools and kindergartens.
Closing Loopholes #2
Right to disconnect
Passed in February 2024, the latest round of reforms delivers important gains for workers across many industries, a new ‘right to disconnect’ is especially relevant to school staff who are drowning under unrelenting workloads.
The right to refuse unreasonable work-related contact outside normal hours builds on similar protections won by IEU members in Western Australia and Queensland through collective bargaining in 2023.
Employer requests, parental queries and student contact often encroach on the personal time of staff. The growth of mobile technology and assumed 24/7 connectivity have only made this worse. But teachers aren’t permanently ‘on call’. They need valuable downtime.
While there is still much to be done to address workload pressures in schools, a ‘right to disconnect’ will help overworked school staff by providing a right to refuse to monitor, read or respond to employer or work-related contact after hours or on weekends.
School communities – including employers, parents and students – will need to come together to ensure a clear understanding and compliance with these important new parameters.