Spotlight on reps

Jacob Betts
St Francis Xavier College, Florey

Jacob Betts is the Science Coordinator at St Francis Xavier College, Florey, in the ACT, where he also teaches human biology. He’s been the IEU rep at the school for more than two years.

Unions run in Jacob’s blood. His father was Neville Betts, former organiser and Assistant Secretary of the Electrical Trades Union. On Neville’s passing in 2021, Labor MP David Smith, member for Bean in the ACT, paid tribute to him in Parliament: “Neville was the ETU organiser on the Parliament House site during its construction. He was loved by delegates, members and officials across the Labor movement.”

Jacob is proud of this family history. “My father was a union delegate for 30-something years, and an organiser, and he became Assistant Secretary of the ETU. So for me, being a rep aligns really well with how I was brought up. When I became a member, Dad messaged me and said, ‘welcome brother’. And I’m like, ‘my father just called me brother’.”

Strengthening the chapter at his school is front of Jacob’s mind. “That’s something we’re working on at the moment – I’ve started by recruiting more reps, and now we’re all starting to work on membership,” he said.

“It’s really about educating people to know what we’ve accomplished so far as a union. Like, even my old man used to say the same thing about unions in general – you know, we didn’t have overtime or paid maternity leave, and because we might live in a more comfortable time now, we can tend to forget where we’ve come from and how important the union movement is. So, yeah, it’s in my blood.

“That 70th anniversary issue of Newsmonth which has the spread of IEU history, I think is really powerful, and I can’t wait to whack it up on the notice board.”

Jacob has a simple reason for having joined the IEU. “I’m a union member because I care about workers – that’s about it, really,” he said.

“Unions, to me, really represent the working class, and we’re encompassing a lot of the middle class now too – we’re the heart and soul of most industries. Without us, everything collapses, and we get disadvantaged. So we need to look after each other.”

Katrina Easton
Rosary Park Catholic School, Branxton

Katrina Easton is a rep at Rosary Park Catholic School, a primary school at Branxton in the Hunter Valley region, where she is an Aboriginal Education Teacher. This is Katrina’s third year as a rep and her fifth as an IEU member.

“I’m a union member because unions look after their people, and history shows that we have better outcomes if we’re unionists,” Katrina said.

Looking after people is the reason Katrina became a rep. “For a while I was filling lots of roles at my school, and I think I was the ‘middle person’ that everyone saw, and they’d come to me and say, ‘This is what I’ve got a problem about’, and I felt like I needed to advocate,” Katrina said.

Membership is strong at Rosary Park, where most of the staff are IEU members. “When there’s examples of when I’ve had to step in and be supportive of chapter members, they see what the union can do,” Katrina said. “We have a really good organiser, and she works with a lot of staff as well. I think when teachers are burnt out, feeling backed is what they most want.”

If Katrina could change one thing for her profession this year it would be workloads. “There are a lot of expectations outside of standard teaching hours,” she said.

Data collection is another issue Katrina would like to see either eased or better managed. “What are we using this data for if we don’t use it to change our programs?” she said.

“We don’t know how to analyse it so we don’t know what it really means, and we’re finding that all of the specialist teachers – learning support, EALD [English as another language or dialect], Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander – we actually don’t get to sit as a team with the teachers and look at what the data actually means for our programming and for our students. We’re pushed to get all this data, but we don’t get to see enough of the insights.”

Debbie Cassar

St Christopher’s Catholic Primary School, Panania

Debbie Cassar is the rep at St Christopher’s Catholic Primary School in Panania, in Sydney’s southern suburbs, where she teaches Year 1.

“It’s an important job that needed to be done,” Debbie said of her decision to put up her hand for the rep role. “In the current education climate, we need to stand up for ourselves and make sure our voices are heard because teachers can be overworked, underpaid and underappreciated.”

Reducing workloads and smaller class sizes are hot topics at Debbie’s school. “No matter what research they choose to show us, I think class size is definitely a big factor in teacher workload,” she said.

Debbie has a secret weapon for strengthening the union at her school. “I give out lollies at our chapter meetings,” she laughed. “But it’s mostly word of mouth – I encourage people to come along. We’re lucky, we have friendly staff, everyone’s lovely, and I think word of mouth really works.”

Debbie finds both her work and being a rep interesting and rewarding. “I’ve learned a lot on the job, and I’m still learning,” she said.

An IEU member for 19 years, Debbie joined the union when she first started teaching. “There’s power in numbers and it’s important to make sure we have a fair and equitable workplace and that our voices are heard,” she said.

Mercedes Goss
St Patrick’s Parish School, Albury

Mercedes Goss teaches Year 5 at St Patrick’s Parish School, Albury, where she’s also the Religious Education Coordinator. Mercedes has been a teacher for 34 years, and a rep for 33 of them.

“I like that I can actually advocate on behalf of my staff as well as advocate on behalf of my region,” Mercedes says.

“You’ve got to have a voice. And that voice is important because in Albury we’re south of even the ‘New South’ in New South Wales, and sometimes we can feel a little bit distant. We have regional issues as well as the bigger picture issues, and we’ve got to have a voice to be able to express all those issues.”

Mercedes keeps the St Pat’s chapter strong by always approaching new teachers and inviting them to join the IEU. “We try and get our younger teachers on board, of course, and we talk through what the issues are,” she said. “We try to be quite specific and intentional about how important it is to be a union member and how the union supports us in our profession.”

Being a union member has been important to Mercedes throughout her career. “It’s a deeply ingrained part of my profession and my vocation as a teacher to be a union member,” she said.

“We do things together, and we have a collective ideology about how important our job is and how important it is to support one another in what we do.”

Mercedes is proudly union. “I love being a union member,” she said. “I’ve been a union member for a long time, and I’ve stood beside a lot of great union people in that time. Our union is strong because of the individuals who stand together and support us.”

Laura Proctor
Casimir Catholic College, Marrickville

For Laura Proctor, sharing the role of rep has brought many benefits. “It’s been really nice to have someone to just chat about things to, you know,” she said.

“Do we need to take this further and talk to the members here, or is this something that we can figure out between ourselves and the person that’s making the inquiry? I think it’s been good to have two people.”

The science teacher was happy to step up to the role of rep when her colleagues put her forward. “I’m passionate about trying to support new staff and just trying to make sure that it’s a positive working environment, and solutions based.

“I think that we all have a part to play having a positive culture and enjoyable place to work, solving problems, just making sure that everyone feels that they’re being looked after.”

For Laura, workload is the key issue impacting members in her chapter. Everyone has noticed the gradual creep in the workload over the last 10 years, she said. It’s increased bit by bit to the point where “it’s pretty much impossible to do everything we’ve being asked to do,” she said.

“And, you know, teachers are deciding how to prioritise those things, and I think inexperienced staff find it hard to prioritise. And yeah, I think it’s something that I would like us to talk about going forward.”

Laura, who is in her first year as a rep, has been a member of the IEU since she first started teaching. “I just think it’s an absolute necessity that everyone joins so that we can make sure that we’re represented and that we have an opportunity to negotiate for our work lives”.

Joseph Clark
International Grammar School, Ultimo

Joseph Clark’s first degree was in politics. When he became a teacher, he began helping his friends out with “understanding contracts and looking at the MEAs and explaining situations to them,” Joseph said.

With the multi-enterprise agreement (MEA) in independent schools coming up this year, Joseph thought: “I’m going to be getting annoyed about these things anyway, so I might as well do it as part of my position”.

Joseph has been a rep for just over a year, and when he speaks to his colleagues about the union, he explains that the rights they now have are negotiated and that the profession is changing.

With teachers having to do more online and the creep of administrative tasks, there’s a risk of losing good people, he said. If we “leave it up to employers, even if they have the best intentions, we know what teaching is like,” he said. Teachers will keep being asked to do more “and the only people who are going to stand up for us is organised labour”.

When it comes to the MEA for independent schools, Joseph is especially focused on workloads and school-based standards. Members in his chapter are concerned about salaries and “they’ve been really disappointed in the offers from the AIS,” he said. “When people speak of how much teachers are valued” there’s a disconnect because teachers aren’t shown “that you’re financially valued”.

“So, I think tangible change is something that I’d really like to see as the negotiations continue. I think even if you can’t spell out every single requirement on the teacher, there’s got to be some room for negotiation and acceptance that the role has changed. And in terms of salary, I think with everything that’s asked of us, we need to be moving up with that.”

Monique Magri
Sacred Heart Catholic Primary School, Cabramatta

Monique Magri teaches at the primary school she attended as a child. The music and art teacher started there after she graduated, over two decades ago, and now works alongside her year 2 and year 6 teachers. It’s such “a lovely community”, she said. “And so when I saw the job advertised, I really wanted to work in that environment.”

She now gives back to her community as a union rep. Monique’s desire to have a family motivated her to become an IEU member. “I knew that I would need to take maternity leave. I just wanted to be supported. So that’s my main reason for joining the IEU.”

When it came time for Monique to go on maternity leave, she found the support she needed from the IEU “So it was very beneficial to be part of the union at that point,” Monique said.

These days. workload is a focus for her chapter, she said. “I feel like the Catholic system is doing a lot for the students, which is really, really wonderful.” While she sees those benefits for students, staff “are very busy”. That’s something she wants to see addressed because “workload is a big problem”.

Keith Smith
St Scholastica’s College, Glebe

For Keith Smith, joining the IEU was the natural thing to do. He grew up in the north of England, an area he said is very unionised and leans left. So being a member of a union, “that’s just a continuation of those values and those principles over the years”, said Keith.

The teacher at St Scholastica’s College became a union rep a year and a half ago because he felt a sense of responsibility. “As I say, I’ve always been active. I’ve always been a vociferous member of the staff in terms of union issues.”

Keith came along to a reps’ training session at IEU’s Sydney office to meet other reps, learn new things and find out what’s happening in other schools.

At his chapter, working conditions are at the top of his list of concerns. “I think that of course that ties into pay. But, I think there are work practices issues around face-to-face, around meetings, around entitlements, and I think we can see that at the moment, there’s a lot of people leaving the profession.”

To Keith, staff retention is the “number one job of any school”.

“And I think a strong union with clear work practices really benefits staff retention.” It’s a message he’s passed on to senior leadership — that a strong union chapter makes for “a better school”.

Noel Neilson
Glenaeon Rudolf Steiner School, Middle Cove

Noel Neilson is the rep at Glenaeon Rudolf Steiner School, where he is a maintenance and groundskeeper across three campuses – preschool, infants and secondary school – for a total of about 400 students.

When it came to electing a rep at his school, “I just put my hand up,” said Noel, who’s been the rep now for two-and-a-half years and an IEU member for 15 years.

“I’ve always been a union member, in the building trade or whatever else,” he said.

This year, Noel said he’d like to see success in the campaign for single-interest bargaining for the multi-enterprise agreement covering members at his school, as this gives them more rights in the process of negotiating for better pay and conditions.

“Being around all three campuses, I ask the teachers, if they’re interested, please vote – I’m trying to get as many teachers as we have to vote, and it’s working,” Noel said. It certainly is working: the members at Glenaeon have said yes to single-interest bargaining.

“Glenaeon is a great school to work at – all the kids, and the respect, I love it,” Noel said.

Mitchell Flack
Delaney College, Granville

When Mitchell Flack came to an IEU reps training session in November, it was a busy time in the term. With exams, marking reports, and more, “it’s good to sort of, I suppose, re-centre myself as a union rep and focus on what’s coming with the next award negotiations in my diocese,” said Mitchell.

The young teacher became the rep for Delaney College six months ago and went to the training session to gain a deeper understanding of the role. “I’m obviously still learning, and want to support my chapter, as much as I can, so I’m just here to learn the ropes.”

Mitchell joined the union three years ago because of the impact of Covid, during which he observed “the stresses being placed on teachers”, said Mitchell.

“I saw the lead up to the last award negotiations, and believed in what changes the union was trying to push for and wanted to be part of that voice.”

As a rep, the key issues he’d like to see addressed are workload and the transparency of communication.

The training session proved useful, and Mitchell was glad he went. “A lot of thinking today, a lot to bring back to the members of my school.”