Education Minister Jeremy Rockliff has described as "extraordinary and undemocratic" a move by the head of the teachers' union to reject the government's latest wages offer.
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In an email to members, Australian Education Union president Helen Richardson admits the offer is not in the best interests of relief teachers who would have suffered a big pay cut.
"While the latest government offer to members on the Teachers Agreement contains a long list of benefits for members and for public education, significant numbers of members have expressed strong concerns over the government's proposed changes affecting relief teachers," Ms Richardson wrote.
"When members speak, it's our job to listen and respond.
"I will ask our Branch Council members to reject the government's proposed changes to relief teacher loadings and the unjustified link the government has created between this and primary teacher instructional load reductions."
Mr Rockliff called on the AEU to respect the 70 per cent of members who voted in support of a "good deal" for teachers and students.
"This is an extraordinary, undemocratic and hypocritical backflip by the AEU," he said. "The union cannot have its cake and eat it too.
"This was the deal to reduce teacher workload, put more teachers in our schools and reduce workload pressures."
In other news:
Mr Rockliff said the AEU had campaigned for more than three decades to reduce contact hours for primary school teachers which was part of the new deal.
Ms Richardson will move three motions at the AEU's council meeting on Friday including rejecting and revising the offer and establishing a taskforce to solve what she says is a "crisis in attracting relief teachers".
She said it was clear the government had "failed to convince members that cutting relief teacher pay loading is acceptable, particularly when we have a relief teacher shortage crisis already in our schools and colleges".
"Schools are regularly forced to collapse classes because they can't source relief teachers, especially in the winter months," she said.
Meanwhile, public sector union members will meet in the next two weeks to decide further action in their long-running wages dispute.
Public sector union secretary Tom Lynch said unions wanted to negotiate with Premier Will Hodgman who was "not capable or unwilling to do that".
Sue Bailey
Sue works two days a week for The Examiner and The Advocate newspapers and and is based in Hobart. Loves any human interest stories!
Sue works two days a week for The Examiner and The Advocate newspapers and and is based in Hobart. Loves any human interest stories!
