About thirty staff and teachers at Launceston College briefly walked off the job on Wednesday morning in protest over claims of government inaction to solve the state's intractable education crisis.
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Australian Education Union Tasmania-branch president, David Genford, said the union would further escalate industrial action if the government continued to ignore concerns over low pay, staff shortages and high teacher and staff workloads.
It was only when "people are actually prepared to take action" that the government would listen to the concerns, Mr Genford said.
"We've got other schools that are going to do similar actions, and if we are still not being listened to, then that will need to increase," he said.
"Teachers need to be valued, they've been overworked, underpaid, and we've got a government that hasn't come forward with solutions to actually address this and our members are angry."
A spokesperson for the Department of Education said the government is committed to supporting the "highly valued teaching and education workforce".
The spokesperson confirmed the Department has been negotiating pay with AEU representatives for several weeks, including a meeting held on August 10.
"As occurs in 'good faith' negotiations, there is not always immediate agreement on all aspects, but parties work towards prioritisation of matters of shared importance, and during the process, both parties may negotiate aspects that vary from their initial position," the spokesperson said.
"It is disappointing the AEU has conducted industrial action outside of good faith negotiation. Negotiations cannot continue while industrial action is underway."
The spokesperson noted that "good faith" negotiations led to the most recent wage bargain signed in March this year.
The new agreement included a new flexibility clause to provide for additional pay where teachers volunteer to work above their maximum instructional load per fortnight to cover absences from COVID-19, the spokesperson said.
That agreement was only for a year, and is due to expire next month, and was signed on the understanding that negotiations for the next pay bargain continue in the mean time, according to union officials.
Launceston College history and English teacher, Cameron Hindrum, said it was disappointing that Tasmanian teachers are the lowest-paid in the country.
"We rack up huge amounts of overtime each week, we give up our lunch hours for meetings or tutorials, for counseling sessions sometimes or just to have a chat with a student who wants to catch up," he said.
"That is one of the things we hope the state government will start paying attention to."
There are large numbers of vacancies for teachers, relief teachers, as well as school psychologists and social workers in the Tasmanian system.
Meanwhile, mainland states are poaching staff to relieve their own shortages - Victoria in May renewed a $59 million incentive programme that offers as much as $50,000 over a number of years to teach in its schools.
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