To: St Bede’s College
St Bede’s College & VCEA, Grant Us Bargaining Rights Now
We call on St Bede’s College to push back against the anti-worker position held by the Victorian Catholic Education Authority (VCEA), and to focus instead on the important employment issues in Catholic education – addressing workforce shortages, recognising and rewarding the hard work of staff, ensuring that Catholic schools are first-rate workplaces and supporting fair and equitable good-faith bargaining between employers and employees.
Why is this important?
The Victorian Catholic Education Authority (VCEA) is seeking to ignore the nearly 19,000 staff who signed a Statement of Support for fair bargaining last year – a clear majority of the 35,000 staff that the VCEA has claimed work in Victorian Catholic education. No good explanation has been provided for this anti-worker stance, and this continued denial of our basic rights is causing deep concern amongst staff in Catholic schools right across the state.
As educators, we don’t want to have to take industrial action – but as workers, we know that the internationally-recognised right to do so is what gives us power at the bargaining table, and that without this right we are negotiating with one hand tied behind our back.
As educators, we don’t want to have to take industrial action – but as workers, we know that the internationally-recognised right to do so is what gives us power at the bargaining table, and that without this right we are negotiating with one hand tied behind our back.
