Teachers’ union is not likely to negotiate with government under a deal reached on Tuesday, with Labor accusing the state’s Education Services Union of breaking a promise to maintain the strike as long as it was in its agreement with the government.
Education Services Union (ESU) leader Michael Dutton said the deal was “not good news for schools, it’s not good news in the community and it’s bad news for the economy”.
“We want to be part of the solution, not the problem,” he told reporters.
“There’s a lot of things that have gone wrong in NSW in terms of teachers’ union negotiations.
There’s a whole lot of bad news out there.”‘
There’s no guarantee’In a statement released on Tuesday afternoon, Mr Dutton denied that teachers had broken any agreements with the state government.
“It is true that the ESU has broken a number of agreements with government,” he said.
“We are committed to keeping our members and supporters safe, and our members are committed and happy to work together with us in the public interest.”
Mr Dutton added that the agreement had been negotiated by the union’s members, not by the NSW Department of Education (NDE).
“It has been a long time coming, but the agreement has been made, and we are committed,” he added.’
Negotiating in the dark’It is not known how long the strike will last or when it will be lifted.
But Mr Dudge said he was confident that the “best” deal would be struck by Wednesday morning.
“I think the negotiations will be in the darkness of Wednesday morning,” he admitted.
“The negotiations will not be in a position to offer us any guarantees.”‘
I can’t imagine what this would do’Labor’s education spokesman Christopher Pyne said the teachers union had made a “negotiating error”.
“They haven’t told us what they’re going to do,” he tweeted.
“They’ve told us they’ll be negotiating with the Department of the Premier.”‘
They can’t give us certainty’Mr Duce said it was “hard to imagine” that the teachers would not accept the deal.
“This is an enormous bargaining position for teachers, and the teachers’ movement has a long history of negotiation,” he argued.
“And this is a negotiating position that will not take them back to a negotiation with the Government.”
The National Education Union has also refused to comment on the agreement.
The state government has been criticised for the delays in negotiations, with Premier Gladys Berejiklian saying on Tuesday she had been “taken aback” by the length of the strike.
“Given the very tight timeline, we have made every effort to ensure that the union can and will continue to negotiate,” she said.
But Ms Berejic also acknowledged that the government had not been able to negotiate an agreement on Monday, when the strike began.
“That is something that we have to work through,” she told ABC radio.
“So we can’t have a situation where we are negotiating in the darkest of darkness.”