Well, members, today a couple of thousand people took their message to Premier Rann only to discover that he wasn’t at home! We can only imagine that he had much more important things to do. Perhaps he was meeting with Minister Paul Caica and telling him to sort out the EB mess?
Anyway, despite the rain, it was great to see our sea of red and feel the energy of member action. A number of members made great comments to the media and these were played on the various news services earlier tonight. Talkback radio today was also very interesting, with lots of debate about the government's proposed funding model. It was good to finally have these issues debated in earnest on the airwaves.
Minister Caica announced that today was “the union’s day for comment”. After the meeting last week, Jack, Marcus, Anne and I left with the impression that Paul would brief himself on the issues and that we might see some shift in the entrenched position of the state government sometime soon. Their silence today seems to indicate that resolving our dispute is not high on their agenda.
I guess once the government has few more good news stories – like the announcement of a desalination plant – there might be some room in Premier Rann’s Cabinet meetings for the 14,000 AEU members who deserve a far better deal than the one currently on the table.
Our actions continue right across the state this week so that we can inform people about the inadequate pay and conditions on Offer and to articulate the major problems with the proposed Student Centred Resource Funding Model.
It seems to me that there is an obvious way forward for negotiations; Minister Caica needs to appoint some senior advisors to the negotiating team as it's just far too difficult to negotiate with people who have no understanding of the day to day realities faced by our members.
The solution is quite simple. Give us someone to talk to Paul!
Members, keep up the outstanding support and we'll see you at the next rally.
In solidarity,
Correna
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