As teachers became employees rather than independent contractors or owners of schools through the nineteenth century, the need to work together for a variety of purposes increased. The improvement of wages and working conditions was always one reason for purposeful association, but there was also a desire to improve the governance of schools and education administrations, as well as improving the educational experiences of young people.
These aims are often separated into the “industrial” and “professional” aims of teacher associations and unions. They developed at different rates in successive teacher organisations. Teachers, almost always aspiring to middle class respectability and professional status, found it difficult until well into the twentieth century to associate with broader working class union movements, and to utilise some of their methods, the most challenging being labour withdrawal (the strike), to achieve their aims. Negotiation, representation and cooperation were most often seen as the most desirable tactics. At the same time, colonial and state governments often legislated or regulated against political activity by its public employees, including teachers. The demand for “obedience” from teachers, and the signing of official correspondence with superiors with “your humble servant” often remained a requirement until well into the twentieth century.
Following is a list of some of the issues that public school teachers, and some nongovernment school teachers fought against over many decades preceding and after 1900:
- payment of teachers in part by the “results” of their students when tested
inflexible regimes of teacher and school classification
inspection routines on which teacher salary, promotion and transfer might depend
teacher transfer rules, some of which appeared to be applied capriciously
inadequate teacher housing, especially in rural areas
exploitative pupil and junior teacher regimes
unequal pay for men and women doing the same work
inadequate teacher education, institutions and time spent within them
inadequate wages or salaries
poor or no access to superannuation
large class sizes.
Authoritarian, paternalistic and punitive governance by central bureaucracies in public education systems gave teachers plenty of reason to organise. Despite this, the nineteenth century teacher organisations were often weak and ephemeral. Teachers were overworked, dispersed through the countryside, and attempts to influence governments and education departments often failed.
As organising began to occur on the “industrial” side it should not be forgotten that from the 1880s the New Education movement was gathering force in the Australian colonies. Teachers were interested, and their associations often organised speakers, meetings and conferences to promote the new approaches. The new directors of public education early in the twentieth century, advocates of the New Education, such as Alfred Williams, Frank Tate, Peter Board, William Neale and Cyril Jackson often cooperated with and engaged the teacher organisations in the work. There might even have been an industrial pay-off. The successful development of the New Education in schools would necessarily soften some of the harsher elements of teacher employment and school organisation. The ending of teacher payment by results is a good example of the alignment of professional with industrial aims.
Over time the ephemeral teacher associations in each colony began to develop or merge into stronger and larger groups. Most teachers from the 1870s in Australia were employed by newly formed government education departments. Following the organising of schools and teachers on centralised and bureaucratic lines, and the employment of hundreds, then thousands of teachers, it became increasingly imperative that teachers organise to present a united front to their employers.
Problems with achieving unified state teacher unions
Forming strong and unified teacher unions was a huge task. It was temporarily achieved in South Australia in the 1920s. In 1923 the union conference meets. SLSA PRG 280/1/37/334
The ability of public school teachers to organise within a single or limited number of associations or unions was not easily achieved. There were at least six major obstacles.
(1) Education employees worked at differing promotion levels. Classroom teachers and school headmasters and mistresses often had different interests. Single unions of teachers often had difficulty in containing the differing interests.
(2) Separate sectors of schooling also promoted disunity. Teachers of infants, primary children and then adolescents in the secondary schools often argued that the education systems should employ, pay and organise them differently. Secondary school teachers for example, more likely to have a university degree, usually believed they should be paid more than primary school teachers. Technical schoolteachers often saw their interests as different from those of high school teachers. In later periods the incorporation of teaching assistants and other education workers into teacher unions was not achieved without difficulties.
(3) Gender. It took well into the twentieth century for male and female teachers to achieve the same pay scales, to end discriminations on the basis of gender and marital status and to achieve equal promotion opportunities. Male unionists were not always supportive of their female colleagues. That men, increasingly a minority of public school teachers, tended to monopolise the better paid promotion positions, and women the less well-paid positions was a long-standing source of tension. Women teachers were often divided. Unmarried career women teachers with access to promotions and the salaries that went with them, often in single-sex schools, could resist the assertions of married women for the same employment opportunities. The various state governments’ marriage bars prohibiting married women from permanent employment within government education departments may be seen as another problem that teacher unions might not always resist. In New South Wales most married women were barred from employment in a 1932 act of parliament. In 1956 the bar was lifted. In South Australia the bar had officially begun in 1915 but had been informally in place from two or three decades before. It was not lifted there until 1969.
(4) Urban and rural teachers were often at odds over a wide variety of issues. Urban teachers could organise more easily, the professional and social disadvantages of isolated and country schools were not theirs. Housing, transfers, promotion opportunities, access to training that could assist career development and local parental pressures could all be problematic for teachers in small rural schools, including the many one-teacher schools that lasted through the nineteenth and into the twentieth century.
(5) Political differences also played a role. Some teachers, socialists for example, might have wished to organise with and alongside working class unions. Others, more conservative, believed their organisations should resemble the associations of the professions such as medical doctors, abjuring militant actions in the pursuit of professional aims. Rejection of political affiliations remained strong in most teacher unions through the twentieth century.
(6) The longest lasting cause of disunity has been the split between teachers working for governments and those in the nongovernment sectors. The opposition of many of the unions of public school teachers to state aid to nongovernment, sometimes private schools was a major cause of disunity. The salaries of too many nongovernment school teachers became dependent on state aid to nongovernment schools. There were long-lasting cultural differences as well. Teachers in many of the wealthier nongovernment schools developed few affinities with public school teachers, and vice versa. They were more likely to work together in school subject and curriculum associations.
Teachers in nongovernment, corporate and private schools
Public or government school teachers were able to organise more effectively than nongovernment teachers even though they had developed their own associations and unions from the early twentieth century. Foundations of large church and secular corporate schools and systems of schools made this possible, but the problems were great. Instead of one major employer, a government education department in each state, there were several nongovernment systems of schools, including Catholic, Lutheran and Anglican, as well as independent or corporate schools, each of which employed teachers under different arrangements, contracts and conditions. Instead of being able to fund and organise single campaigns and cases for better wages and conditions as did teachers across a large government school system, multiple campaigns and cases were required within the smaller systems and independent schools.
It was not until the early 1970s that existing associations and unions of nongovernment school teachers formed a national peak organisation, the Independent Teachers Federation of Australia (ITFA), becoming the Independent Education Union of Australia (IEU). The new federal funding of nongovernment schools following the Karmel Report (1974) required an organised national voice for teachers in the nongovernment sector. In 1984 federal registration with the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission was sought. It was achieved in 1988. Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) membership had been achieved in 1985.
Significance of industrial arbitration and conciliation courts and commissions
The NSWTF contemplates strike as Depression provides the argument for reducing teachers’ wages. Warwick Daily News, October 12, 1936, p.12
From the 1890s the Australian colonies, then states developed a variety of industrial conciliation and arbitration courts that sought to resolve disputes between employers and employees, and the handing down of “awards” that regulated salaries and conditions of employment. Where possible these were used by teacher associations and unions. Problems were many. In some cases the courts failed to recognise the right of teacher unions to be heard, while many teachers continued to resist recourse to working class union methods which might have led to early dispute resolution. Public service conditions, and public school teachers’ own aspirations towards middle class status and respectability occasionally restrained their use of industrial conciliation and arbitration courts.
The timing of teacher unions joining local Trades and Labour Councils varied across the Australian states. For example, in New South Wales it occurred in 1942, Queensland in 1982 and in South Australia, 1983. Eventually all the larger teacher unions succeeded in accessing the state courts and commissions. Sometimes separate tribunals were established for teachers. The Teachers’ Salaries Board in South Australia (1946 through to the 1980s) was an example of this.
The increasing probability that state and federal courts and commissions across the twentieth century might improve wages and conditions for teachers was a powerful incentive for teachers to join and organise associations and unions, and affiliate with other peak organisations such as ACSPA (Australian Council of Salaried and Professional Associations) and eventually the ACTU (Australian Council of Trade Unions). Together they would have the resources and status to develop effective campaigns and representations to governments, as they put their award cases before the industrial commissions, tribunals and courts.
National teacher unionism
Only a national organisation of teacher unions could fight the federal government for education funding. The ATF publicises its demands in 1967. Canberra Times, 28 June, p. 3
The Australian Constitution from 1901 did not include education as a federal government domain for law making. As a result the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Court took no interest in schools and teachers although it did have an influence over one of the very long running injustices in teacher wages and employment. The Harvester Judgement of 1907 consolidated the idea that women should be paid less than men. Women, whether married or not, were defined as dependents. Employers of teachers as well as state-based industrial courts set the percentages of the male wage that female employees were paid.
Lack of influence in the federal sphere meant that attempts to form national teacher unions from the 1920s tended towards confederation models, where state unions were stronger than the national. They needed to be. State, not Commonwealth governments and arbitration courts, were the places that the state-based teacher unions needed to concentrate if improvements in wages and conditions were to be achieved. The Federated State School Teachers Association of Australia was formed in 1921. In 1929 the High Court decisively rejected the right of the Association to seek a national wages award. The Court argued that education did not constitute an “industry” within the meaning of Section 4 of the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Act and that any dispute between teachers and state governments was not the Commonwealth’s business.
Following this defeat the Australian Teachers Union was founded in 1930, becoming the Australian Teachers Federation (ATF) in1937. It brought together the unions of public school teachers across the states. Fifty years later, in 1987, its successor union, the second Australian Teachers Union achieved the much needed national registration for the purposes of arguing its cases before federal tribunals. From 1993, the union became the Australian Education Union (AEU), and the older state and territory-based unions became its branches.
The state branches of the AEU remain crucial for developing campaigns and claims for teacher salaries and conditions given that the major employers remained state-based. Nevertheless the national union was not insignificant. From the 1960s federal governments took an increasingly influential role in framing education policy and funding schools across the nation. Teacher unions required a united and forceful voice as federal education interventions in education developed rapidly.
Developing teacher unionism in the colonies, states and territories
There were multiple and usually short-lived attempts to form teacher associations and unions in each of the Australian colonies. To follow these developments more specialist works need to be consulted (see References below). In the following list some of the main events associated with the associations and unions of public school teachers are the focus. Each of the public school teacher associations and unions eventually included members who taught in the government technical colleges. Depending on the state or territory, teachers college and other tertiary educators might be included, and in South Australia for example, for a long period, many nongovernment school teachers were included as well.
Australian Capital Territory (ACT)
From 1901, the State of New South Wales provided teachers to the Territory and therefore teachers belonged to the unions and associations of that state. The years 1972-1974 saw the separation of the schools of the ACT from those of New South Wales. The federal government created a Commonwealth Teaching Service and teachers began joining a newly developed union, the Commonwealth Teachers’ Federation. By 1975 the Australian Capital Territory Teachers’ Federation (ACTTF) was established. One envied feature of the ACTTF was that it had access to the Commonwealth conciliation and arbitration courts for wages and conditions determination unlike the unions of the states. With the formation of the Australian Education Union (AEU) in 1993 the ACTTF became a branch of the national organisation: the AEU ACT.
New South Wales
In 1946 the NSW Teachers Federation fights for improved education funding. SLNSW, Home and Away 21663.
Small associations of teachers, often based in rural areas, have a history dating back to the 1850s, but they were ephemeral. The 1890s was a significant decade for the founding of stronger, more persistent organisations. A Public School Teachers’ Institute was founded in 1895 with a transition to a Public School Teachers’ Association in 1899. The modern New South Wales Teachers’ Federation was founded at the end of World War I, subsuming the older Association. The development of the Federation in New South Wales is the subject of two entries in this dictionary (Part I: 1918-1968 and Part II: 1968-2018). The New South Wales Teachers Federation became a branch of the Australian Teachers Union in 1984, and the renamed Australian Education Union (AEU) in 1993.
Northern Territory
From the 1940s to 1973 schools in the Northern Territory were staffed and run by the South Australian Education Department, except those for Aboriginal children. Before then but after 1901, at the request of the Commonwealth Government, both Queensland and South Australia had responsibilities for Territory schools. As was the case for the Australian Capital Territory in 1973 when the Commonwealth took control of territory schools and developed a teaching service, the first Northern Territory teachers’ union was founded. This was the NTTF (Northern Territory Teachers Federation). As occurred elsewhere it became a branch of the ATU in the 1980s and the AEU in 1993.
Queensland
The Queensland Teachers Union was founded in 1889 after the failure of an earlier Queensland Public School Teachers Association. Fall-out from the strikes of the 1890s meant that Queensland teacher unions were very conservative, fearing Labour movement affiliations for much of the twentieth century. Nevertheless the union was a pioneer in registering with and receiving an award from the Queensland Arbitration Court in 1917. The union made equal pay for men and women teachers part of its policy in 1947 but the Arbitration Court rejected the case brought in the following year. Equal pay was achieved in 1972. The union had its difficulties dealing with intransigent state governments, none more so than that of Premier Bjelke Petersen, but unlike the experience elsewhere, especially in Victoria and South Australia, the QTU was less subject to disabling break-aways or splits. It agreed to become a branch of the ATU in 1990, and the AEU in 1993.
South Australia
Preceptors’ associations were founded in the 1850s but they were small and ephemeral. A stronger South Australian Public Teachers’ Association (SAPTA) was founded in 1875, a response to the centralisation of public education under the Education Act of 1875. It was succeeded by the South Australian Teachers’ Association (SATA) in 1885 but had a rival in a branch of the Teachers’ Guild based in Britain. These were the predecessors to the emergence of the much stronger union, the South Australian Public Teachers’ Union (SAPTU) in 1896. Women teachers often felt that their interests were not well heard inside the union, let alone government. A Women Teachers’ Progressive League organised, often working within the union. In 1937, 600 women teachers resigned from SAPTU and formed their own organisation, the Women Teachers’ Guild. The split lasted until 1951 when the new South Australian Institute of Teachers (SAIT) was formed, with a constitution that safeguarded the representation and leadership of women. SAIT was one of the affiliates of the Australian Teachers Federation that disaffiliated from the ATF as it joined the ACTU, but reaffiliation occurred in 1983. SAIT became a branch of the Australian Education Union in 1997, renaming itself the AEU (SA Branch).
Tasmania
The Tasmanian State School Teachers’ Association was founded in 1905, launching quickly into conflict with the Education Department and its efforts to introduce the New Education into Tasmanian schools. The word “Federation” soon replaced “Association” in its name, eventually becoming the Tasmanian Teachers Federation (TTF). As was the case in South Australia, in the 1980s the TTF disaffiliated from the Australian Teachers Federation when it affiliated with the ACTU. In 1993 the problems were resolved and the TTF, the Secondary Colleges Staff Association and the Tasmanian TAFE Staff Society merged to form the Tasmanian branch of the Australian Education Union (AEU).
Western Australia
As in other colonies and states early cooperation between the Education Department and the incipient teachers’ unions was displaced as state governments from 1911 too often attempted to solve their financial problems by reducing teacher salaries. A Public School Teachers Association operated from 1896 to be replaced by the the State School Teachers Union of Western Australia (SSTUWA), founded in the years 1898 and 1899. A newly founded Country Teachers Association (1898) merged with the SSTUWA in 1910. Registration with the state’s arbitration court was achieved. Following the example of other Western Australian unions, members of the SSTUWA were frustrated enough to take strike action in July 1920, a first for teacher unions in Australia. Successes, especially in the improvement of salaries were a result. The SSTUWA was little subject to break-aways or splits as occurred elsewhere. While joining the AEU as a branch in the 1990s, the AEU branch retained its earlier name, the SSTUWA.
Victoria
In 1886 a State School Teachers Union of Victoria formed but splits developed. Until the 1990s there was rarely a unified public schools teacher union. 1926 saw the Victorian Teachers Union (VTU) founded. It argued equal pay for men and women and sought and won an independent tribunal to set wages and conditions for teachers. In 1948 there was a break-away from the VTU, the Victorian Secondary Masters Association (VSMA). Women were allowed to join it in 1954 and the Victorian Secondary Teachers Association (VSTA) followed. In 1965, the VSTA, usually more radical than the VTU staged the first statewide strike in support of a pay claim. A further split from the VTU in 1967 saw the founding of the Technical Teachers’ Association of Victoria (TTAV), renamed the TTUV in 1981. Over the next decade cooperative efforts between the separate unions eventually led to an amalgamation into the AEU Victoria in 1995.
Significance of teacher unions
Fighting for public education, a teachers rally, 1982. SLNSW, Tribune item 0669
These markers of teacher union development in Australia concentrate mainly on organisational development and the struggle to achieve unity across the differing sectors that employed teachers and other education workers. There is brief mention of some campaigns by unions, but very limited discussion of the major role that unions have played in advancing the employment conditions for teachers for well over a century.
In many of the states there was a reluctance to use the word “union” in their names: “federation”, “association” and “institute” often occurred before affiliations to the trades and labour councils and the ACTU (Australian Council of Trade Unions) helped legitimise unionism among teachers. The formation of the AEU in 1993 was a major step in this process.
Unionisation of teacher organisations did not mark any reluctance to continue and advance actions and policies in support of improved educational experiences for young people. Along with state and federally-based parent organisations, teacher unions continued as significant pressure groups, with the capacity to organise considerable voting power as governments developed their education administrations and reforms.