Catholic school staff will stop work for an hour this week in legally protected action over a lack of progress on a new enterprise agreement.
"Negotiations for a new enterprise agreement began in early February," Independent Education Union of Australia NSW/ACT branch acting secretary Carol Matthews said. "It is now November and employers are no closer to resolving pay issues."
The NSW Industrial Relations Commission on Friday handed down a decision to grant teachers in NSW government schools pay rises of 2.29 per cent in 2022 and 2.53 per cent in 2023.
Ms Matthews said the Catholic employers have sat on their hands awaiting this decision, and while they were not legally bound by it, they had long imposed the NSW government's wages policy on Catholic school teachers.
"Teachers' salaries have been falling relative to other professions for more than a decade now and this year's intensifying cost-of-living pressures only make matters worse," she said. The action will take place at some schools between 8.30am and 9.30am on Tuesday.
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