HUNTER public school teachers have voted at Thursday stop-work meetings to accept their new award.
Students had minimal supervision at schools while teachers attended mass meetings at 210 NSW venues to hear about the NSW Teachers Federation's recently-finished negotiations with the Department of Education over the new salaries and condition award.
Under the new award, teachers will be paid an increase of 2.5 per cent from January 2020, then an increase of 2.28 per cent from 2021 with another 0.22 per cent as superannuation.
Federation Hunter organiser Jack Galvin Waight said this was the maximum increase allowable under the NSW Public Sector Wages Policy.
All conditions have been protected and there were some improvements, including the preservation of the school counselling service; protection of the status of Aboriginal student liaison officers and home school liaison officers; improvements for teachers at the Saturday School of Community Languages and resolution of a pre-2016 salary anomaly.
Mr Galvin Waight said teachers also voted to condemn the government's "unjust" wages policy, which restricts access to the NSW Industrial Relations Commission to run work value cases.
