Across Australia, teachers have been walking out of their classrooms. Not because we've given up, but because we've been left with no choice. After years of exhaustion, endless paperwork, burnout, and hollow promises of reform, educators have finally been taking industrial action. We are fighting for what every parent, student, and teacher knows education should be: fair, humane, and properly supported. ---- The status quo isn't sustainable. Nearly one in three teachers leave the profession within five years. Those who stay are working 55 to 60 hours a week to cover gaps left by chronic under-staffing and workloads that even 'fully staffed' schools struggle to keep up with.
In regional schools, and in struggling urban areas, positions stay empty for months. To cope, classes are merged, split, or cancelled. This means that students miss out on specialised subjects, like art and languages-the kind of learning that often best sparks curiosity and joy.
Teachers have been holding the system together with tape and willpower. Now we're striking. Not just for better pay and conditions, but for the future of public education itself.
The nature of the crisis
We are constantly told that the education system is in crisis. Test scores are falling, behaviour is getting worse, teachers are burning out. What we aren't told is that this crisis didn't just happen. It's the result of years of decisions, made far from classrooms, by governments and bureaucrats.
Why? To cut costs, commodify education, and keep workers in line.
To manage this attack on the working class, governments have centralised control over our classrooms. A single rule-change from Canberra or a state government can reshape the working lives of thousands of educators. We're left to implement policies written by people who will never face thirty students in a single room.
Meanwhile, schools are expected to patch holes left by the class war on public services. Unaffordable housing and lack of access to mental health support means that more kids are turning up to school hungry, tired, and traumatised. The ruling class puts the burden on teachers with no time or resources.
Capitalism in Australia is sustained by this invisible-largely feminised-labour, and a quiet expectation that we'll just deal with it.
The two-tier system
Public schools are pillars of working class community. They include everyone: the kids with disabilities, the ones who move homes every six months, the ones whose parents can't afford uniforms, those still learning English. And yet, public schools are the ones set up to fail.
The result is a two-tier system: abundance for the wealthy, managed scarcity for everyone else.
While billions of dollars flow into elite private schools (some so flush with cash they build Olympic-sized swimming pools, and equestrian centres), public schools have to fight for the basics. Staffrooms fundraise for books and air conditioning, while teachers spend their own money on food and stationery for kids who have none.
This isn't just an attack on public school teachers and students. It's an attack on our class and the very idea of solidarity. It teaches kids to accept privilege and their role as future workers in companies run by the rich kids.
The EBA and the limits of arbitration
Teachers are fired up and want to fight back. The question now is what the fight looks like: Do we take industrial action? Or let the officials negotiate behind closed doors?
In Queensland, teachers have spent months in negotiations for a new Enterprise Bargaining Agreement (EBA). But by November 2025, the dispute had stalled and drifted into arbitration. The state government offered an 8% pay rise over three years. Teachers rejected that offer twice, because it failed to match inflation, and would have left them worse off. The offer also ignored mounting workloads, widening pay gaps with other professions, and deepening staff shortages.
As we prepare this issue of Picket Line, a similar story is playing out in Victoria. Teachers have been getting ready for rolling strikes and work bans. But just as things have been heating up, the officials are now calling to wind things down. Their goal was to get back members who left after the last EBA, let them blow off some steam, then wrap up the industrial action.
But relying on arbitration and behind-the-scenes negotiations will get us nowhere. It puts the fight on the bosses terms and drains life out of collective action. Instead of mass meetings, picket lines, and community rallies, teachers are told to wait quietly for the outcome of closed-door hearings. The power of the strike is replaced by silence.
What will it take to win?
One day of state-wide strike action in Victoria, plus the threat of more, moved the government from a measly 17% pay rise offer to 28% over four years. That's still way short of what's needed to transform our schools. But it proves a point. Strikes work. This is already far better than where we got to in 2022, when we didn't strike at all.
The officials want the strikes to end. But they have a problem: the process has raised members' expectations. Many teachers won't accept less than 35% over three years, because it's the only way to make up for the losses of the 2022 agreement.
The anger is there, and so is the desire to fight. But it has to be organised.
We need to start building rank-and-file groups in the teaching unions to push back against the officials. These groups can't just be for left-wing activists. They need to involve every single member willing to fight. The point of a rank-and file group is to build up the power of the union in each workplace, rather than just being a small but vocal group of activists. If the only members of rank-and-file groups are socialists or anarchists, they'll fail to effectively influence the union.
Strong rank-and-file groups would give us the power to fight against our officials when they try to de-escalate a campaign. In Victoria, there are elements of rank-and-file organising in the form of Fight the Crisis, Socialists in Schools, and the ACF-led group Class Struggle. These groups need to build greater unity and extend beyond socialist bubbles to include every active organiser and militant in the AEU.
This is how we take back our unions. Every time a group of colleagues meets after school to talk about union action, we take a step toward shifting power back where it belongs. Real unionism begins when those of us doing the work make the decisions. The next proposed agreement will be a test. Can we get organised enough to collectively vote down any offer that doesn't meet our demands?
https://ancomfed.org/2026/06/class-war-in-the-classroom/
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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