When the leaders who run Victoria's schools step onto a picket line, something has shifted fundamentally. School principals do not strike lightly. These are the administrators caught between union demands and government budgets, typically invested in keeping operations running. That they have now aligned themselves with teachers in rejecting the state government's pay offer signals how badly negotiations have deteriorated.
The numbers explain the desperation. 98% of Victorian public school teachers, principals and education support staff who are Australian Education Union members have voted in support of taking stopwork action over low pay and excessive workloads. The offer is the first made by the state government after eight months of negotiations, proposing an eight per cent pay rise for teachers and principals, four per cent for education support staff on April 1, and three per cent each year across the following three years.
On its face, an 18.5% nominal increase sounds substantial. But union officials argue it fails to address the core grievance: Victoria's public school workforce is being systematically underpaid relative to other states. By October 2026 teachers will be earning as much as $15,359 a year less than their NSW counterparts, a classroom based education support employee starting out would be 10.5% behind, and a Victorian school principal new to the role would start $27,841 or 18% behind. Over a four-year agreement, this wage gap compounds.
There is a legitimate government case for fiscal restraint. Victoria faces significant budget pressures and already carries substantial debt. Education Minister Ben Carroll's reference to a "very competitive offer" reflects the constraint the government believes it operates under. When facing budgetary limits, offering what is nominally a double-digit pay rise is not trivial.
The counter-argument, however, carries equal weight. School staff working an average of 12 hours unpaid overtime per week is not compensation; it is uncompensated labour that degrades working conditions year on year. In the middle of chronic shortage of school staff, it is not possible to retain experienced, dedicated teachers, principals and support staff in the public school system when they are being underpaid and overworked. If Victoria loses its most capable educators to interstate recruitment or career changes, the actual cost of replacing them will dwarf wage increases offered now.
The strike is scheduled for 24 hours next Tuesday after the Fair Work Commission-endorsed ballot had 98 per cent of members vote to take stop-work action. If the industrial action goes ahead, it'll be the first statewide teacher strike in Victoria since Labor returned to government 13 years ago. This historical marker matters. Labor has held office for 22 of the past 26 years in Victoria. If the party cannot negotiate a settlement that keeps its own education workforce from striking, it raises uncomfortable questions about priorities and institutional competence.
What remains unclear is whether either side has genuinely exhausted negotiation options. The union is demanding 35% over four years. The government has offered 8% immediately, followed by 3% annually. The gap is substantial but not unbridgeable, particularly if workload commitments and staffing standards are considered alongside wages. Both parties now face incentives to negotiate hard before March 24, but also incentives to hold firm publicly to maintain credibility with their respective constituencies.
This is not a simple case of greedy unions versus fiscally prudent government. It is a genuine conflict between two legitimate constraints: a government facing budget limits and a workforce experiencing real wage erosion against the cost of living. Reasonable people can disagree on which takes priority. What cannot be reasonably disputed is that the current offer, in the union's assessment, fails to address the workforce retention crisis that will ultimately harm students most severely.