MELBOURNE: You don't have to sit back and take what the bosses dish out; that is the message of victimised TAFE teacher Alison Thorne. Alison has been a respected secondary and TAFE teacher in Melbourne for many years. During that time she has served the teachers' union in a number of capacities.
It is these qualities that worried the management at Northern Metropolitan Institute of TAFE (NMIT), where Alison served as President of the sub-branch of the Australian Education Union (AEU). After a period of harassment by management, Alison and two other members of the VCE/Communications Studies Department were retrenched and replaced with casual staff on 11 April last year.
Shortly afterwards, the AEU sub-branch stopped work and condemned the retrenchments as discriminatory.
Alison notes that 'for a whole term, the teachers identified as being "in excess" were given no duties...The very day after the retrenchments took effect, management advertised in The Age for sessional teachers to replace them!'
Afterwards, two of the three sacked teachers accepted a settlement reached at an unfair dismissal case in the Industrial Relations Commission. Alison, however, has pressed ahead with an Equal Opportunity (EO) case, lodged in November 1997, and has gained the support of thousands of people via petitions and information stands in the region covered by NMIT. The solidarity campaign is organised by the NO MORE INTIMIDATION OF TEACHER UNIONISTS COMMITTEE and is also backing the case of Barbara Morgan, a former NMIT union sub-branch secretary whose contract was not renewed (in a blatantly discriminatory way) in mid-1996.
The campaign is endorsed by the Victorian branch of the AEU, which is fully funding the EO cases.
Alison and the Committee are settling in for a long battle. As she puts it, 'I'm fighting on!'
The NMIT Unionists Campaign Committee can be contacted at PO Box 266, West Brunswick 3055, or by 'phoning Delia on 9497 1496. Donations are welcome and copies of a petition are available.
The Committee is also holding a fund-raising dinner and celebration of resistance on December 16. The venue is Lebanese House and tickets and tables can be booked by telephoning Delia on 9497 1496.