October 14, 2020 at 3:39 pm
MUT declares trade dispute with Secretariat for Catholic Education – 23 church schools breaching educators working conditions
Following a notification issued earlier today by the MUT, and a scheduled meeting which was cancelled by the Secretariat for Catholic Education, the MUT is hereby declaring a trade dispute with the Secretariat for Catholic Education on the breach of working conditions of educators by twenty-three church schools. This dispute is caused by the decision of these schools to multiply the workload of educators without any consultation or consideration when they decided to alternate attendance of students and create an unmanageable system for educators. All these schools did to cater for their new services is to seek the easiest solution by multiplying the workload of educators, which is unsustainable and irresponsible.
The MUT would like to make it amply clear that it is not against schools providing additional services such as online learning. However, as a trade union, the MUT will never accept that this is done at the expense of blatant breach of the agreements in place and with schools completely disregarding their own employees.
The decision of these church schools to alternate attendance of students has led to a wave of pressures on the school community, who are being expected to juggle between many teaching modes interchangeably for several hours, including face-to-face teaching to students who are at school, live streaming to students who are at home and recording of lessons to students who are at home. All this is exceeding the workload of educators, not to mention the mammoth task to carry out preparation for all lessons in all teaching modes. The MUT is warning schools once again to either address this situation or start facing industrial action.
