TEACHERS of the Macleay voted unanimously to condemn the State Government’s changes to the industrial rights of educators and its failure to support public education at a stopwork meeting on Tuesday.

Schools across the Shire were either closed or had minimal supervision for two hours on Tuesday as teachers protested against the dismantling of the current State-wide transfer system, a lowering in the qualification standards to become educators and a refusal by the State to discuss a pay increase.

Teachers also agreed to continue rolling stoppages at schools across the Shire unless their demands were met.

Macleay Rivers Teachers Association president Grant Lee said teachers were particularly incensed about the Department of Education and Training’s refusal to negotiate a wage increase that would lead to salaries rising by just 2.5 per cent a year, when inflation has already hit 4.5 per cent.

The Department has already stated there would be cuts to teaching and learning conditions if there were increases beyond the 2.5 per cent rate.

“The Department’s director-general Michael Coutts-Trotter came out earlier this week and said the Teachers Federation have taken preemptive action in spite of the fact that negotiations were underway,” Mr Lee said.

“That is a lie. The federation has been seeking negotiations for over a year and so far the Department is refusing to negotiate.

“We’ve been told we have to except the 2.5 per cent increase or nothing. We don’t believe that’s negotiating. We want the Government to put some funding on the table and then we’ll begin negotiating what’s fair.”

Mr Lee said further industrial action locally was a certainty unless the Government and the Department began negotiations.