No wonder teachers strike
Some corrections are needed to the outdated misconceptions held by Tony A (Your Voice, Weekly, February 26) about teaching. Police officers and construction industry employees with RDOs get more leave than teachers.
Teaching requires a four-year university degree and is markedly underpaid compared to all other tertiary level jobs. A teacher on a school camp can work up to 120 hours a week yet only get paid for 40 hours.
And have you visited a school lately? The working conditions are generally poor, along with an increasingly abusive student population.
Over two years, all the government has offered the teachers is no pay rise at all. It won’t negotiate despite having promised that Victoria would have “the best-paid teachers in Australia”!
No wonder teachers keep striking.
Marc Matthews, Kealba
Piping up for VicRoads
We would like to congratulate VicRoads and its staff involved in the completion of Calder roadworks at the Organ Pipes Road junction.
It was completed on the target date specified and now provides a much safer facility for road users on the Calder from Sunbury and further north, as well as access for those from Hillside and the growing Brimbank suburbs.
Drivers will no longer have to risk an illegal U-turn to get to Melbourne from the west. But both federal and state governments are yet to commit to the major improvement that we have canvassed for so long on behalf of road user safety.
The ineffective 80km/h speed limit over so much of the so-called freeway will remain until a major project is undertaken. The moderately costed Calder Park Drive overpass will remove one of the serious safety hazards remaining on this section and allow full freeway standard driving.
We seek strong community support for a bipartisan government commitment to take up this project, which promises the same efficient delivery we have just seen.
The community needs to see this project funded at the earliest opportunity.
Ian Sutherland, president, Calder Action Group
