By Tim E. Stewart

DARWIN -- The NT government has stepped up its campaign against educators covered by the Australian Education Union (NT) by threatening indefinite lockouts, sending an open letter to individual households in the Darwin area and conducting interstate recruitment campaigns for short-term contract positions.

The dispute over better pay and working conditions and a separate enterprise bargaining agreement from the rest of the NT public service has entered its 10th month. Weekly rallies outside Parliament House, stop-work meetings and work bans have been met by an "open letter to all Territory parents", signed by Chief Minister Shane Stone. The letter puts the cost of teachers' demands at $54 million and claims a hidden agenda by the union for "a national campaign to force pay rises for teachers Australia-wide."

The NT News has pitched in with headlines of "Students angry at `stupid' strikes", articles on high school students marching on Parliament House and an editorial.

Tour operators have also taken to the streets against the teachers' union, in response to an AEU initiative to promote a tourist boycott of the NT.

In response to the threatened lockouts, the AEU has deferred industrial action and sought the support of the NT Trades and Labour Council. At its meeting on May 27, the TLC put the "NT government on notice of a program of Territory-wide and national industrial action focusing on the NT government's lockout actions against the AEU and its members".

It instructed the president to convene a meeting of affiliates to support the AEU and to observe picket lines and other actions.

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