BARGAINING CONFERENCE
General & Professional Staff bargaining claim R
espect, Recognition and Reward. These are the three Rs at the centre of the Union’s General and Professional Staff bargaining agenda. Respect for the work that general and professional staff do, recognition of the value of that work, and reward for our endeavours.
The bargaining agenda endorsed by NTEU’s National Bargaining Conference is a comprehensive suite of measures to address the key areas of concern for general and professional staff; classifications, career opportunities, staff development and workloads. It was developed by the General Staff Working Party comprising representatives from each Division, after extensive research of available data and a process of consultation and review. Most important was NTEU’s national survey of general staff in late 2011, to which 8000 people responded. This provided real up to date information and commentary from members and non-members on the issues and concerns.
Classifications NTEU will be campaigning for: • Enforceable classification descriptors. • Classification to be independent of budget. • Agreed Position Descriptions reviewed regularly. • Joint union-university classification committees and appeal processes. • Timely consideration of reclassification applications and backdating to the time that the staff member first applied. • Genuinely competitive pay rises.
Careers On Career opportunities, NTEU will be campaigning for: • A staff mobility program and secondment register. • All short term vacancies to be advertised as a secondment opportunity first. • All longer term vacancies to be advertised internally first and to be given to internal applicants who meet the selection criteria.
JULY 2012 www.nteu.org.au
• On-going staff having the right to take up a fixed term job without giving up permanency and fixed term staff able to apply for ongoing jobs. On Staff Development our bargaining claims centre upon: • Establishment of a central staff development fund that offers real learning opportunities.
Workloads We believe that it has been too easy for employers to shirk their responsibility to ensure that general and professional staff are working reasonable hours and are compensated for extra time that they are required to spend at work simply to get their jobs done. We will be campaigning to ensure that employers take active steps to ensure general staff workloads are not excessive. At some Branches we will also be bargaining for a novel approach to addressing the problem we would all be familiar with, that many general and professional staff are stuck at the top of their level and despite continuing to acquire skills and develop their abilities the extra value of their work is not rewarded. This is a special case claim that is very much dependent on the circumstances in each Branch. As a general staff member you have an opportunity to help shape the claim at your university and participate in the campaign for better general staff working conditions. You can do so by joining your local NTEU Branch, attending meetings, taking part in campaign activities and making your voice heard. NTEU believes that the shameful lack of investment in their general staff by university managements has gone on for far too long and it is time that general staff receive the respect, the recognition, and the reward that we deserve. A Gabe Gooding, National Vice President (General Staff)
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