Advocate vol. 25 no. 3 • November 2018 • www.nteu.org.au • ISSN 1329-7295
25 years
1993-2018
Days of Action ɓɓHands off the ARC! ɓɓ25 Years of higher education unionism ɓɓ12 Days of Action to Change the Rules ɓɓUOW dirty tricks make us stronger ɓɓSurvey on sexual harassment ɓɓFlood of insecure employment ɓɓDoes our casual data stack up?
ɓɓ#Sausagegate at UC ɓɓNational Casuals Committee ɓɓNTEU Lecture: Our brutal past ɓɓI’m Still Not A Racist, But... ɓɓLetter from Behrouz Boochani ɓɓFight to release the Palace papers ɓɓFuture of the Sector conference
ɓɓResearch funding shrinking ɓɓTime to disconnect? ɓɓRamsay Centre update ɓɓTPP-11 contorts the ALP ɓɓNTEU Election results ɓɓNational leadership changes ɓɓ...and much more.
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Contents 2 Minister’s veto power on ARC grants is political interference
Advocate ISSN 1321-8476 Published by National Tertiary Education Union ABN 38 579 396 344 Publisher Matthew McGowan Editor Alison Barnes Production Manager Paul Clifton Editorial Assistance Anastasia Kotaidis All text and images © NTEU 2018 unless otherwise stated.
NTEU National Office, PO Box 1323, South Melbourne VIC 3205 Australia ph +61 (03) 9254 1910 email national@nteu.org.au Division Offices www.nteu.org.au/divisions Branch Offices www.nteu.org.au/branches Feedback, advertising and other enquiries: advocate@nteu.org.au
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From the General Secretary Cover image: NTEU members at the Melbourne Change the Rules rally in October. (Paul Clifton)
3 4
The pressures of university employment Editorial, National President
Commitment to building a stronger union From the National Assistant Secretary
UPDATE 5
UOW management dirty tricks make Branch stronger
Flower power at USyd
6
New Agreement at Lowitja Institute
Hudson Institute moves forward
7
Bargaining update
Trouble at Murdoch again
8
12 Days of Action to Change the Rules
What was learned from bargaining at UTAS.
11 #HandsOffARC: ARC grant scandal shows Government hypocrisy on academic freedom
36 The shrinking pot of research cash
Academics for Refugees
13 NTEU survey on sexual harassment
Report reveals poor policies and a sexist culture of bullying at UC
SECURE JOBS NEWS 14 National Casuals Committee endorsed by National Council 15 Revitalising activism and democracy via professional development for casual academics 16 UQ Charter of Casual rights 17 SuperCasuals bbq at UNSW
In accordance with NTEU policy to reduce our impact on the natural environment, Advocate is printed using vegetable based inks with alcohol free printing initiatives on FSC certified paper under ISO 14001 Environmental Certification.
18 From casual to Division President
Advocate is available online as a PDF at nteu.org.au/advocate and an e-book at www.issuu.com/nteu
FEATURES
A&TSI NEWS 19 A&TSI business at NTEU National Council 2018 20 I’m Still Not a Racist, But…
46 Achieving the impossible An animated play portrays the results of neoliberal managerialism on university staff.
48 Future of the sector Our Future of the Sector events resonated well with speakers and participants.
32 Lessons from the bargaining table 34 Was physics ‘built by men’?
12 #Sausagegate. UC members strike for value, support & respect
NTEU members may opt for ‘soft delivery’ (email notification of online copy rather than mailed printed version). Details at nteu.org.au/ soft_delivery
Assessing the growth and achievements of higher education unionism over the past 25 years, and identifying future challenges.
10 Dan Tehan: The new Education Minister has a policy solution in search of a problem
Environment ISO 14001
30 Reflecting upon 25 years of higher education unionism
Dr Maryanne Large addresses the role of sexism in the field of physics. NTEU has opposed numerous attempts to use research funding as leverage to lift the appallingly low level of Australian business R&D.
COLUMNS 51 Technology and Trust News from the Net, by Pat Wright
52 Tam U one of the Top Ten Rural Universities Less Than 20 Years Old Lowering the Boom, by Ian Lowe
53 Chewing on the FAT
Thesis Whisperer, Inger Mewburn
37 Meet with your MP How to lobby your MP on behalf of universities.
38 The Dismissal & the fight to release the secret ‘Palace letters’ Letters between the Queen and John Kerr may shed light on the events of November 1975.
40 TPP-11 contorts ALP The ALP has made a 180° turn on the TPP-11.
41 #NoMoreHarm A message of support for Academics for Refugees NDA from Behrouz Boochani.
42 NTEU Lecture: Our brutal past Professor Lyndall Ryan will present the 2018 NTEU Lecture on 22 November.
44 Time to disconnect? Giving employees the right to disconnect.
45 Flexible crystals win top prize UQ’s Jack Clegg has won the $50,000 Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year.
54 Expectations of Labor in government
Immediate Past President, Jeannie Rea
55 Hard conversations about prejudice Letter from NZ, Sandra Grey, TEU
YOUR UNION 56 NTEU 2018 elections completed
Colin Long, Vic Div Secretary
57 National Council 2018 60 Jeannie Rea: feminist, educator, activist and unionist 62 Grahame McCulloch’s legacy is the Union itself 63 United we stood. We were going to move mountains. 65 2018 Life Members 68 New NTEU staff
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21 New A&TSIPC Chair, Shane Motlap
Terry Mason, retiring A&TSIPC Chair
22 The flood of insecure employment at Australian universities The university workforce is becoming increasingly casualised, feminised and specialised.
25 Ramsay, iterum 26 Does our casual employment data stack up? Are university casual staffing statistics adequate, or even reliable? NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 25 no. 3 • November 2018 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 1
From the General Secretary Matthew McGowan, General Secretary
Minister’s veto power on ARC grants is political interference The revelations of the shameful intervention by Simon Birmingham, when he was Minister for Education, to politically interfere with research funding should appal everyone, but unfortunately most outside the sector will pay little attention. His actions, in secretly rejecting eleven applications that had been approved by the Australian Research Council (ARC), re-visit the actions of Brendan Nelson in 2005-2006, and demonstrate again this Government’s readiness to kowtow to the extreme right – now referred to, within their own party and more broadly, as their ‘base’. The ARC is tasked with providing expert, arm’s length assessment of the spending priorities for the limited research dollar. When Brendan Nelson, as then Education Minister, first opened this door he did so as a direct political act to undermine the academy and as a nod to the rantings of Andrew Bolt at the height of the Howard Government’s culture wars. NTEU has a duty to call out these occurrances, as well as an important role in standing up for the principle of academic freedom and university autonomy.
Universities are a cornerstone of our democracy. The principles that promote independent discussion, debate and inquiry are not than just the elitist ideals of a select privileged few. They are crucial to our civil society. Academic freedom is also an essential precondition of universities, carrying out their role of advancing knowledge and the public good. Universities, as a place of independent discussion, debate and inquiry, are essential to informed debate, for lawmakers, the courts, the media, and all of civil society. The kind of secret political interventions we have seen here also raise questions of good government and public policy. Principles of good governance and sound public administration require transparency, proper processes, and a recognition of the role of properly constituted bodies to provide impartial advice and to make decisions free from partisan interference. Transparency is also essential for a healthy democracy. An informed electorate has to be able to form views about the decisions of those governing us so that they can exercise their authority at the ballot box. Free and independent media also have a role to play in ensuring that elected politicians are kept accountable. (Unfortunately, much of Australia’s press is in the hands of a monopoly which has created a right-wing ‘echo chamber’ on issues related to so-called ‘culture wars’, as well as other areas of policy like industrial relations.)
NATIONAL EXECUTIVE
NATIONAL OFFICE STAFF
National President Vice-President (Academic) Vice-President (General Staff) General Secretary National Assistant Secretary
Alison Barnes Andrew Bonnell Cathy Rojas Matthew McGowan Gabe Gooding
Industrial Unit Coordinator National Industrial Officer
A&TSI PC Chair
Shane Motlap
National Executive: Rachael Bahl, Nikola Balnave, Damien Cahill, Vince Caughley, Jonathan Hallett, Andrea Lamont-Mills, Louisa Manning-Watson, Virginia Mansel Lees, Michael McNally, Kelvin Michael, Catherine Moore, Kerrie Saville, Melissa Slee, Ron Slee, Michael Thomson, Nick Warner
Policy & Research Coordinator Policy & Research Officer National A&TSI Coordinator National A&TSI Organiser National Organiser National Publications Coordinator National Membership Officer Education & Training Officers
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To the broader public, some of the work done by our members may seem esoteric and can sometimes be used by politicians and others to attack the sector. But the independence of the process is vitally important. We have peer review process in place to ensure that the best research proposals are supported. It is also worth noting that ARC applications already have to address a ‘national benefit’ requirement. NTEU was quick to challenge this action and has called on members to email the Minister expressing their concern. So far, over 1,270 members have responded, demonstrating the strength of feeling amongst university staff. There has also been condemnation of the political interference by many (if not all) universities, and by the learned academies. This intervention is insulting to both researchers and the ARC, but more importantly it demonstrates a lack of understanding about why the independence of the ARC is important. The current Education Minister, Dan Tehan, has said that he will publish the facts on his interference in the future, but will not advise why he interfered. The fact is, he should not interfere at all. But even in his limited response, he is tacitly acknowledging that Birmingham was wrong. This veto power is political interference, plain and simple. Matthew McGowan, General Secretary mmcgowan@nteu.org.au
Executive Manager
Peter Summers
Tam Vuong Wayne Cupido ICT Network Engineer Uffan Saeed Campbell Smith Database Programmer/Data Analyst Jo Riley Paul Kniest Payroll Officer Terri MacDonald Manager, Office of Gen Sec & President Anastasia Kotaidis Tracey Coster Adam Frogley Executive Officer (Meeting & Events) Celeste Liddle Admin Officer (Membership & Campaigns) Julie Ann Veal Industrial Support Officer Renee Veal Michael Evans Receptionist & Administrative Support Leanne Foote Paul Clifton Glenn Osmand Melinda Valsorda Finance Manager Senior Finance Officer Gracia Ho Ken McAlpine, Finance Officers Alex Ghvaladze, Tamara Labadze, Helena Spyrou Lee Powell, Daphne Zhang
Editorial Alison Barnes, National President
The pressures of university employment All who work in universities and TAFE experience the pressure of funding cuts. Insecure work serves the interests of university management alone, while increasing workloads and ceaseless restructuring confront both professional and academic staff. The insidious undermining of academic independence constrains our capacity as public intellectuals, along with our ability to teach our students to challenge conventional wisdom. In my first week as National President, I encountered several examples of these pressures. Two hundred academic staff at Flinders University have been compelled to compete against each other and reapply for their own jobs. Many of our West Australian campuses are facing similarly appalling change management processes. At the University of Sydney, two change management programs recently initiated by management propose to cut and radically restructure professional staff teams who provide vitally important services to the entire university community. Hun-
dreds rallied through Eastern Avenue to protect jobs and services, and to stand with professional staff colleagues. And at Victoria University, NTEU members have resorted to strike action. This follows management’s intransigence to the resounding rejection of a proposed Agreement by an overwhelming majority of staff. These attacks on our working conditions are challenging. However, we must maintain a clear vision on how our sector could operate, and what working conditions should look like. I have researched unions and industrial relations throughout my working life. The best industries feature strong, vibrant, democratic unions.. The NTEU is in excellent shape but can grow even stronger with greater activism. It could be asking your colleagues to join the Union, becoming a delegate in your workplace or joining your cases committee, displaying posters on your doors, or talking about the Union’s activities. All of these actions signal to management that we are active and organised. This is critical not only to the health and vitality of NTEU but to the health of the sector. Much of my first week focused on university managers acting against the interests of
staff and students. However, the collective actions and spirit of members was inspiring. I witnessed university staff across the country rally to support refugees, Branch committee members at Melbourne University establish a network of delegates and activists, the growing strength of NTEU in Tasmania, and the inspiring example of the Casuals Charter, developed by University of Queensland casual activists. Members at the University of Canberra were sick of being disrespected and held their first strike in over a decade. We also saw strike action at Victoria University, Monash, and at University of Wollongong where members were side by side with striking steel workers and other unionists at the Change the Rules rally in Wollongong City. In spite of the difficulties we face, these instances of collective action convince me that, by acting together, we can make genuine gains and further the interests of our sector and ourselves. As the Union anthem Solidarity Forever puts it, “what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one / for the Union makes us strong”. Alison Barnes, National President abarnes@nteu.org.au
Below: Alison Barnes leading NTEU members at the Sydney rally. (Kiraz Janicke)
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From the National Asst Secretary Gabe Gooding, National Assistant Secretary
Commitment to building a stronger union This is a difficult column to write as an introduction in my new role as National Assistant Secretary. We have been through an extensive election campaign at many levels of the Union and I know that for some members you have already had too much information about me! So I will use this column to do what I love to do, talk about our Union. No matter how exasperating they are at the time, the elections are an important demonstration of the power of the fundamentally democratic NTEU structures and processes – a genuinely democratic Union is something that all of us should be proud of. All members who participated in the recent elections should be congratulated for their willingness to step up and run for elected office at Branch, Division or National level. For those of us who were elected to new positions it is the beginning of a two or four year commitment to helping to build a stronger Union. I am personally grateful to all of those who
supported me and am delighted that Vince Caughley has now been elected to the National Executive. I welcome the opportunity to work with Vince who has much to offer the Union. The program of work for the new leadership team began on October 16 and I hope that members will be able to see the difference soon. Our joint undertaking to work collaboratively across the Union and to make sure that Divisions and Branches (where the work of the Union is largely done) are well consulted and well serviced by the National Office is important. As is our determination to make sure that what we do at the national level not only provides what members need but also provides the leadership that empowers our members. What we have, as a collective of union members, regardless of whether we also serve as a delegate, or on a Branch, Division or National committee, is a joint commitment to the common good. To working together to protect each other and to working together to improve the working conditions and lives of all. In this edition of the Advocate you will find a report on the National Council meeting held in October. The motions passed at
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that meeting demonstrate both the depth and breadth of the commitment to justice from the Union’s elected National Council. Issues that the National Council endorsed for action in 2019 include support for our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members and continuing work on the scourge of lateral violence that impacts on their working lives, rejecting student “evaluations” of teaching and finding better ways to assess teaching quality and outcomes, supporting transgender workers, campaigning against discriminatory industrial laws, developing a forum for elected general and professional staff, a national casuals committee, and working towards better recognition of the teaching work of casual academics. Along with our commitment to the Change The Rules campaign, these issues will feature in the work of the Union in the coming year. I urge all members to take up the challenge of becoming active in one or more of these incredibly worthwhile union activities. While we may have a newly elected national leadership team, the true strength of the Union lies with you. Gabe Gooding, National Assistant Secretary ggooding@nteu.org.au
Update
Management dirty tricks make Branch stronger University of Wollongong (UOW) campus rang out to ‘war cries’ on Wednesday 10 October, according to the Illawarra Mercury. ‘Whose University? Our University!’ and ‘What do we need? FAIR PAY! What do we need? SECURE WORK! What do we need? RESPECT!’ About 300 members and supporters rallied in the rain and were joined by colleagues in our five satellite campuses from Bega in the south to Liverpool in Western Sydney. The stop work action was the biggest seen at UOW for many years. It came on the back of a particularly aggressive stance by UOW management to our NTEU Branch activities in general, and to enterprise bargaining negotiations in particular (remember, Murdoch’s VC came straight from UOW). But management’s attempts to shut us down have failed. Each time management has tried to knock us down, our Branch has grown. They evicted us from our office and put us in a cupboard at the far end of the campus. They required us to book rooms through their employment relations manager in order to hold members meetings, then invoiced us for room use, and tried to prevent us from holding our weekly information stalls in common spaces.
Management has threatened our office-bearers with letters from high-end legal firm, Clayton Utz. They delayed our application for a Protected Action Ballot for five weeks with what we consider malicious legal objections that they then withdrew three days prior to hearing. Most seriously, they misrepresented the Fair Work Act requirements concerning our rights to take protected industrial action in communications to all staff – a blatant attempt to intimidate, threaten and coerce members not to participate in the strike. But none of this has worked. In fact it has made us even stronger. For each impediment they put in our way, we got our message out even more clearly and grew our movement. Our membership is the biggest it has ever been. Union-mindedness among non-members has grown. Progressive students have aligned themselves with us. We had a massive 94% of members vote in favour of industrial action in our protected action ballot. The local media and the local community in this strong union town is aware of what is happening and fully behind us. Our brief stop-work meeting on 10 October was a fantastic success. It was electrifying and exhilarating. But at the time of writing, our Vice-Chancellor has continued to hide up in the ‘flight deck’ and refuses to engage with us. The Branch voted unanimously for a 24hour stoppage to be held on 23 October. We held pickets on the day and later joined a mass rally of Illawarra unionists as part of the Change The Rules day of action. We are far from finished yet. Watch this space!
Flower power! NTEU members at the University of Sydney (USyd) handed out pot plants to celebrate a recent victory against management’s attempt to stop workers from displaying personal artworks or pot plants in their offices. In a directive delivered by the USyd’s Corporate Infrastructure Services earlier this year, occupants of the new services building on City Road (F23) were told they were not permitted to bring any personal artworks or pot plants to their new office space. NTEU members mobilised and fought a successful campaign to have this dehumanising directive rescinded. To celebrate this victory and to show solidarity with workers moving into this new building (which still has a number of ongoing wellbeing concerns), NTEU members have been handing out tiny pot plants – that will fit on their new 1.5 metre desks – as staff move in.
Top: A ‘Perennially Union’ pot plant. Below: USyd members handing out plants.
Georgine Clarsen, NTEU University of Wollongong Branch President
Above: Members marching through the UOW campus on 10 October. (N Clark)
NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 25 no. 3 • November 2018 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 5
Update Agreement at Lowitja Staff at the Lowitja Institute, Australia’s National Institute for Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Health Research, have voted unanimously in favour to approve their new Enterprise Agreement. Their Union delegates are especially pleased with gaining superannuation equity for casual employees with a 14% employer contribution, a more flexible
travel allowance and an excellent pay result of 3% per annum over three years. The Agreement includes a range of improved job security measures and an allowance for staff members who regularly use an Aboriginal language in the course of their employment. Congratulations NTEU delegates George Kirby and Catie Morrison for all your hard work! Serena O’Meley, Victorian Division Industrial Officer
Right: George Kirby, NTEU Research Institutes Branch President, and Union delegate Catie Morrison at the Lowitja Institute. (Serena O’Meley)
Hudson Institute moves forward with better job security & outcomes for ECRs
on leave, and uncapped leave for people seeking fertility treatment, attending meetings relating to surrogacy or the placement of a child. Previously a primary care giver could be compelled to pay back some or all paid parental leave entitlements if they did not return to work. In place of this onerous requirement, Hudson has agreed to provide an incentive for staff to return to work in the form of a 4-week return to work bonus.
NTEU’s new Agreement with the Hudson Institute of Medical Research has maintained all major conditions of employment and includes substantial improvements to equity, flexibility, job security, employee retention and efficiency.
It’s in the area of job security that members have made enormous gains. Currently there is only one person who is employed on a continuing contract at Hudson. Based on current estimates around 40 other staff will be moved into continuing positions by mid-2019. Similarly, most researchers with 2 years or more continuous service at Hudson will be moved to a Research-Continuing contract which will only terminate upon a number of strict conditions relating to funding. This means that there will no longer be an annual race to renew or not renew contracts, allowing Hudson to concentrate on assisting those staff whose positions are vulnerable. Severance for both fixed-term and Research-Continuing staff remains at up to 18 weeks depending upon years of service.
Hudson has matched or exceeded many of the achievements from the recent Florey Institute agreement (see Advocate vol. 25, no. 2), including the establishment of a joint workplace Consultative Committee and development of its first Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment strategy, in consultation with relevant stakeholders. Hudson also has strongly worded commitments relating to diversity and tolerance, intellectual freedom and gender equity. The Hudson Agreement includes uncapped paid family and domestic violence leave, and 5 days paid leave for staff who are supporting anyone who is experiencing such violence. There is improved compassionate leave, a new provision for paid Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leave and rights for Union delegates to access time to represent members. The parental leave provisions include improved contact with the workplace while
The NTEU bargaining team undertook consultations and developed a paper around barriers to promotion for early career researchers (ECRs). This paper was welcomed by management negotiators and has influenced the content of the final Agreement. There is now a mandated career review for ECRs, six months prior to a staff member reaching the top of their level. Funding will not be a consideration in relation to promotion applications. The current highly prescriptive classification system for research staff has been replaced by a simplified set of research descriptors. A new promotions process will be devel-
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oped in consultation with all stakeholders including NTEU. We will advocate for changes to the promotions process to ensure that ECRs are only required to meet, rather than exceed, the requirements of the next level to get promoted. Other improvements include a new reclassification process for technical, administrative and professional staff, improved managing change processes, and ill health dismissal protection while a staff member is applying for a superannuation disability benefit. The disciplinary procedures have been substantially improved, including a comprehensive in-house process for managing research misconduct allegations which ensures natural justice and procedural fairness, while protecting the reputation of employees and the Hudson Institute. The process establishes a Scientific Research Misconduct Investigation Committee which includes Union representation, an agreed independent chair and members with disciplinary expertise and expertise in investigating scientific research misconduct issues. Employees have a right to representation and to provide evidence to the Committee. This has been a long but rewarding negotiation and we look forward to working with the Hudson Institute to implement the new Agreement over the coming years. In an irony that highlights the insecure nature of work at such research institutes, we had a ‘relay’ team of delegates involved in the negotiations as some moved on to other institutions. Thank you to Matthew McKenzie, Nadine Brew, Alison Moxham and Clare Westhorpe for your tenacious work on behalf of members. Serena O’Meley, Victorian Division Industrial Officer www.nteu.org.au/resinstitutes
Update Bargaining update As at the end of October, NTEU has finalised 31 Agreements with only 15 remaining unsettled. NTEU recently reached Agreements with the Charles Sturt University and Charles Darwin University. Outside of Western Australia, pay increases are tracking at around 2.1% per annum, and at their highest at 2.4% and 2.5% on a pay rise to pay rise basis, at Swinburne and Deakin universities, respectively. We continue to achieve solid outcomes on our key job security claims, with the inclusion of retrenchment as a last resort and improved conversion or contract renewal rights for fixed term staff achieved in our Agreements. NTEU has also achieved payment of the full 17% employer superannuation contribution to all fixed term staff in each settled Agreement. Other trends this Round include: • Improved Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment targets. • Extended paid parental leave. • Extended paid partner leave. • Paid leave provided to surrogacy and
Trouble at Murdoch again Murdoch University recently made headlines again for all the wrong reasons – a substantial influx of international students, many with poor English language skills, and concerns about both the failure rate and plagiarism. Murdoch had initiated an inquiry into a range of topics, many of which have been concerns of NTEU members for some time. Issues to be covered by the inqauiry, headed by a barrister, included international student selection and appointment processes, staff selection and appointment processes, senior management selection and appointment processes, well-being and mental health of staff
long-term foster parents, and permanent carers. • Extended leave for staff affected by domestic violence, including leave for casual staff. • Maintenance of key committees and/ or independent review, particularly for misconduct matters. • Paid cultural and ceremonial leave. • Payment for all casual work. • Improved conversion rights for casuals through extension of the scholarly teaching fellow or equivalent category. • Improved consultation provisions, including over changes to policy and managing change By and large, we have withstood attempts to ‘simplify’ Agreement provisions and have staved off attacks on academic freedom, workload protections and attempts to increase the span of hours for professional staff.
Member support & industrial action Round 7 has seen an increase in activism and engagement from rank and file members in response to the negative agendas run by many university managements. Members have rallied well in response to the Murdoch approach to bargaining and have dissuaded managements from deploying similar tactics elsewhere. NTEU members have recently taken industrial action at University of Wollongong,
Monash University, Victoria University (VU) and University of Canberra. VU members should be commended for defeating a non-union ballot conducted by management with close to 80% of all staff emphatically rejecting management’s attempt to get up a substandard Agreement. At the time of writing, members at Queensland University of Technology are voting for a protected industrial action order and the University of Canberra are about to put a non-union agreement out to the vote. Almost every application for a protected action ballot order has been challenged by the employers, often with legal representation, to delay and frustrate our right to take protected industrial action. Of note, employers have raised objections that relate to our choice of ballot agents, the wording of our questions, whether we had been trying to genuinely reach agreement, the scope of the Agreement, the notification time for industrial action and a range of other matters. All our achievements thus far in improving and protecting working conditions in the sector havew been due to the high levels of the activism, support and engagement of all members across all Branches. We call on all members to support the remaining sites in their efforts to negotiate new Agreements. Thank you all for your support. Wayne Cupido, National Industrial Coordinator and Renee Veal, Industrial Support Officer
and of students (especially international students), and OHS and HR grievance processes.
were not offered the opportunity to seek independent legal advice before signing.
NTEU members have told the Union that the substantial increase in international students enrolled at Murdoch, many under-prepared, is exacerbating workload pressures. In addition, they also hold genuine concerns for the welfare of students. At a packed members’ meeting members expressed their frustration with insufficient resourcing of support, an ongoing fear of bullying that prevents many staff from speaking out, and what they allege is inadequate management responses to complaints.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the Vice-Chancellor recently reported to staff that there were no adverse findings about Murdoch staff. She did not report whether there were any adverse findings about Murdoch processes and decision making.
You would think that this would lead to the appointed barrister receiving a wealth of information from a wide range of staff, but sadly, no. We understand that the inquiry was limited to a small number of selected staff and that those staff were required to sign non-disclosure agreements. NTEU also understands that staff
A university that was prepared to terminate its employees’ Collective Agreement was always going to find it difficult to regain the confidence of staff and rebuild morale. Not holding a full, open, transparent and public inquiry, and not inviting submissions from all staff without them being required to sign a binding non-disclosure agreement is not going to assist in that process. Neither is a failure to publish the report. Gabe Gooding, National Assistant Secretary
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Update 12 days of action to Change the Rules NTEU joined thousands of Australians hitting the streets in October and November to demand more secure work and fair pay as part of the 12 Days of Action to Change the Rules. The 12 days kicked off in Perth on 18 Oct, followed on 23 Oct with rallies across NSW and the Melbourne mega-rally with a crowd of over 150,000. Tasmania followed on 24 Oct, and Newcastle on 30 Oct. Canberra and Qld will rally in November.
This page: Union thugs in Hobart; Members at the Melbourne mega-rally; Jonathan Hallet (Acting WA Div Secretary) and Sally McManus (ACTU Secretary) with NTEU Curtin members. Opposite page, clockwise from top left: NTEU member cycling for change; Members at the rally in Melbourne; Emma Gill with the ‘Dear Trickle down economics...’ awarded best rally sign nationwide by Sally McManus; Marchers in Sydney; NSW Div Secretary Michael Thomson leading NTEU members at the Sydney rally. (Emma Gill, Paul Clifton, Toby Cotton, James Supple, Shannon Harwood)
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Update
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Update Dan Tehan: The new Education Minister has a policy solution in search of a problem The Liberal Party’s decision to dispense with the services of Malcolm Turnbull as their leader and replace him with Scott Morrison as Prime Minister also resulted in the demise of Senator Simon Birmingham as Education Minister. He was replaced by Dan Tehan. This may have, in part, been due to Birmingham’s apparent inability or unwillingness to deal with the Liberals’ ‘Catholic schools’ problem. Tehan, it seems, wants to stamp his mark on higher education by proposing a solution to a problem that doesn’t really exist. In his first, intervention into the higher education policy debate, the new Minister for Education and Training did not tackle the very real problems imposed by Birmingham’s funding freeze or the impact that lowering the income threshold on HELP debts would have on low to medium income families. Rather, he suggested that universities consider changing their codes of conduct to reflect the University of Chicago 2012 Statement on Principles of Free Expression and make protesters, not organisers, pay any security expenses related to events to which controversial speakers were invited. Mr Tehan, it seems, has swallowed the line being pushed by some of Australia’s more conservative commentators and think tanks that we have a free speech crisis on Australian university campuses. For example, Jeremy Sammut, the Director of the Culture, Prosperity and Civil Society Program at the Centre for Independent Studies, recently released a policy paper entitled University Freedom Charters: How to best protect free speech on Australian campuses which calls for government intervention. The paper provides examples of a number of cases of disruptive behaviour or institutional policies that have prevented individuals expressing
their controversial views at universities in the USA and Canada. It also chronicles the development of freedom charters at the University of Chicago and more recently government policies in Ontario, Canada. Sammut’s paper acknowledges that the Higher Education Support Act (2003) Clause 119-15 already requires universities to have a policy that upholds free intellectual inquiry in relation to learning, teaching and research. Therefore, if it was academic freedom that he was concerned about, surely he would have suggested the Government undertake an audit and ensure all universities are complying with their legislative requirements. Instead, his paper argues that the Government should introduce policies which might include financial penalties where universities failed “to implement ‘best practice’ free speech polices to discourage disruptive conduct that restricts the right to freedom of thought and expression on campuses.” The emphasis of the paper is more about curtailing disruptive protests, than it is about promoting free speech or academic freedom. The evidence of a so-called crisis of free speech at Australian universities is underwhelming. The evidence includes staff at ANU and Sydney expressing opposition to the establishment of a Ramsay Centre sponsored degree in Western Civilisation, the actions of several dozen boisterous students protesting against Bettina Arndt at the University of Sydney and the sacking of climate geologist Professor Peter Ridd from James Cook University (JCU). ANU’s decision not to proceed in its negotiations with the Ramsay Centre had nothing to do with student or staff protests, but had everything to do with interference and micromanagement that Ramsay was seeking to exercise over curriculum and staffing. That is, from ANU’s point of view, entering into an agreement would comprise academic freedom and institutional autonomy, two of the defining characteristics of a modern university. Citing the Peter Ridd’s case is also very curious, because according to JCU his dismissal had nothing to do with his views about climate change, but rather it was about the manner in which he expressed those views, which were considered to be disrespectful and contrary to the Universi-
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ty’s code of conduct. From JCU’s perspective, Ridd’s behaviour might well have been considered to be a disruptive way of trying to silence those who might disagree with him, exactly the sort of behaviour the proposed charter is trying to prevent, not to encourage. The evidence in relation to the protests that tried to prevent Bettina Arndt from speaking about “the fake rape crisis to students at their university” (her own words) also appears to be overblown. The facts are that Arndt did speak at La Trobe despite initially being refused permission on the grounds that the event constituted a safety threat to attendees. Even Arndt’s address to the University of Sydney, which was interrupted by several dozen unruly and disruptive protesters, eventually went ahead, albeit after police had been called. In other words, there appears to be very little, if any evidence for the need for the imposition of policy that would financially penalise universities if they do not introduce policies which discourage disruptive conduct and prevent staff expressing controversial views. This is very much a policy solution in search of a problem. Might we respectfully suggest that, if Minster Tehan is looking for a policy cause that he can sink his teeth into in relation to higher education, perhaps he might consider addressing the inadequacy of public investment in our universities which is leading to increased reliance on casual employees to deliver teaching, and all the implications this has for those staff involved and for the quality and reputation of Australian higher education? If the Minister is genuinely concerned about issues of free speech, a good place to start would be to ensure that every Australian university has and enforces a policy or policies that uphold free intellectual inquiry, as required by existing legislation. Paul Kniest, Policy & Research Coordinator
Above: Minister for Education and Training, Dan Tehan.
Update #HandsOffARC ARC grant scandal shows Govt hypocrisy on academic freedom Government rhetoric around the need for universities to improve academic freedom has been undermined with the revelation that former Minister for Education and Training, Senator Simon Birmingham, secretly vetoed eleven ARC approved competitive research grants, worth over $4 million. According to evidence given by Australian Research Council (ARC) officials at the recent Senate Education and Employment Committee Estimates hearing, Birmingham rejected six Discovery grants worth a total of $1.4m, three Early Career grants ($1.1m) and two Future Fellowships ($1.7m). The rejected projects are all based in the humanities, creative arts and social sciences and had been recommended by the ARC. The ramifications of what appears to be a return to the Howard-era culture wars has already been felt, with one of the rejected Early Career grants applicants, Mark Steven, forced to relocate with his family overseas as a direct result of the grant refusal.
Mr Steven was unaware that his UNSW research project,’ Soviet cinema in Hollywood before the blacklist’, had initially been approved by the ARC, only to be ‘blacklisted’ itself by the Minister, without explanation.
Whilst there is so much that is good about my new post, taking it up meant relocating myself, my wife (also a researcher, who was in the final stages of her own PhD), and our 2 year old son to the other side of the planet, impossibly far away from our family, our friends, and anything like financial stability. This move was undertaken through extreme economic and emotional turbulence, felt all the more acutely by a working-class family.
make transparency the law
Despite the intense workload C involved in the research grant #HandsOffARdom application process only about ree cF mi de #ProtectAca one in five applications succeed. It is therefore concerning that, despite these projects surviving the extremely tough ARC vetting process, they were surreptitiously rejected at the last hurdle by the ex-Minister without justification. Such action can only lead to questions about the motives behind these decisions and whether anticipated reactions from government figures or conservative commentators was a determining factor. Whatever the reasons, this covert political interference by the former Education Minister not only undermines research independence and academic freedom in Australian universities, but also weakens the integrity of the ARC’s competitive grants peer-reviewed, merit based processes.
NTEU National President, Dr Alison Barnes, has strongly condemned Birmingham’s actions, stating that the NTEU and the research community expect the Education Minister to uphold the principles of academic freedom and to not directly interfere in the allocation of research grants. She has called on the Government to apologise to the affected researchers and immediately reverse their decision and fund these projects.
Education Minister Tehan:
Mr Steven said the impact was profound, noting that:
Education Minister Tehan:
Keep politics out of ARC
NTEU will also be pushing for the Government to enshrine in legislation a requirement that, should a Minister choose to veto any of the ARC recommendations on research funding, the affected applicants must be notified of that decision and the reasons for the Minister’s rejection to be publicly disclosed.
#HandsOffARC
Terri MacDonald, Policy & Research Officer
emicFreedom #ProtectAcad
Academics for Refugees Academics for Refugees held a National Day of Action on 17 October, supported by NTEU. Staff across the university sector took action to call for the immediate end to offshore detention, to put renewed pressure on the Morrison Government for policy change in support of refugee rights, and to support calls from refugees themselves on Manus Island and Nauru for immediate resettlement.
NTEU members distributed #NoMoreHarm postcards to mail to Scott Morrison or local MPs. academicsforrefugees.wordpress.com
Above: National Day of Action for Refugees at UTS. (Richard Bailey) See p. 41 for the letter of support from Behrouz Boochani on Manus Island.
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Update Sausagegate! UC members strike for value, support & respect NTEU members at the University of Canberra (UC) have gone on strike demanding that staff be valued, supported and respected. The strike follows UC Management’s failure to negotiate seriously to address staff concerns. The Half-Day Strike was held on Wednesday 17 October. This included a BBQ lunch after UC staff walked off the job at 12.30pm. A rally attended by staff, students and supporters was addressed by several UC members. NTEU UC Branch President Craig Applegate highlighted concerns by academic staff over workloads. Casual staff job security issues were presented by bargaining team member Sarah Ambrose. Professional staff member Richard Carne spoke to the growing stresses on professional staff from increasing workloads and the impact of a voluntary separation program earlier this year. Assistant Professor Eamon Merrick spoke out against the exploitation of the Assistant Professor scheme. Other UC staff also spoke with Jason Weber and Stephanie Kizimchuk expressing their views on the state of negotiations.
The rally also heard from NTEU ACT Division Secretary Rachael Bahl, NTEU NSW Division Secretary Michael Thomson and NTEU General Secretary Matthew McGowan. Negotiations with management resumed on Thursday 18 October, with UC Management presenting NTEU negotiators with their ‘best and final’ offer. At the time of writing, a members’ meeting was called for Thursday 25 October to consider the management offer. The NTEU Bargaining Team is of the view that UC Management’s offer does not represent significant progress, and will be recommending that members vote against it. A further Full-Day Strike is foreshadowed. The UC Strike attracted good media coverage, particularly after a UC spokesperson suggested in an email that staff who were not members of the NTEU could not attend the BBQ lunch as it might ‘constitute participation’ in the strike, which is unlawful for those outside the Union. The
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email went on to add that such participation would attract a ‘minimum four hour pay reduction’. Rather than preventing staff attending, the email instead spurred a surge in membership with new members telling the NTEU they joined as a direct result. The potential sanction for eating a sausage in your lunch break was labelled ‘ridiculous’ by the NTEU, with the whole affair known across campus and social media (and even the Canberra Times) as #sausagegate. While the implicit threat over eating a sausage may itself have been trivial, members felt that the whole episode was representative of a heavy-handed approach by an out of touch management. Lachlan Clohesy, ACT Division Organiser To follow the latest on Bargaining at UC: www.nteu.org.au/uc/bargaining
Above: Strike Day messages from members. Below: ACT Division Secretary Rachael Bahl addressing members on campus. (Lachlan Clohesy)
Update NTEU survey on sexual harassment To assist with our submission to the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) National Inquiry into Sexual Harassment in Australian Workplaces, NTEU launched a survey of members nationally, asking about sexism and sexual harassment in the workplace. The survey was open for 3 weeks, from 12 October to 2 November, and received around 2,500 responses from members. Preliminary results show that almost 20 per cent of respondents had personally experienced sexual harassment in the workplace, and that another 37 per cent were aware of others who had experienced sexual harassment in their workplace. Most of the harassment occurred occasionally (70 per cent), and could be in the form of sexually suggestive comments or jokes (32 per cent), inappropriate and intimidating staring or leering (22 per cent) intrusive questions about physical appearance or private life (22 per cent), and unwelcome touching, kissing, hugging or cornering (21 per cent).
Report reveals poor policies and a sexist culture of bullying at UC In light of the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) Change the Course report, the University of Canberra (UC) issued the Broderick Report (University of Canberra: Creating a Safe and Inclusive Community for Living and Learning 2018) by former Australian Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Elizabeth Broderick
Many respondents also reported experiences of sexual harassment that occurred from the office, such as events, excursions and conferences, and while co-workers rated highly as harassers (at 38 per cent), harassment by students was also significant (18 per cent).
We will be making the strong point to the AHRC that the preliminary results of the survey support what many staff have been saying – that sexual harassment and sexism is an issue in our universities, for staff as well as students, and needs to be dealt with as a priority by all.
Respondents also shared their personal accounts of sexual harassment and sexism in the workplace. Where appropriate, these submissions will be de-identified and included as confidential, non-public statements to the AHRC, so the voices of these members can be heard directly.
In September 2018, the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) released the report Everyone’s business: Fourth national survey on sexual harassment in Australian workplaces. It presented the findings of the Commission’s national survey, which found that one in three people had experienced sexual harassment at work in the last five years.
NTEU has been a strong advocate for safe workplaces, and we have consistently pressured universities to take action on sexual harassment and sexism. We have also supported the advocacy of students who have campaigned for universities to address sexual violence, which was investigated comprehensively by the AHRC in the Change the Course report (2017) at the request of Universities Australia. NTEU, together with student organisations, continues to monitor the response of universities as they implement the recommendations of the Change the Course report. However, until now, university staff have not been directly asked about their experiences with sexism in the workplace, including sexual harassment, despite the findings of the AHRC in both the student survey and their national survey. Reports from our members on their experiences has also deepened our concerns that sexual harassment of staff working in our universities is not recognised or adequately addressed.
NTEU commends the University for commissioning this report, however the Union is deeply concerned by some of the issues raised in the report’s findings, including the lack of a centralised reporting, advice and referral service for victims of sexual assault. UC is a Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) ‘employer of choice’ and has been a White Ribbon accredited workplace since 2013. The University’s Strategic Plan for 2018-2022 states the University’s commitment to become a national sector leader in equality, diversity, inclusion and access, but this report by Elizabeth Broderick highlights the gap between the University’s goals and the reality on campus. The Broderick Report found that students and staff experience a range of behaviours that are deeply gendered.
While the levels overall were an increase on the previous AHRC survey, this survey, for the first time, also focused on broad industry areas. Disappointingly, the education and training sector was found by the AHRC to be one area with higher than average levels of sexual harassment. In response to the national survey, the AHRC launched a National Inquiry into Sexual Harassment in Australian Workplaces. The Inquiry is accepting submissions until 31 January 2019. NTEU, other unions and the ACTU are currently drafting submissions to the Inquiry. Terri MacDonald, Policy & Research Officer
Broderick writes: Staff in discussion groups, interviews and through the confidential submission process spoke of certain intimidating behaviours within their workplace that impacted disproportionately on women and were gendered in nature. As these staff indicated, these behaviours are corrosive and serve to undermine the worth of women more broadly, in the faculties, schools and broader University. It’s clear that the Broderick Report highlights problems consistent with a poor workplace culture. NTEU’s experience is that staff morale at UC is as low as it has been for some time. NTEU welcomes the University’s commitment to act on all the Report’s recommendations and will seek updates on progress. Rachael Bahl, ACT Division Secretary
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Secure Jobs News National Casuals Committee endorsed by National Council NTEU’s commitment to tackling casualisation was bolstered at the recent 2018 National Council which voted to endorse a motion committing further resources to casual campaigning and to establish a National Casuals Committee (NCC) to give a prominent voice to casual members to build campaigns and inform future enterprise bargaining. This decision was a historic moment for many of us who have been involved in campaigning against casualisation, and comes at a time of crisis for staff in Australian universities where, according to WGEA data, more than 42% of all staff are now casually employed (by headcount). In some universities, those employed on casual contracts represent approximately two-thirds of all staff. When employed on casual contracts, staff are not eligible for paid sick leave, annual leave, or employer-funded parental leave. But there is often nothing ‘casual’ about the work they do. Many report working regular systematic hours, semester after semester, contract after contract. They’re expected to conveniently disappear over summer periods, while in busy periods they often work more hours than they’re paid to meet with students, prepare for teaching, and mark essays. They miss out on career progression, are excluded from the intellectual life of the university and often isolated from other casuals. While there have been some successes in NTEU campaigning, overall, university management has not shifted its approach to casual employment and casualisation has continued to increase. The exploitation of academic and professional casual staff also undercuts the wages and conditions of those employed on a fixed-term or continuing basis. It is for these reasons that tackling casualisation is a key priority
for the NTEU, with the establishment of a national casual delegates committee the next, necessary step building on past National Council motions to create casual-identified Branch Committee positions and increase casual fees.
Building on momentum across the country The NCC builds on recent momentum for casual organising in many Branches and Divisions around the country. The Victorian SuperCasuals campaign is one example of successful Division level casual organising. Among its most significant achievements is securing a right to conversion to continuing employment for casual academics in the Swinburne University Enterprise Agreement, the first clause of its kind in the country. In response to SuperCasuals campaigning, many Victorian universities have now committed to providing paid domestic violence leave for casual staff (although the fight is not over to secure this right in all universities). At Deakin University, casually employed staff secured a right to paid training in their Enterprise Agreement and recently conducted a Casuals Professional Development Day, also run at the Division level. At La Trobe University, casuals are currently leading an unpaid work campaign focused on marking. At ANU a successful campaign on underpayment of tutorials in 2017 secured more than $100,000 in backpay. The USyd Casuals Network at the University of Sydney has also been incredibly active, producing a guidebook for employing casuals. SuperCasuals campaigning has also recently taken off at the University of New South Wales. Recently, casually employed delegates at the University of Queensland have developed a Charter of Rights for Casual Academic Staff. There are many other examples of successful activism which, until now, have often taken place in isolation with little
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communication, comparison or collaboration between sites of casual campaigning, a gap which the NCC will address.
Make up of the NCC The NCC will comprise of delegates drawn from members occupying Branch Committee (Casual staff ) positions on Branches within each Division (at a ratio of one NCC delegate per 300 casual members in each Division). The NCC will meet regularly throughout the year, including via Zoom or Skype, with the purpose of facilitating learning and building campaigns, and will be supported with dedicated staffing and resourcing from National Office. The NCC will also have a presence at the National Council each year and will function as a national delegates committee. This will ensure that we foster casual leadership and delegates within the Union, and that our policies and campaigns on insecure work are informed and driven by casual members. We envisage part of the NCC’s role will also be to inform enterprise bargaining so that the voice and experiences of casuals will drive priority bargaining demands that university management must take seriously. It is our vision that the NCC will build Australia-wide structures and networks for communicating, comparing and collaborating around casual activism, strengthen organising and campaigning across the Branches and Divisions, and equip new casual delegates and leaders with the skills to exercise genuine influence in formulating Union policy and strategy. Casuals deserve our respect and our support and we look forward to more wins in the future. Bel Townsend (ANU), Nic Kimberley (Monash), Audrey Statham (Deakin), Ellyse Fenton (UQ), Lachlan Clohesy (ACT Division)
Above: NTEU member at University of Wollongong strike on 23 October. (N Clark)
Secure Jobs News Revitalising activism and democracy via professional development for casual academics That prioritising casualisation is one of the key challenges our Union is now facing was brought home by the recent publication of the Times Higher Education University Leaders Survey, a major survey of leaders in global higher education which found that seven out of 10 Australian vice-chancellors expect that a greater proportion of academics will be on short-term or casual contracts in Australian universities by 2030. Not only does this show, as Jeannie Rea, NTEU’s outgoing National President observed, that the majority of Australia’s vice-chancellors have little regard for their staff and students, it also shows their lack of vision for the future of Australian democracy. At a time when we ought to be acting to protect the wellbeing of Australian democracy, most vice-chancellors are planning instead to steer Australian universities towards the use of more precarious employment even though this would inevitably lead to deepening inequality which has been a key factor contributing towards the destabilisation of democracy overseas. Yet, according to University of Sydney academic Marc Stears, who gave a public lecture last month entitled ‘How Australia can save democracy for the world’,
a chance now exists in Australia to not only avoid the political instability of other developed democracies but to lead the world. Australia can revitalise democracy through the provision of opportunities for as many people as possible to exercise responsibility for making daily choices about the governance of their own lives and the conditions of their own work. In order to seize this chance for revitalising a more demanding kind of democracy and activism in Australia, which vice-chancellors seem now bent on stifling, the NTEU Victorian Division ran a Casuals Professional Development Day for casual academics on 27 September which was attended by 40 casuals, comprising 12 members and 28 non-members. The success of the Victorian Casuals Professional Development Day clearly demonstrates that our Union has an important role to play in revitalising the more demanding kind of democratic activism which Stears argues that this critical juncture in Australian democracy is now calling for. The program consisted of sessions designed to create a public space for casual academics to come together to deliberate about our lack of access to career progression, poor working conditions and the lack of recognition of the skills which casual academics exercise in our insecure work. However, the key aim of the event was to provide opportunities for casuals to begin to exercise responsibility for initiating, planning, and implementing action to improve the conditions of our own working lives, and certain possibilities and tensions around this came to light during the course of the day. Two comments made on the day illustrate the possibilities and challenges which might support or prevent our Union from promoting the emergence of a new kind of democratic activism amongst casuals: a young female teaching academic observed, “Casuals need a collective voice” and several attendees posed the question, “What is the Union doing for casuals?” The call for a collective voice for casuals points
to a desire for recognition, which our Union could work to channel towards fostering a revitalised activism on the part of casuals. However, an obstacle to this occurring might be the belief on the part of some casuals that it is solely up to the Union or others to bring about improvements for casuals, which is an assumption, according to Stears, that at this critical juncture could constitute an evasion of responsibility. Revitalising a new democratic activism might require deep-seated attitudinal change on the part of some casuals as well as on the part of our Union in relation to prioritising casualisation. That this shift in attitude is already underway in our Union at the national level, and that casualisation is now a priority issue, was signalled by the National Council’s passing of motions in 2017 to create casual-identified roles on Branch Committees, and in 2018 to allocate funds to establish an Australia-wide delegate committee for casuals – the National Casuals Committee – that will ensure the collective voice of casuals is heard at National Council (see p. 14). Yet, ultimately it us up to casuals ourselves to exercise responsibility for accessing opportunities provided by our Union and, beyond that, having a say in the formulation of union policy, strategy and implementation. There is an urgent need for us – casual and ongoing staff together – to shift our attitude towards actively committing to support our Union’s role of revitalising activism animated by a genuinely inclusive vision for the future of all higher education workers and Australian democracy. Then, at the next round of enterprise bargaining, we might be in a better position to collectively combine and effectively combat Australian vice-chancellors’ inhumane and undemocratic ‘10-year plan’ to shift towards even greater precarity in Australian universities. Dr Audrey Statham, Deakin University
Below Casual staff at the Victorian Casuals Professional Development Day. (Helena Spyrou)
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Secure Jobs News UQ Charter of Casual rights On 18 September, the Charter of the Rights of Casual Academic Staff was launched at the University of Queensland (UQ). The Charter highlights the unjust and exploitative conditions faced by casual academics, and broadly calls for recognition, representation, fair remuneration, and employment security. A group of union members, staff, and students gathered in UQ’s Alumni Court to mark the publication of the Charter. Those gathered were addressed by Queensland Council of Unions General Secretary, Ros McLennan, casual academics John Hunter, Victoria Bladen and Ellyse Fenton, and UQ NTEU Branch President and National Vice President (Academic), Andrew Bonnell. In a call to UQ management to redress the poor working conditions experienced by casual academics, the crowd marched across the iconic Great Court and nailed the Charter to the doors of the Forgan Smith building. The Charter was created by UQ’s Casuals Caucus, a group of NTEU members who are casually employed in teaching and research. Members are tutors, lecturers, course coordinators, demonstrators, and research assistants. The group started meeting last year, and the Charter grew out of the collective experience articulated by Caucus members as we discussed our working conditions. It became clear over the course of these meetings that casual academics face a range of problems, including income and employment insecurity, underpayment, exclusion from systems and services, and lack of access to resources, professional development, and workplace support. Uniting these issues is a pervasive sense of invisibility, the impression that our work is not valued and our expertise not recognised. The Charter is more than a set of claims for better treatment. It is a collective statement about what is wrong with the current system of academic employment. This system relies on the use of casual labour to perform core university functions in teaching and research, yet it excludes casual academics from recognition and reward, including fair remuneration for the
work that we perform. Universities rely on our goodwill, our commitment to students and to quality education, our love of learning, and our investment in knowledge production. If casual staff withdrew our labour, the institution of higher education would cease to function. Our work is not marginal but central to the sector. Perhaps the biggest barrier to challenging casualisation is the discourse of deficit which attaches to casual academic work. There is a tendency to view casuals as failed academics, those who have not worked hard enough, or published well enough, to have been admitted to the hallowed halls of academe. This discourse ignores the structural changes to higher education in Australia that have resulted in mass reliance on casual labour. It ignores the changes wrought in industrialised economies that have increased inequality and produced precarious work as the new global norm. Yet this discourse continues to circulate in universities, constructing casual academics as less capable, less worthy, less deserving. Against this, the Charter is an affirmation of the value of UQ’s casual academic workforce. It is an act of resistance and a strategy for surviving, for continuing to respect ourselves and remain in the occupation
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that we love. It is a way of saying, “We matter. We contribute. We belong.” It is a show of solidarity against a system which seeks to arrange us into hierarchies, to individualise and divide us. It is an affirmation of the dignity of work from within a set of structures which commodifies us all. The launch of the Charter marks the beginning of a campaign to improve the working conditions of casual academics at UQ. Together with the Casuals Caucus, the Branch Committee is developing an implementation plan in support of the Charter’s claims, with actions targeted at three levels: improvements in current practice, changes to UQ policy and procedures, and potential enterprise bargaining claims. These will be pursued over the next three years. Current activities are focussed on promoting the Charter, building a constituency of casual academic members, and increasing the visibility of issues affecting casual staff at UQ. Dr Ellyse Fenton, UQ Branch Committee Member (Casual Staff)
Above: NTEU members with the Casuals Charter in the UQ Great Court. (Kate Warner)
Secure Jobs News
SuperCasuals bbq at UNSW The first ever UNSW Casuals’ Network BBQ took place on Tuesday 9 October. The event formed part of the NTEU SuperCasuals Campaign, complete with life-size cardboard cutouts of the Time Lord, Magic Marker and the Invisibilist.
The gathering, which was organised by the newly formed campaign group, proved to be a great opportunity not only for networking but also to draw staff and students’ attention to unfair payment formulas and working conditions. Campaign materials produced for the event particularly highlighted the fact that 84% of UNSW jobs are insecure and that casual academics are paid as little as 45 minutes per student to mark all assignments in the semester, inevitably resulting in hours of unpaid work. The event was well attended by a mix of casual staff, with permanent staff and students joining in solidarity.
The UNSW Casuals’ Network will be planning campaign activities and events for 2019. Please join the mailing list if you would like to receive updates or attend future events organised by the network. Jason Heffernan, UNSW Branch If you are a casual worker at UNSW who would like to join the network, feel free to join the UNSW Casuals’ Network Facebook group or contact unsw@nteu.org.au
Images: UNSW members in the SuperCasuals cutouts. (N Clark)
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Secure Jobs News From casual member to Division President Nic Kimberley believes his recent election as President of the NTEU Victorian Division comes at an exciting time, when casuals are coming together in the Union and demanding better conditions. Tackling casualisation The level of casualisation in our universities is a national disgrace. As former Victorian Division Secretary Colin Long, sociologist Dr Fabian Cannizzo and I recently argued in an opinion piece for The Age, it is a well-kept secret that the higher education sector is one of the worst industries for insecure work, with more employees hired in insecure work than in ongoing positions. Our opinion piece showed just how significant this scourge is. We did, however, get one thing wrong in the article. We said that it is remarkable that our universities manage to conduct high quality research and excellent teaching with such precariously employed workforces. This is not entirely true. Universities have long used the unethical practice of job insecurity to pressure staff to work more hours than they are paid and to avoid speaking out about their poor working conditions. The exploitation of casual labour has disturbingly contributed to the success of universities. Casuals have become the cogs that keep university teaching turning. Without their unpaid labour, marking wouldn’t get finished, class planning wouldn’t get done adequately, students wouldn’t receive responses to emails, and the administration associated with teaching wouldn’t get done. University management should be ashamed of the level of wage theft going on in our institutions.
Reflecting on our actions We need to ask ourselves, could the NTEU have done more to prevent the exploitation of casually employed staff? We continue to sign off on Enterprise Agreements which keep outdated and no longer fit-for-purpose pay rates for casual academics. Since our major win in introducing
payment for marking a decade ago, we have only really chipped around the edges in terms of improving the conditions of casuals. This should not be seen as an attack on the NTEU, but a need to reflect in order for us to take stock of the past and work towards greater action. This also should not be used by universities as a scapegoat for their refusal to pay casuals for the hours that they work. There are provisions in most Agreements to pay extra if the rates don’t cover the work required. NTEU is beginning to better grasp the need to more seriously address the casualisation of our universities and improve the working conditions of casuals. Victoria has been the leader in the Union, having launched the SuperCasuals campaign over two years ago. This campaign is focused on running organising campaigns at universities on issues facing casual staff. Not only has the Union’s Victorian casual membership grown by over 200 per cent since this campaign commenced, we have also won improved casual working conditions at universities such as Swinburne and Deakin. SuperCasuals has by no means been perfect, and we need to see more of our members in ongoing positions willing to step up to fight with our casual comrades, but the campaign has been fundamentally important in beginning the work to improve the working conditions of casuals and bring about more secure employment pathways. In addition, the most recent National Council voted to introduce the National Casuals Committee, which will command a strong voice at the national level of the Union around casual issues (see report, p.14).
Benefits of becoming active in our Union Four years ago, when I joined the NTEU and became a delegate I would never have expected that I would be the Victorian DIvision President today. I do not come from a union household and did not know what a union was until I joined United Voice while working part-time during my undergraduate studies. Nonetheless, the values of unions are the values that I have always held, so it was inevitable that I became active. What my circumstances tell us is that anybody who wants to contribute to the NTEU has an important place. Don’t ever feel that you are not good enough or knowledgeable enough to be involved in our Union. There is a place for anybody who wants to be active in improving the working conditions of tertiary education staff. If
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you want to get involved, the NTEU will support you.
Insecure work must be our key priority As President I want us to build our membership and increase the involvement of casuals as delegates, build public support, and develop a clear strategy to address the core issues facing casuals. This needs to take a ‘bottom up’ approach with Branches leading the work. I see the next two years as a period of growth and planning for a mass casuals’ game changing campaign. I am determined to ensure that our Division prioritises addressing casualisation over the coming years. I call on all members – casual, fixed term and ongoing – to come together to change the course of the higher education sector. The current mass casualisation and exploitation is not irreversible, but it requires us to stand together as one union to fight against it. We need more casual NTEU members. Persuade all casuals that you know to join NTEU! Ask your colleagues in secure work to commit to stand with the Union in any future campaigns to improve the working conditions of casuals. If you are casual, become a delegate or join your NTEU Branch Committee to ensure that casuals have a strong voice at all levels of the Union. We can and must do better than tolerate the casual scourge in our universities. As Victorian Division President I will fight for casuals every single day, but only through collective action can we achieve the greatest change. Let’s do it, comrades! Nic Kimberley is Victorian Division President
Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander News A&TSI business at NTEU National Council 2018 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander business at NTEU National Council 2018 was again an important and vital part of the agenda, with a wide-range of motions tabled on issues ranging from continued support for treaties, through to the continued removal of A&TSI children. According to established protocol, A&TSI matters were again first items of business for Council, with the outgoing Chair of the A&TSI Policy Committee (A&TSIPC) Terry Mason providing an overview of the work of the Policy Committee and National Unit over the past year. A&TSI motions were tabled and debated on the second day of National Council with the following motions being moved by the Policy Committee: • NTEU Continued Support for Treaties & ACTU Resolution – Voice, Treaty and Truth Telling. • Indigenous Student Success Program (ISSP), support for A&TSI students & vice-chancellors’ salaries. • Campus visits.
Newly elected A&TSIPC membership for 2018–2020 Name
Institution
Jurisdiction
Shane Motlap
Charles Darwin University
NT (Chair)
Sharlene Leroy-Dyer
University of Newcastle
National Councillor & NSW
Terry Mason
Deakin University
National Councillor & Victoria
Jacob Prehn
University of Tasmania
Tasmania
John Graham
Griffith University
Queensland
Aileen Marwung Walsh
ANU
Canberra
No nomination
n/a
WA
Nominee resigned
n/a
National Councillor & SA
• NTEU Elders membership. • Lateral violence in universities. • Continued removal of A&TSI children. The significant majority of A&TSI motions were passed unanimously, aside from one abstention recorded for a single motion. Along with motions pertaining to A&TSI business, two additional motions of thanks and gratitude for the outgoing National President, Jeannie Rea and the outgoing General Secretary, Grahame McCulloch were tabled by the A&TSIPC.
New A&TSIPC members As this National Council was held during the regular NTEU election cycle, the positions of Chair and Deputy Chair for the A&TSIPC were vacated, with Shane Motlap elected as Chair for 2018–2020 (see p. 21). No nominations were received for the position of Deputy Chair.
The National A&TSI Unit thanks the outgoing members of the A&TSIPC and congratulates the newly elected officers to their Division and National positions on the Committee. While NTEU has installed a newly elected National leadership team, A&TSI members can rest assured the commitment to A&TSI employment, education and social justice across NTEU will remain as one of the highest priorities for the Union. Adam Frogley, National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Coordinator Further information and contact details for the new A&TSI Policy Committee can be found at: www.nteu.org.au/atsi/atsipc
Below: Phil Mairu, Sharlene Leroy-Dyer and Shane Motlap at National Council 2018. (Paul Clifton)
NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 25 no. 3 • November 2018 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 19
Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander News I’m Still Not a Racist, But… Racism, discrimination, a lack of cultural understanding/ respect and lateral violence continues to impact Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff in the Australian higher education sector. The NTEU National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Policy Committee (A&TSIPC) released the findings from the latest member survey, I’m still not a racist, but…, at NTEU National Council meeting in October. Findings show effectively no change since the release of the first member survey report in 2011. The report details that racism, discrimination and a lack of cultural understanding and/or respect continues to have a detrimental impact and outcomes for A&TSI peoples and their communities, both in the workplace and in the wider society. Findings from the member survey show the following.
Racism in Australian society A&TSI staff reported they are experiencing racism and discrimination in Australian society in greater levels than seen previously. 85.9 per cent of responses strongly agree there is racial discrimination in Australian society, while a further 12.1 per cent (98.0 per cent aggregated) agree racism and discrimination impacts A&TSI peoples, their families and communities; at times on a daily basis. Members were also asked if they felt racism and racial discrimination was widespread in Australia today. It was found that 77.2 per cent of members strongly agree that racial discrimination is widespread and entrenched in Australian society, while 16.1 per cent (93.3 per cent aggregated) agree that racial discrimination is quite prevalent in Australian society.
Cultural respect in the workplace A&TSI members are experiencing a lack of cultural respect in the workplace in greater numbers than previously recorded. Aggregated responses show 90.7 per cent of respondents are experiencing disrespect for culture and cultural obligations in the workplace; an 11.2 per cent increase
from 2011 strongly indicating that no change has occurred since 2011. A&TSI members stated that middle management (54.4 per cent) and colleagues (55.0 per cent) showed the greatest levels of disrespect for A&TSI culture and cultural obligations; while attempts to remedy issues of cultural disrespect in the workplace 50.4 per cent of respondents stated clearly that no attempt was made by their university to effectively manage and remedy instances of cultural disrespect. Only 19.4 per cent of responses indicated that attempts were made to address a lack of cultural respect in the workplace.
“I think it’s still the predominant view in this country that Indigenous people should be denied their rights over the white majority.” NTEU member
Racism/racial discrimination in the workplace A&TSI member responses (aggregated) show that 75 per cent of members encounter racial discrimination and/or racist attitudes in the workplace. Of interest was the 13.1 per cent increase in the number of A&TSI members experiencing racial discrimination in the workplace. Almost half (47.7 per cent) of A&TSI members stated that colleagues were the main perpetrators of racial discrimination in the workplace. Attempts by universities to address and remedy instances of racial discrimination and racism in the workplace were found wanting with 44.2 per cent of members indicating their university did not attempt to address issues of racism and racial discrimination in the workplace. While this finding is sobering, it was positive to see 21.7 per cent of members indicated that attempts were made to address racial discrimination.
Lateral violence
The theory behind lateral violence explains that this behaviour is often the result of disadvantage, discrimination and oppression, and that it arises from working within a society that is not designed for an A&TSI way of doing things. Lateral violence in the workplace remains a major issue for A&TSI staff working in the Australian higher education sector. In 2011, 60.6 per cent of respondents detailed they have experienced lateral violence in the workplace; while findings from the 2018 member survey showed (aggregated responses) an increase of 5.7 per cent in cases of lateral violence in the workplace to 66.3 per cent. Attempts to address lateral violence in the workplace was at best, sporadic with member responses detailing that only 9.4 per cent of incidents of lateral violence were addressed with positive action; an increase of 3.7 per cent from 2011 data. While this is a positive outcome it shows universities are either unaware of lateral violence or simply ignore incidents in the workplace, while specific policy and procedures to tackle lateral violence in the workplace are simply non-existent. It remains very concerning that aggregated data shows 90.7 per cent of member responses indicated that little action/no action was undertaken to address lateral violence.
Recommendations Arising from the member survey and report findings, a total of nine recommendations have been drafted to encourage universities and the Union to address issues of racism, discrimination and lateral violence in the workplace. Adam Frogley, National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Coordinator A copy of all recommendations and detailed findings can be found at: www.nteu.org.au/atsi/publications
ST IL L I’m not a Racist, bu t...
Lateral violence is often described as ‘internalised colonialism’ and includes: [T]he organised, harmful behaviours that we do to each other collectively as part of an oppressed group: within our families; within our organisations and; within our communities. When we are consistently oppressed we live with great fear and great anger and we often turn on those who are closest to us.
page 20 • NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 25 no. 3 • November 2018 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate
2ND Report on Cultu ral Respect, Racial Discrimination, Lateral Violence & related Policy at Australia’s Universitie s published by NATIONAL ABORIGINAL & TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER UNIT OF National Tertiary Education Union
www.nteu.org.au/at
si
october 2018
Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander News Shane Motlap Shane Motlap is the new Chair of the NTEU Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Policy Committee. Shane is a proud member of the Mbarbaram and Kukuthuypan Nations of North Queensland. His primary interests lie in the self-determination of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (A&TSI) nations in Australia, and the protection and strengthening of A&TSI culture through economic development. Armed with a Diploma of Teaching and subsequent Bachelor of Education, Shane commenced his employment in the tertiary education sector in 1993 at the then Northern Territory University (NTU, now Charles Darwin University), gaining teaching experience in both the vocational and higher education sectors with a short pause to complete a research-based Masters of Business. At present Shane is completing a Master of Business Adminis-
Terry Mason After serving five terms of office as the Chair of the National A&TSI Policy Committee, along with one term as the Deputy Chair, Terry Mason has stepped down from this position. While Terry remains on the Policy Committee as both the Victorian A&TSI Representative, as well as one of the National A&TSI Councillors, his leadership of the Committee will be missed by many. Terry’s time at the helm has marked a period of substantial growth and change in the Policy Committee. During his terms of office, the NTEU has strengthened its political messages concerning both the rights of A&TSI workers, but also communities more broadly. As well as taking a hard line during bargaining to ensure that the majority of university Agreements had enforceable numeric targets for Indigenous employees, Terry has often been seen challenging the NTEU and the union movement as a whole on their need to adopt social justice agendas for A&TSI rights. He has been crucial in the struggle to get Indigenous business recognised as union business
tration with an aim to commence doctoral studies in the near future. Despite his love of teaching, Shane moved from the classroom to undertake policy analysis in late 2010 at CDU. As an early indication of his vision for A&TSI Nations’ participation in the tertiary education sector, Shane was one of three authors who (in 1997) developed a proposal for a pro vice-chancellor position responsible for overseeing and developing the A&TSI-specific portfolios of teaching, learning and research within NTU. The position was finally established 11 years later, and CDU is acknowledged as the first Australian university to establish such a position, pressuring other universities to follow. Shane was elected to National Executive for four terms, and has served as NT Division Secretary. His combined experiences of working in both academic and professional roles and as an active NTEU member will enabled him to continue and build upon the positive work already achieved by the previous Chair and Deputy Chair. He is keen to work with the
Women’s Action Committee and Queer Unionists of Tertiary Education, academics, casuals and general/professional staff to advance the goals of NTEU. Finally, Shane credits much of the achievements of the NTEU in raising the profile of A&TSI peoples to the committed and collaborative efforts of NTEU staff and its various elected officers at the Branch and Division levels. To that end, he looks forward to working with them to achieve even greater outcomes for the benefit of all members and the NTEU more broadly.
and to hold our universities accountable to the rights of the peoples on whose lands they operate. The life-expectancy gap between Aboriginal people and other Australian workers, for example, led to Terry pushing (in a number of forums) the right for A&TSI workers to gain early access to their superannuation funds – a battle which is ongoing but gained serious momentum due to his tenacity. Additionally, many will remember Terry’s engagement in international union business – both as an honoured guest of the NZTEU annual Maori caucus Hui, but also in attending Education International and collaborating in the push to set up an indigenous sub-committee at EI so work could be done on advancing Indigenous rights in the classroom globally. Terry’s continual push – both within the NTEU and broader union movement, but also in society more generally – to ensure that the sovereignty of A&TSI peoples was recognised, and that Australia started recognising these rights through treaty processes, will remain one of his greatest legacies at the helm. His leadership at a time where many other workers’ bodies were simply adopting the Constitutional Recognition platforms of the political parties meant not only that the NTEU maintained their strong commitment to rights rather than
symbolic gestures therefore challenging other unions to engage with Indigenous communities more fully, but also created the space for NTEU A&TSI caucus members to add their learned perspectives to the discourse. Additionally using his platform to educate others and to engage with grassroots sovereignty movements meant eventually that the political landscape shifted. Terry’s contribution to an environment where states and territories are holding treaty discussions. The A&TSI Policy Committee, together with the National A&TSI Unit, thanks Terry for these many years of staunch leadership and looks forward to his ongoing contributions as a Policy Committee member.
NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 25 no. 3 • November 2018 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 21
The flood of insecure employment at Australian universities NTEU’s detailed analysis of the latest higher education staffing data published in Flood of Insecure Employment at Australian Universities 2018 shows that the Australian university workforce is: • Continuing to rely heavily on insecure forms of employment. • Becoming increasingly feminised.
Image: Tidal wave (iimages/123rf.com)
• Becoming increasingly specialised, especially with the Taylorisation of academic work.
Number of employees NTEU estimates that Australia’s universities employed about 213,000 people in 2017. Our estimate on the number of employees based on Department of Education and Training staffing statistics (Figure 1) are confirmed by Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) staffing profiles for 201617 which show that universities employed 212,378 people in that year. Of these, approximately 75,000 (35%) had secure ongoing (tenurial) jobs, 48,000 (22%) had limited term contracts and 91,000 (45%) were casuals. The data in Figure 1 shows that the total number of people employed at Australian universities increased from about 147,000 employees in 2005 to 213,000, an increase of some 66,500 employees or 45%. This increase was composed of an additional 15,000 (+25%) employees with secure on-going jobs (tenurial), 17,500 (+58%) people with limited term contracts and 34,000 (+60%) people employed as casuals.
Insecure jobs – the rising tide has not subsided Paul Kniest Policy & Research Coordinator
page 22 • NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 25 no. 3 • November 2018 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate
Given that the increase in the number of people with limited term and casual jobs (58% and 60% respectively) grew at more than twice the rate of people with
Casuals
Limited Term
78,232 77,072 79,120 81,684 86,212 90,796 69,604 73,592 56,924 57,192 58,644 59,404 62,176
40,808 43,048 43,860 45,360 45,804 46,383 45,825 45,986 47,599 30,153 32,670 34,975 38,184
secure jobs (25%) this means that the proportion of employees without secure jobs increased from 59% in 2005 to 65% in 2017. In other words, just over one in three (35%) of all people working at our universities in 2017 did not have a secure job. It might be argued that an examination of full time equivalent (FTE) employment data rather than the number of employees would provide a clearer picture of the changing nature of employment at our universities.
Figure 2 shows that the share of insecure (casual and limited term) FTE positions at Tenurial our universities over the period 2005 to 2017 increased from 41% in 2005 to 48% in 2017. In FTE terms only just over one 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 in two (52%) of university positions are secure ongoing positions. Figure 2 also shows that the rising tide of insecure emFigure 1: Number# of University Employees by Employment Contract 2005 to 2017 ployment between 2005 and 2010 associ# Number = Estimated Casual FTE x 4 . Source: www.education.gov.au/selected-higher-education-statistics-2017-staff-data ated with the introduction of the Higher Education Workplace Relations RequireShare of University Insecure (Casual and Limited Term) FTE Positions in Australian Universities 2005 to 2017 ments (HEWRRs) and announcement and phasing in of the Demand Driven funding model has not subsided and remained in the 47%-48% since 2010. 75,077 65,306 67,933 69,676 71,322 72,667 74,428 60,016 59,076 59,837 59,950 61,867 62,867
The data clearly show that our universities are highly reliant on insecure forms of employment with only one in three people (35%) having a secure job and only one in two FTE (52%) being secure ongoing positions.
48% 46% 44% 42% 40%
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
Figure 2: Share of University Insecure (Casual & Limited Term) FTE Positions in Australian Universities 2005 to 2017
This reliance on insecure employment is highlighted by a recent Times Higher Education (20 Sept 2018) Survey of University Leaders which shows about 70% of the Australian vice-chancellors included in the survey said they believed that a greater proportion of academics will be on short term or casual contracts by 2030. (A more detailed examination of casual FTE and issues about how it is measured is addressed in this edition of Advocate: see ‘Does casual employment data stack up?’, p. 26)
Feminisation – a continuing trend Female: General/ Professional
40,116 41,496 42,323 43,175 35,049 36,600 38,011 35,549 29,830 30,448 31,489 33,123
Female: Academic
26,094 26,927 27,454 27,633 28,351 19,350 20,252 21,037 22,239 23,484 24,560 25,575
Change since 2005 é45% é47%
Male: General/ Professional
19,343 19,207 19,349 19,950 20,898 21,475 22,112 22,737 23,075 23,546 23,897 24,236
é25%
é22%
Male: Academic
30,935 25,470 25,847 26,414 26,958 27,789 28,295 29,184 29,851 30,237 30,452 30,502
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016
Figure 3: Australian university FTE positions – Academic & General/Professional by gender, 2005 to 2016 Source: Department of Education and Training Staffing Statistics – data provided on request
The data in Figure 3 shows that total FTE positions (including actual casuals) at Australian universities increased from about 94,000 to 127,000 or 35% between 2005 and 2016 (latest year for which actual casual data are available). Over the same period, female FTE grew more than twice as much as of male FTE, growing by about 45% compared to 23%. The growth in female FTE amongst general and professional staff was slightly higher than for academic female staff. The proportion of female FTE increased from 52% in 2005 to 56% in 2016. The data shows that females are over-represented in general/professional positions, where they account for 60% of all female FTE compared to only 45% for males (see Figure 5 below). Females are under-represented at higher academic levels, where they only account for 32% of level D and E and above positions, and in senior
continued overpage... NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 25 no. 3 • November 2018 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 23
The flood of insecure employment ...continued from previous page general/professional positions, where they account for less than half of all such positions. The data, however, indicates that there does not appear to be any systematic bias against females when it comes to use of insecure forms of employment. As Figure 4 shows the proportion of both male and female FTE with insecure forms of employment exhibits a very similar pattern even when broken down by type of work. Therefore, while gender might not be an important determinate of whether you have an insecure or secure position, the data in Figure 4 shows that for academic staff at least, the type of work you are engaged to perform is a factor in determining your contract of employment. The data show that regardless of gender, about eight out of ten teaching-only FTE positions are casual and a similar proportion of research-only FTE positions are limited term.
The Taylorisation (specialisation) of academic work Figure 5 shows the academic share, broken down into teaching-only, research-only and teaching and research FTE by gender for both 2005 and 2016. As discussed above, females are under-represented amongst academics. In addition the data also shows that the use of specialised academic roles (teaching-only and research-only) has increased significantly over the last decade. While teaching and research academics (persons) accounted for 27% of all university FTE in 2005, this had fallen to only 22% in 2016. At the same time teaching-only and research-only FTE combined had increased from 21% to 26%. Therefore, on an FTE basis in 2016, our universities had more specialist academic positions than teaching and research academics, once considered the bedrock of our universities.
Are teaching and research academics becoming an endangered species? When the data is broken down by contract of employment it shows that of the 33,000 additional FTE positions created between 2005 and 2016 (Figure 3) only 6.8% where teaching and research FTE. However of this, only 2.6% were tenured teaching and research positions. While tenured female teaching and research positions increased by 4.3% over this period, tenured males FTE positions actually fell by over 500 FTE or 1.7%.
Males General/Professional 12.5% 21.0% Teaching & Research 1.6% Research only 6.1% Teaching only 16.8% All Males
Casuals Limited Term
25.4%
78.1% 78.2%
8.7%
30.0%
Females General/Professional 11.9% 23.0% Teaching & Research 2.0% Research only 9.7% Teaching only 18.0% All Females
26.1% 78.1% 75.8%
10.1%
29.0%
Figure 4: Composition of university FTE positions by type of work, work contract and gender, 2016
60%
57%
Teaching & Research Research-only Teaching-only
Males 56%
50% 40%
Females 35%
28%
20%
30% 20%
15% 13%
10% 9%
0%
39%
2005
11% 13%
2016
8%
2005
All Persons 48%
47%
27%
22%
40% 17%
11% 13%
2016
13% 12% 13%
9%
2005
2016
Figure 5: Proportion of total FTE (including Actual Casuals) by type of work. All universities, 2005 and 2016
Conclusion The analysis of latest higher education staffing statistics shows that: • The rapid rise in the use of insecure forms of employment that occurred between 2005 and 2010 has not subsided, with only one in three (35%) people or one in two (52%) FTE positions classified as having ongoing or secure employment. • Despite the fact that the proportion of female FTE increased from 52% to 56% between 2005 and 2016 and that females are over-represented in general/ professional positions and under-represented in senior academic and general/ professional roles, the data do not reveal any systemic gender bias in the use of insecure forms of employment, and
page 24 • NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 25 no. 3 • November 2018 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate
• There has been a significant increase in the use of specialised (teaching-only and research-only) positions where insecure forms of employment are overwhelmingly favoured. Download The Flood of Insecure Employment at unicasual.org.au/ resources/ publications
The Flood
of Insecure Employment at Australian Universities
August 2018
Academic freedom
Ramsay, iterum* The previous issue of Advocate (vol. 25, no. 2, July 2018) contained a thorough account of the events at the Australian National University (ANU) after it was approached by the Ramsay Centre to host a sponsored academic program on ‘Western Civilisation’. After lengthy negotiations between ANU academics and managers on the one side, and Ramsay Centre representatives on the other, the proposed deal fell through, with the ANU Vice-Chancellor Brian Schmidt citing unresolved issues around university autonomy and academic freedom. There was also the suggestion that Ramsay representatives might conduct periodic ‘health checks’ on the program (i.e. spy on teachers), to ensure that the intentions of the donors were being realised. What these intentions were was spelled out with characteristically unsubtle clarity by former Liberal Prime Minister Tony Abbott, a member of the Ramsay board in his now notorious essay in Quadrant in April 2018. The Ramsay program would be explicitly ‘right-wing’ and would be ‘not just about Western civilisation but for it’. Abbott’s article fuelled concerns that a centre ‘for Western civilisation’ was not just a scholarly exercise but embodied an ideological goal of asserting the superiority of Western civilisation over other traditions. The decision by the ANU’s senior management not to proceed with the Ramsay Centre deal was met by a barrage of hostile criticism in the Murdoch press, most of which played on tired ‘culture wars’ themes, but such commentary largely avoided engaging with the core issues of academic freedom and university autonomy. Subsequently, the Ramsay Centre, represented by its CEO, Professor Simon Haines, commenced discussions with senior management at the University of
Sydney. The Ramsay Centre also started informal contacts with the University of Queensland. NTEU Branches at each of these universities wrote to their respective vice-chancellors, seeking answers on the core issues of academic freedom and institutional autonomy, as well as on transparency and matters of process. At the same time, a significant number of academic staff members at Sydney formed a group of concerned scholars actively campaigning against the right-wing conservative ideology, cultural chauvinism, insularity and elitism that they saw as inextricable from the Ramsay ‘Western Civilisation’ program. Since these developments, the ANU’s leadership has been more explicit about the reasons why they walked away from a possible $60 million of Ramsay money over eight years. (The Ramsay fortune comes from the private health care industry – an industry generously propped up by taxpayers thanks to the health-care policies of past Liberal governments.) ANU Chancellor Gareth Evans stated, with an eye to the negotiations going on at other universities: “I would respectfully suggest to my colleagues elsewhere that they may need to look as cautiously as we did at the teeth of this particular gift horse”. In particular, Evans cited as the ‘knock-out blow’ for the ANU the fact that, when the university sent its draft memorandum of understanding for the Ramsay Centre and board to consider, ‘a draft sentence reading ‘the parties to this MOU acknowledge each other’s objectives and their shared commitment to the principles of academic freedom’ came back to us with the words ‘their shared commitment’ struck out and ‘ANU’s commitment’ substituted!’ In short, Ramsay refused to endorse a common commitment to academic freedom. ANU Vice-Chancellor Brian Schmidt has also supplied more information about the developments at the ANU, revealing that he consulted the Vice-Chancellors of Oxford and Cambridge and the Presidents of Yale and Berkeley about the negotiations with the Ramsay Centre. Schmidt reported that these Vice-Chancellors all “agreed it was manifestly not appropriate” for the ANU to accept a deal with Ramsay on the terms proposed by Ramsay.
Schmidt added: “It became clear there was an emerging discord about the level of control that the centre wanted and the amount of control that the University was prepared to cede on this”. It is worth stressing at this point that there have been philanthropic donations to the humanities in recent years, including endowed chairs, that have been welcomed by all concerned without any controversy. The Ramsay centre is different, not least because of the overt ideological agenda enunciated by Abbott, but also because of its challenges to university autonomy and academic freedom. There are precedents for this kind of influence-buying in the United States: see, for example, Jane Mayer’s recent book Dark Money and Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains. Under the flag of ‘philanthropy’, mega-rich individuals have sought to purchase influence over universities, promoting rightwing libertarian ideology while getting tax breaks for their efforts, at the expense of the credibility of institutions that accept strings-attached donations. Against the backdrop of the ANU revelations, at the time of going to press (mid-October 2018), the University of Sydney has reached the stage of formulating a draft Memorandum of Understanding for the Ramsay Centre, and the University of Queensland has submitted an initial ‘Expression of Interest’. It remains to be seen how Vice-Chancellor Spence will square the circle of overcoming the Ramsay board’s resistance to the concept of academic freedom on the one hand, and addressing the strongly articulated concerns of many Sydney staff on the other. One thing the Ramsay saga has already demonstrated is the need for robust and transparent codes of conduct to govern universities’ relationships with outside bodies. The more universities experience financial pressure from government freezes on funding and inadequate indexation, the more likely it is that university managements will come under pressure to enter into arrangements that might compromise the integrity and core academic values of our public universities. Andrew Bonnell, NTEU National VicePresident (Academic) *Latin: again
NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 25 no. 3 • November 2018 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 25
Does our casual employment data stack up? A comprehensive review published in 2016 of the available literature on casual/sessional or contingent employment in Australian higher education by Stuart Andrews and others found that: “… the available data shakes the assumption that the majority of casual academic work is carried out by research higher degree students, considerably more work needs to be done to identify the full nature and patterns of employment of Australia’s casual academic workforce.”1
In line with the sentiments of this observation, a motion put forward by the UTS Branch at the NTEU’s National Council 2018 called for the Union to initiate discussions with both the Government and the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) about the adequacy of university casual staffing statistics. As discussed below, while there are publicly available measures of the levels of casual employment at our universities, we need to ask whether these measures aid in understanding who is engaged in casual work at our universities, what is the nature and pattern of casual employment, how it has changed, and what, if any implications this has had on the quality of teaching, research and support and service being delivered by our universities.
Measuring casual employment at our universities
Paul Kniest Policy & Research Coordinator
page 26 • NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 25 no. 3 • November 2018 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate
According to the latest Department of Education and Training Higher Education Staffing Statistics there were 22,699 estimated full time equivalent (FTE) casual staff positions at Australian universities in 2017. This represents almost one in five (18 per cent) of a total of 128,622 total FTE positions.
25,000 GENERAL/PROFESSIONAL ACADEMIC
20,000
14496 13530 13973
15,000
5026
10,000
5,000
0
5069
5564
15647 5997
17979
16922
8503
8903
8930
9649
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
7264
6935
6515
10407
19009 18844
19487
20309
7994
7621
7281
11046
11745
11563
11866
12316
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
21362
22176 é63.9%
• how many there are, and 8164 é62.4%
8027
13336
14011 é64.8%
2015
2016
Figure 1: Actual Casual Full Time Equivalent (FTE) Positions in Australian Universities 2005 to 2016 If you want more detail on the nature of the work undertaken by casuals, the latest data on actual casual FTE published by the Department is for 2016. As shown in Figure 1, in 2016 there was a total of 22,176 actual casual FTE positions, of which 8,164 (36.8 per cent) were classified as general/professional positions and 14,011 FTE (63.2 per cent) as academic positions. Actual casual academic positions can be further broken down into 12,282 teaching-only FTEs (55.4 per cent of total), 1,237 research-only FTEs (5.6 per cent) and 492 teaching and research FTEs (2.2 per cent). In other words, well over half of all casual FTE in 2016 were teaching-only positions.
cent and 64.8 per cent respectively. The increase in the use of casual FTE is almost twice as much as the increase in total (including tenurial and limited term contract) FTE which grew by 34.8 per cent over this period. It is apparent that universities are becoming more reliant on the use of casual positions to deliver core university services such as teaching, research and student support services. Figure 2 shows the proportion of total FTE accounted for by casuals for academic, general/professional and all positions over the period 2005 to 2016. The proportion of academic FTE accounted for by casual positions increased from 19 per cent in 2005 to 23.6 per cent. For general/professional staff the proportion of FTE increased from 10.2 per cent to 12.1 per cent and for all FTEs the proportion increased from 14.4 per cent to 17.5 per cent.
The data in Figure 1 also shows that the utilisation of casual FTE positions has risen significantly since 2005, having increased by 8,646 FTE or 63.9 per cent over the period. The increase in the use of casuals for delivering general/professional and academic functions was very similar over the period with FTE growing by 62.4 per
While we know that our universities are becoming more reliant on casuals to deliver core responsibilities, there is still
26% 23.6%
24% ACADEMIC
22% 20%
19.0%
18%
17.5%
TOTAL FTE
16% 14.4% 14% GENERAL/PROFESSIONAL
12% 10%
12.1%
10.2% 2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
a lot that we do not know about casuals, including:
2015
2016
Figure 2: Actual casual share of total full time equivalent (FTE) positions by type of work, academics, general/professional and all positions in Australian universities 2005 to 2016
• w ho they are in terms of gender, age, qualifications (all of which is available for tenurial and limited term contract staff ). These are very important questions in not only understanding the nature of the casual academic workforce and in terms of understanding the extent to which universities might be exploiting individual employees, but also in terms of understanding the implications of what an increasing reliance on casuals might have on the quality and reputation of Australian higher education.
How many casuals are employed by our universities? While the Department requires universities to provide data on both the number (headcount) and FTE for staff with ongoing/permanent (tenurial) jobs and those on fixed/limited term contracts, this is not the case for casuals. Universities are only required to provide the Department with data on casual FTE. FTE is calculated according to a prescribed formula outlined below.
Headcount While the Department of Education and Training does not collect data on the number of casual employees, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) requires employers with more than 100 employees, including all of our public universities, to report staffing profile data on the number and composition of its employees. The data on Australian universities for the year 2016-17 showed that universities employed a total of 221,378 employees (headcount) of whom 93,001 (43.8 per cent) were casuals. Unfortunately, WGEA data is not broken down by academic and general/professional staff and therefore, it is not possible to reconcile WGEA casual headcount data with Departmental FTE data. However, to convert the 22,700 FTE casuals reported by the Department into 93,000 total casual employees reported by WGEA requires a multiplier of 4.1. While this might represent a reasonable proxy for converting total casual FTE across the sector into headcount numbers, it becomes much more problematic at more disaggregated levels. Even trying to estimate the number of academic and general/professional staff is difficult. For instance a study by May et al. (2011) Casual approach to university teaching, used UniSuper data to estimate there to be about 67,000 casual academic staff employed in 2010.
continued overpage...
NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 25 no. 3 • November 2018 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 27
Casual employment data ...continued from previous page Based on the data in Figure 1 (which shows there was approximately 11,000 actual casual academic FTEs in 2010) this gives you are multiplier of approximately 6. The issues become even more problematic at the institution level, with the 2008 RED (Recognition- Enhancement – Development) Report giving three examples of widely differing ratios of headcount to FTE ranging from 23 to 1 to 7.5 to 1. Therefore by collecting only FTE data for casuals, Department staffing statistics make it all but impossible to estimate how many casuals are employed at each university. It also means we lack information about the age or academic qualification profile of casuals or whether they are higher degree research students, postgraduates pursuing an academic career, industry experts or retirees. The NTEU believes that better data on casual employment is a necessary first step in helping to answer some of these questions.
Calculating casual FTE
Table 1 Type of teaching
Number of Teaching Weeks 24
28
36
48
Lectures
7.8
6.7
5.2
3.9
Tutorials, Demonstrations, Workshops etc.
2.8
2.4
1.9
1.4
The problem is of course that because universities are not required to report ‘hours paid’ or ‘teaching weeks’ no one (except universities) know whether changes in FTE are being driven by changes to hours or weeks. The data in Table 1 demonstrates how changing the number of ‘teaching weeks’ has a profound impact on FTE. The calculations are based on 1,680 hours (35 hours of work x 48 weeks) for tutorials, etc and lectures. It shows that, all other things being equal, if a university were to move from semesters (24 weeks @ 2 x 12 weeks) to trimesters (36 weeks @ 3 x 12 weeks) then the FTE for 1,680 hours of casual tutorials would fall from 2.8 FTE to 1.9 FTE. For casual lectures it would fall from 7.8 FTE to 5.2 FTE.
The Department of Education and Training requires universities to report casual FTE data based on formulae outlined in the pull-out box on p. 29. The formula that relate to tutorials, demonstrations and workshops (total number of hours divided by 25 divided by the number of teaching week) is based on the assumption that the number of ‘teaching weeks’ is equivalent to about half of a full year – that is about 26 weeks (two 13 week semesters). This means in effect that a FTE workload for someone employed only to deliver tutorials (and associated preparation, consultation and contemporaneous marking) is about 12½ hours per week of face to face classes for a period of 52 weeks. For lectures the equivalent is 4½ hours face to face.
Not requiring universities to report data on the number of hours of face to face classes paid for or the number of teaching weeks creates obvious difficulties in interpreting casual FTE data: 1. How can it be that two universities that pay for exactly the same number of casual classes (tutorials or lectures) but that have a different number of teaching weeks, will report different casual FTE? 2. How do you compare casual FTE for one university over time where there have been changes in the number of teaching weeks? The way that universities currently report casual FTE for tutorials and lectures is highly problematic. People relying on the data are effectively blind because they do not know whether changes in casual FTE are being caused by changing hours or teaching weeks or a combination of both. For example if the number of teaching weeks has increased over time, then any reported increases in casual FTE would be understated. If the number of teaching weeks has fallen then, all other things being equal, an increase in use of casuals would be overstated.
How much university teaching is done by casuals? Having better data on casuals is not only a matter of having more accurate data for the sake of it. It has important implications for working conditions at our universities as well as broader implications for quality. The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) identifies “academic staff on casual work contracts” as one indicator that it uses as part of its Risk Assessment Framework . The FTE data reported above shows that almost two out of three casual positions (63.2 per cent) are classified as academics. Indeed more than half (55 per cent) of university casual FTEs are classified as teaching-only academics and almost one in four (23.6 per cent) of all university academic FTE are casuals. Therefore, while we know casual employees are important in delivering core teaching responsibilities, we don’t know exactly how much teaching is being delivered by casuals, how this
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Casual employment data Teaching & Research Tenured 31% Teaching-Only Casual 46% Teaching & Research Limited 9% Teaching-Only Tenured 8%
Teaching-Only Limited 6%
Calculating FTE for a full year The full time equivalence (FTE) for a full year for a member of staff or group of members of staff with a casual work contract is to be calculated in the following way: If the work performed is lecturing, then:
Teaching & Research Casual 1%
Figure 3: Who is doing the teaching at our universities? Share of Teaching FTE 2016
...continued from previous page is changing, and what implications this might have on the quality of the working experience of those staff and the learning experience of their students. The 2008 RED (Recognition – Enhancement – Development) Report concluded that somewhere between 40 per cent and 50 per cent of university teaching was being delivered by sessional (casual) employees. This seems like a reasonable estimate. Using Departmental staffing data (including actual casual data) and assuming that 100 per cent of teaching-only academic FTE are dedicated to teaching and that 40 per cent of teaching and research academic FTE are dedicated to teaching (traditional 40-40-20 breakdown) then it is possible to estimate how much effort (measured in FTE) is devoted to teaching by people employed on a casual, limited term and tenurial basis. The results for 2016 are shown in Figure 3. Based on these assumptions, the data in Figure 3 show that 46 per cent of all teaching FTE is delivered by teaching-only casual employees and another 1 per cent by casual teaching and research staff. That is, almost half of the teaching done at our universities is being delivered by casual employees. Furthermore, teaching-only (6 per cent) and teaching and research staff (9 per cent) on limited term contracts account for another 15 per cent of the teaching effort. In other words, staff employed on insecure forms of employment account for well over half of all the teaching. Put another way, less than 40 per cent of the total
• Determine the total number of ‘contact’ hours (excluding associated hours spent in preparation and marking) for the person or persons during the full year. • Divide that number by 9 to give an equivalent number of weeks worked, and
teaching effort is delivered by ongoing (tenurial) teaching and research (31 per cent) and teaching-only (8 per cent) FTE.
• Divide the equivalent number of weeks worked by N, where N is the number of teaching weeks in a full year.
We would question whether this is a sustainable position and is an issue we intend to raise with TEQSA.
If the work performed is supervising or conducting demonstrations, tutorials or workshops, then:
Conclusion
• Determine the total number of ‘contact’ hours (excluding associated hours spent in preparation and marking) for the person or persons during the full year.
As the analysis presented above clearly shows we are well overdue to look at the way data on casual staff at our universities is collected. At a very minimum the NTEU believes that in addition to publishing estimates of FTE, universities should immediately be required to publish the data underlying these calculations, namely: • Number of casual hours paid for by different categories of work. • The number of teaching weeks used to calculate FTE. Given the overwhelming importance of casual staff in delivering university teaching programs (to ensure reliable quality assurance), universities should also be required to collect and publish data in relation to the number of casual employees engaged as well data on gender, age, education qualification and whether they are currently enrolled as a higher degree research student. 1. Stuart Andrews et al. (2016) Contingent academic employment in Australian universities, AHEIA and LH Martin Institute, University of Melbourne. https://melbourne-cshe.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/ pdf_file/0009/2564262/2016-contingent-academic-employment-in-australian-universities-updatedapr16.pdf
• Divide that number by 25 to give an equivalent number of weeks worked, and • Divide the equivalent number of weeks worked by N, where N is the number of teaching weeks in a full year excluding any summer school period. If the work performed is marking (as a single activity), research or other work, then: • Determine the total number of ‘paid’ hours for the person or persons during the full year. • Divide that number by 35 to give an equivalent number of weeks worked, and • Divide the equivalent number of weeks worked by 52.
Source: Department of Education and Training > HEIMS > Glossary > Full Time Equivalent for a Full Year. Year Download: https://heimshelp.education.gov. au/resources/glossary/glossaryterm11ab
NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 25 no. 3 • November 2018 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 29
Reflecting upon 25 years of higher education unionism With 2018 being the 25th anniversary of the NTEU and also of Education International, NTEU hosted a symposium considering the growth and achievements of higher education unionism over the past quarter century, and identifying the challenges for the next 25 years.
The well attended symposium in August at Victoria University in Melbourne focussed upon both the local and the global with the recently retired founding General Secretary of Education International (EI) Fred van Leeuwen as the special guest. Van Leeuwen was also in Melbourne to address the dinner to celebrate the retirement of NTEU founding General Secretary Grahame McCulloch, which followed the symposium.
Photo: Grahame McCulloch talking at the Symposium. (Paul Clifton)
International contributions EI is the 32 million strong global federation of education unions, which includes teacher unions, as well as unions representing early childhood, further and higher education, and research workers. EI President Susan Hopgood, who is also Federal Secretary of the Australian Education Union, chaired the international section, which included Jens Vraa-Jensen, former leader of Denmark’s academic union (Danish Masters) and former chair of the European Higher Education and Research Standing Committee (HERSC).
Jeannie Rea Immediate Past President
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Having participated in EI global congresses and all the conferences of the EI higher education and research section, Vraa-Jensen had much insight into the development of higher education unionism from the European perspective at a time of encouraging student mobility across the European Union. He explained that
standardisation and the use of metrics are undermining teaching standards and warned that marketisation and commercialisation are becoming an increasing problem in European universities and systems. He also spoke to the ongoing struggle to protect academic freedom and the right to organise in unions. Yamile Socolovsky, Director of the Centre for Research and Capacity and International Secretary with the Argentinian higher education industry union (CONADU), was struck ill on her way, but her forwarded speech. She addressed the recent development of higher education unionism in Argentina and other parts of Latin America. Socolovsky noted that this growth was aided by affiliation to, and participation in, EI, and the support of affiliates in capacity building. There are now seven Latin American affiliates. Socolovsky argued the importance at this time of “an authentic international vision of our common world, our common problems, our common challenges – and our collective force”. For profit universities and colleges are opening at a rapid rate across Latin America and are often of poor quality for students and undercut the salaries and conditions of staff. Privatisation and commodification of education and knowledge are major issues, along with spreading job insecurity also in public universities. Sandra Grey, President of New Zealand’s Tertiary Education Union (TEU) also focused upon the decline of public funding and consequences for job security and for breadth and quality of teaching and research. She was concerned that neoliberal ideologies still hold sway in New Zealand as too many now thought that higher education was a private good. Dr Grey also urged developing a more interconnected tertiary education approach in EI across vocational and higher education. As the final speaker in the international section, retiring NTEU General Secretary Grahame McCulloch spoke to the development of the higher education and research section of EI which includes affiliates covering three million tertiary education workers. As tertiary education continues to rapidly expand across the world, the role for EI in providing an organising point and leverage for initiatives in international arenas was critical, along with the core roles of solidarity and capacity building.
Grahame has played a key role in advocating for a higher education and research presence (and its resourcing) in EI, and this was acknowledged by other speakers including Fred van Leeuwen. He was elected three times (the maximum allowed) from the floor of the global congress to the EI Executive Board, where he advocated for higher education and research, for the Asia and Pacific region, as well as highlighting the strategic advantages of industrial unions and the responsibility to create space and opportunity for Indigenous workers to organise effectively.
Local speakers The Australian section began with the NTEU General Secretary–Elect, Matthew McGowan speaking to the early days of bringing the NTEU together from two academic staff and three general staff unions. He emphasised the challenges of breaking down pre-conceptions and prejudices amongst academic and general staff unused to organising together. However, the convictions of the NTEU’s founders and activists that we would be stronger together soon started to show results in increasing salaries and improved conditions across the board; a point also emphasised by Grahame McCulloch in his closing comments. Grahame emphasised that while the NTEU remains small in terms of financial members, our Enterprise Agreements cover the whole sector. Former professional scientist Gabe Gooding (WA Division Secretary) and former administrative officer, Michael Thomson (NSW Division Secretary) talked about bringing more groups of general staff in from the public sector and other unions to further strengthen the NTEU as an industry union. What was very clear in these long term activists and now elected officials’ stories was not only the clear conviction of the need to unionise the sector’s workers, but also the belief in the importance of university education and research felt by workers well beyond that assumed amongst academic staff. Margaret Lee, retired industrial relations academic and former Queensland Division Secretary, spoke of the importance of bringing together academic staff also from diverse cultures and traditions, including those of the old universities and the newer formations, and from the colleges and technical institutes.
The Australian experience has its peculiarities due to our labour, political and industrial histories, but these accounts also shed further light for reflection on the tenacity, resilience and, often, courage of those who seek to establish unions and make them work. There were further international guests at Grahame McCulloch’s farewell dinner, including the Secretary of the South African Democratic Teacher’s Union, Mugwena Maluleke. He spoke about Grahame as epitomising the far sighted and idealistic internationalist, but who also has to be persuasive and convince diverse groups of their common interests.
Conclusions Higher education unionism has certainly expanded throughout the last 25 years, aided by solidarity and co-operation through EI. This is most fortunate as tertiary education will continue to grow, facing international and local challenges. As demand grows, so does the interest of profit seekers in entering a potentially highly lucrative area. Across much of the world government investment is declining, at the same time as demanding more and placing more restrictions on the ease of public money. Academic freedom, democratic education and research, university autonomy and even the public good role of universities are contested terrain, in an increasingly harsh and censorious political environment. The challenges for the sector include privatisation and marketisation, along with union busting – and the decline in decent secure jobs in post-secondary education, as students numbers climb. Blue sky research is also contested terrain in most places now; when we need it most. The rights of staff to participate in governance has to be demanded and practiced. For example, as Jens Vraa-Jensen pointed out, we should be using the UNESCO protocol EI fought for that articulates the rights of higher education personnel. Speakers and audience alike left the symposium better informed of our histories, but also of the values and beliefs that reinforce our work as higher education union activists.
NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 25 no. 3 • November 2018 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 31
Bargaining
Lessons from the bargaining table I joined the University of Tasmania (UTAS) as a professional staff member in June 2014, and joined the NTEU in the same week. By this time, the Enterprise Agreement was already one year into its 3 year lifespan. As the Agreement drew to its nominal expiry date in mid-2016, the NTEU Tasmanian Division invited me to be part of the Union bargaining team for the new Agreement. I had not previously been involved in industrial negotiations and wasn’t sure exactly what I would be able to contribute, but I was eager to help if I could. The process was a marathon and an education; one from which I learnt three main lessons.
Members make a difference First, members make a difference at the table. In the corporatisation of the modern Australian university, managements too often try to reduce learning and knowledge creation to mere numbers, and exploit the goodwill of academics and professionals who are dedicated to their work. While HR attempted to frame their efforts as on behalf of staff – describing the management representatives in broadcast emails as ‘your bargaining team’ – their disconnect from employees could not have been more stark. Management negotiators routinely described a workplace which was totally foreign to the reality of most employees. A combination of institutional opacity and strategic ignorance meant that issues urgently felt by staff were often dismissed, obscured, or even denied. But the presence of members and co-workers at the bargaining table, recounting their experi-
ences at work, underlined that the Union’s claims are all about real people. It took being face-to-face with casual workers who had suffered repeated late and under-payment for management to acknowledge the problem. It took Aboriginal employees speaking to the importance of cultural leave to their communities for them to recognise our AT&SI claims. And it took brave women telling the stories of how they needed help from their workplace during periods of domestic violence for management to realise the importance of our claims. By telling our stories uncompromisingly, what our work means to us and for us, members are able to remake the sort of workplace a university ought to be.
Collective action makes a difference Second, members make a difference when they take collective action. Bargaining at UTAS began amidst a flurry of university activity focused around expanding campuses across the state and rolling out a new Associate Degree institute. Management initially hoped for a new set of separate industrial arrangements for the University College, but in early 2017 the College was launched without Agreement having been reached.
page 32 • NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 25 no. 3 • November 2018 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate
From this point, rather than seeking to provide employees with secure salaries and conditions for the future, management seemed intent to stonewall negotiations along until the bargaining round was all but over. When the (former) Vice-Chancellor announced he would be leaving UTAS within the year, management’s enthusiasm for bargaining seemed to evaporate even more quickly. It took industrial action by members across the University, amplified by a media campaign and student and community supporters, to refocus management’s attention. Despite an overwhelming vote in favour of protected action, the University hired a legal firm to contest our protected action, exploiting a system stacked against working people. Nonetheless, some well-targeted industrial actions – and vocal support from members – brought management back to the table to resume negotiations. By working together to show we cared about a single, quality staff Agreement, we made it happen.
Solidarity makes a difference Third, members make a difference when they show solidarity across the sector. Like all our Branches at universities around the country, the Tasmanian Division is deeply
Bargaining connected to its membership. Tasmania’s issues can sometimes reflect the particular, even parochial, interests of its population and be difficult for others to appreciate. Staff – and community – investment in the only university in the state means members place a premium on consultation and decision-making which is not often seen in other universities, for example. When I first joined the bargaining team, the NTEU’s national structure was not only confusing, it was also jarring. Mandatory settlement points set by the National Executive seemed to reflect the priorities of mainland members, but not the people with whom we had spent months working to develop our local log of claims. Over the course of our negotiations, however, I came to understand that the national character of our Union is an important asset. As our bargaining unfolded, so too did the ugly scenes at Murdoch University, and the Australian Higher Education Industry Association’s systematic attempts to break apart inclusive staff Agreements and dismantle hard-fought committee protections. Against this coordinated effort, NTEU helped to organise a strong defence of the hard won rights of union members, and to pursue the big, structural issues each Branch by itself cannot. Ultimately, the thoroughness and resolve of the National Executive in controlling the quality of new Agreements, and the invaluable and tireless support of the National Office were incredible resources. The Tasmanian Division and UTAS concluded a new Agreement in June this year, after almost two years of formal negotiations. The Agreement was shepherded to the end by the skilful efforts of Division Secretary, Dr Kelvin Michael, industrial officers Emma Gill and Wayne Cupido, and incoming General Secretary Matt McGowan. Most importantly, though, it was backed by members, whose contributions throughout the process made it possible.
The new Agreement includes some significant wins: superannuation equity for fixedterm staff; a stronger and more consultative academic workload clause; improved AT&SI clauses, paid partner leave, and dedicated domestic violence leave.
Pat McConville was a professional staff member at UTAS from 2014 to 2018. He is now a doctoral candidate and Teaching Associate at Monash University, and Research Assistant at the University of Sydney.
There are some battles still to fight in the future (and between) negotiations, especially around improving conditions for casual and sessional staff. But my experience in bargaining gives me hope that we will win those battles too – together.
Above: Pat McConville at the 2018 May Day March in Hobart. (Emma Gill)
Opposite page: Getting active around bargaining: the UTAS Staff Soup Kitchen. (Shannon Harwood)
Did you know that all NTEU members are automatically covered for journey injury insurance?
Travel Work insurance Travel Toto Work Insurance
As an individual you could be paying hundreds of dollars a year to get this valuable cover, but as a financial member of your union, it’s absolutely free! Just another great benefit of joining your union, the NTEU.
Find out more at www.nteu.org.au/traveltowork NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 25 no. 3 • November 2018 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 33
Was physics ‘built by men’? It’s been an interesting few weeks for gender equity in Physics. In September, Professor Alessandro Strumia, presenting at CERN, announced that Physics was ‘built by men’, but there was no gender discrimination, and indeed that women were favoured by hiring practices.
Photo: Scene from ‘Have You Seen ELI?’ (YouTube)
Just a few days later, the Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to a woman for the first time in 55 years.
Associate Professor Maryanne Large School of Physics University of Sydney
page 34 • NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 25 no. 3 • November 2018 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate
Donna Strickland was deservedly given the award for the work she did as a PhD student under Gérard Mourou developing ultra-high powered laser pulses. Mourou also received the prize, and Arthur Ashkin was the third winner, for developing optical tweezers. Donna Strickland’s award sparked a lively discussion about how the Nobel Prize acknowledged women, students and supervisors. The discussions played out to a backdrop of Strumia’s comments, Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the US Supreme Court and #MeToo movement. In Australia, they also came in the context of the SAGE program and University Australia’s action plan on sexual harassment which identified serious problems with sexual harassment on Australian campuses. Sadly, there is a pretty direct link between these competing narratives. No sooner had the Nobel Prize been announced, than a video surfaced, starring Gérard Mourou, Donna Strickland’s co-award recipient, and erstwhile supervisor. It is called ‘Have you seen ELI?’ (ELI is the name of a European science consortium run by Mourou). It was made in 2013. It is available on YouTube, and well worth watching in its entirety.1 Towards the end of the video, a group of mostly female students start dancing with Mourou and another older male scientist, and provocatively strip off their lab coats for them. All in all, the video is a stunning
portrait of egotism, privilege and assumed power. Whatever message the video is intended to display, it isn’t a level playing field for women. It’s nauseating. As a woman in Physics, I find it, and the comments by Strumia, deeply depressing. They also make me angry. They diminish women in the field, and discourage others from joining it. The impact on young scientists is particularly appalling. I hoped we’d moved beyond this sort of behaviour. In different ways, both Strumia and the Nobel committee make claims about merit. There is an implicit assumption that their measures are ‘objective’ and ‘true’, just like physics is ‘objective’ and ‘true’. Strumia’s primary source of angst seems to be that a job he applied for was awarded to a woman, despite her having fewer citations than him. In his view, citations show he was a better candidate. Do they really? He doesn’t seem to have even considered that she may have been a better candidate. In his field of particle physics, 100 author papers are common, and author lists can reach into the thousands. In other areas, author lists are much smaller, but networks of friends and colleagues often cite each other, and the citation rate may reflect the strength of social and professional networks. Of course citations are not a meaningless measure – but nor are they a complete one. By contrast, Nobel Prizes are so prestigious that they are often considered a proxy for genius. It’s easy to forget they are chosen by a committee and that the prizes can truly reflect their prejudices and politics. Indeed, the songwriter Tom Lehrer once noted that: ‘Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel peace prize.’ Thankfully, the committee did not make a similar award to Donald Trump, though apparently he was nominated. The Nobel Prize for literature was not even awarded this year because of the sexual harassment and corruption scandals in the committee. The Nobel Prizes in science have been less obviously contentious, but they also have problems. As they are limited to a maximum of three people per prize, they offer a poor representation of the often collegiate nature of scientific progress. They propagate a view that scientific breakthroughs require a sort of hero-genius-leader (a view some scientists share- see Mourou’s video). The categories of the Prize can also be restrictive- particularly in acknowledging interdisciplinary work. There is a list of women who probably/possibly should have won the Nobel for Physics, among them Emmy Noether, Lise Meitner, Chien-Shiung Wu, Rosalind Franklin, Marietta Blau, Vera Rubin and Jocelyn Bell Burnell. They didn’t quite fit the mould. Apparently only three women ever have. In other words, the Nobel Prizes are exactly like other prizes, highly prestigious, but fallible.
Of course, to the public, and to the scientific community, they still really matter. They pluck a story from the incomprehensible vastness of science, and present it in a compelling, accessible way. They make science glamorous. Nerdy children aspire to winning a Nobel the way sporty children aspire to winning an Olympic medal. Elite scientists yearn for them, and muse about their chances. Laureates are given a global platform to express their views- which are always taken extremely seriously, even when they are outside their area of expertise. The personal stories of winners often become legendary (Einstein, Rutherford, Curie, Watson and Crick). By contrast, almost no one knows the stories of Lise Meitner (who discovered the Auger effect a year before Auger, as well as nuclear fission in Uranium), Emmy Noether (who discovered the relationship between symmetry and conservation laws), or others such as Cecilia Payne Gaposchki or Beatrice Tinsley (who made fundamental discoveries in astrophysics). Their scientific contributions were immense, but they also had extraordinary personal lives. Noether and Meitner were Jewish, and had to flee their home countries. As female students, they were only able to attend lectures because of a special dispensation from influential men. For Noether, it was David Hilbert and Felix Klein. Max Planck allowed Meitner to attend his lectures, the first time he allowed a woman to do so. Noether spent much of her career unpaid, and was initially only able to lecture under the name of a male colleague. Meitner fled Berlin in 1938 with only 10 marks in her purse, never to return. Despite huge obstacles, they made profound intellectual contributions. MIT Professor Frank Wilczek described Noether’s theorem as ‘a guiding star to 20th and 21st century physics’. Meitner’s research partner Otto Hahn received a Nobel Prize for the work they did together. It was not shared that year. Representation matters. It is easier to become a scientist or mathematician or engineer if you can identify a role model who you can relate to, someone that looks like you. In the School of Physics at Sydney University, the names of foundation scientists are carved into the walls. None are women (not even Curie). It’s almost as if the fabric of the physics building is literally built ‘of men’.
Strumia’s talk at CERN presented the argument that women were less represented in Physics because their brains were different. He suggested that men are better represented at the extremes of intelligence, and therefore that-essentially- there just were more male physics geniuses. And it is true that there are some differences, on average, between male and female brains. But this effect is small and subtle. There is not a single peer-reviewed study showing that these differences explain the level of female representation in physics. In a 2012 study2, Williams and Ceci compared a number of factors that influenced the representation of women in science, including intelligence and social factors. Surprisingly, they found there was a single factor that was much more important than all the others. It was a disruption that was both social and personal, and occurred exactly at the time that scientists were trying to establish themselves professionally. It happened to women, but not to men. The factor was motherhood. The good news is that this is an area where the NTEU can really help. In a recent study of gender diversity in the geosciences3 Australian researchers, including my colleague Ana Vila Concejo, found that providing better support for women returning from maternity leave was critical to improving the representation of women in science. We all have a role, as individuals, to be conscious of power imbalances, networks of influence, role models, harassment and social expectations. The NTEU as an organisation can be even more influential. By making better return-to-work conditions for mothers and other carers a priority, it can help ensure that in future, science is truly ‘built by humans’. 1. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=k6i7A8Plqb8&feature=youtu.be 2. When Scientists Chose Motherhood, Am Sci. 2012 March 1; 100(2): 138–145. doi:10.1511/2012.95.138. 3. Steps to improve gender diversity in coastal geoscience and engineering, https://www. nature.com/articles/s41599-018-0154-0
Above: Donna Strickland, Winner Nobel Prize for Physics, 2018
NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 25 no. 3 • November 2018 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 35
Research funding
The shrinking pot of cash for research Over many years, NTEU has opposed numerous attempts by Government to use university research funding as leverage to lift the appallingly low level of Australian business research and development. This was seen most recently in (former) PM Turnbull’s National Innovation and Science Agenda (NISA), which introduced new research priorities though changes to block grants (see the Watt Review ) that impacted primarily in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), and new research impact measures. Furthermore, there have also been changes in government attitudes to research, with researchers being urged to demonstrate how their ideas are ‘going to be able to be commercialised’ – essentially, publish or perish became collaborate or crumble. The NTEU and others, including Emeritus Professor Graeme Turner, have warned that such changes will not only negatively impact STEM research – especially the more theoretical and esoteric areas – but will be detrimental to Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) research. Three years on from NISA, it’s now worth asking whether the change in focus on
research policy and funding has had any material effect on the level and/or distribution of university research funding. In an article in The Australian on 25 September 2018, titled ‘Federal research dollars shift from the humanities to engineering, medicine’, Jared Owens wrote:
sciences increased the most, followed by studies in human society and engineers and computing science. The fields to suffer the largest decline in their total funding share included creative arts, writing, history and archaeology, commerce management and tourism.
The Coalition has markedly reshaped the distribution of research grants managed by the Australian Research Council following the introduction in 2015 of new science and research priorities to support projects of ‘immediate and critical importance’ to industry, the economy and the community.
While Owens’ analysis looked at the relative size of the slice of the funding cake going to different fields of research, he did not consider the overall size of the Australian Research Council (ARC) funding. Table 1 shows the total value of ARC national competitive research grants made up of all discovery grants and all linkage grants for the period 2016 to 2018. The data, which is broken down by broad
Owens’ analysis of changes to shares of funding going to different fields of research between 2005 and 2018 shows that the proportion for health and medical
continued opposite page...
Table 1: ARC National Competitive Research Grants ($m) Discipline Grouping
2016 Discovery
2017
Linkage Total
Discovery Linkage
2018 Total
Change 2016 to 2018
Discovery Linkage Total
Discovery Linkage
Total
Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths (STEM)
310.2
113.8
424.0
310.1
71.4
381.5
323.2
55.1
378.3
4.2%
-51.6%
-10.8%
Humanities, Arts & Social Science (HASS)
149.7
23.6
173.3
125.0
28.5
153.5
111.7
0.4
112.1
-25.4%
-98.2%
-35.3%
-5.4%
-59.6%
-17.9%
TOTAL
459.9
137.4
597.3
435.0
99.9
535.0
434.9
55.5
490.4
HASS Share %
32.6%
17.2%
29.0%
28.7%
28.5%
28.7%
25.7%
0.8%
22.9%
Source: Australian Research Council (ARC) Selection Outcome Reports, all schemes, various years
page 36 • NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 25 no. 3 • November 2018 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate
Lobbying
Meet with your MP In an ideal world, our democracy would reward politicians who transparently make decisions after considering the evidence, and use the guidance of experts as they work towards reducing inequality and ensuring a safe and healthy future. In the world we live in, however, the people with the most money to donate, or the most power, exercise influence.
The agenda of governments reflect that of the players in this space. If the people who do the actual work in the higher education sector are absent then all of the advocacy will be conducted at the behest of senior management of universities and their lobbying arms such as Universities Australia. NTEU members do not have the resources to wield influence through donations, but are well placed to develop productive relationships with their local MPs and candidates to make the case for an accessibly and quality higher education and research sector. Universities will often be the largest workplace in an electorate, and the lead up to elections is when politicians are most likely to listen. A typical MPs diary is bulging with appointments with interest-groups, however, and for our message to stand out, it takes planning and preparation.
Clarity of everyone’s role in a delegation is crucial and needs to be established in a meeting prior to visiting the MP. Who will act as a quasi “chair” for the meeting, to keep control of time to ensure you get across what you need to and press for a commitment? Other roles may include someone to give a broad overview, another to provide facts and figures and another to provide a personal story. Who then will ask the MP to make a commitment – and not let them off the hook too easily? NTEU is coordinating visits to Federal MPs and candidates right now. The role of coordinating an initial meeting with an MP and maintaining the relationship afterwards is an ideal opportunity for Branches to involve more newly active members. If you can help in this important work, contact your Branch. Paul Doughty, NSW Division Organiser
We have a huge and growing lobbying industry. There are more than 1,000 third party lobbyists in Canberra and over $1 billion every year is spent lobbying governments.
In assembling your delegation, what allies can you bring with you to demonstrate both their support and the broader reach of your networks in the community?
Resources are available to help you in your visit:
...continued from previous page
meet their strategic objectives. Indeed, in response to Birmo’s ARC blunder (see article on p. 11) new Education Minister, Dan Tehan, has asked the CEO of the ARC to examine whether the financial structure of the ARC grants fit national priorities.
Despite this targeted funding, the NTEU’s submission showed that total level of public investment in higher education research had in fact fallen in recent years, largely driven by shrinking the value of competitive research grants as identified above. Competitive research grants – both ARC and National Health and Medical Council (NHMRC)) – had also fallen as a share of total public investment in universities.
discipline area, shows that over this period the total value of competitive grants fell by 17.9%. The only small growth was for discovery grants for STEM disciplines (increase of 4.2%), which contrast sharply with discovery grants for HASS disciplines (decreased 25.4%). While the disproportionately large decline in linkage grants (59.8% overall and 51.9% for STEM and 98.2% for HASS) seems somewhat ironic given the Government’s new found focus on collaborative research, caution needs to be exercised because the rules governing linkage grants and partner contributions (especially in terms of the cash component) have been amended in recent years. The most recent ARC data shows the ARC competitive grants funding cake to not only be reduced but also sliced differently, and so a thorough analysis of Australian research funding must consider the changed mix of ingredients that make up that funding. Governments of all political persuasions consistently fiddle around with the details of research funding to
The other critical fact to consider is that ARC competitive grants only make up a relatively small proportion of total government support for R&D and higher education research. In NTEU’s submission to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Employment Education and Training Inquiry into Funding Australia’s Research, we showed that in 2017-18 the total level of public investment in R&D was $10.3 billion of which $3.6 billion was targeted at higher education and consisted of: • $ 2.2 billion of research block grants that included funding to cover the indirect costs of research and research training grants for education higher degree research (HDR) students, and • $ 1.4 billion in research grants of which total ARC grants (not only competitive grants) made up $758m.
www.nteu.org.au/lobbying
There is no doubt that the research funding landscape in Australia has changed in recent years, with not only the decline in the overall level of public investment but also a significant shift in how the funding cake is divided. The shift in funding away from HASS disciplines to STEM disciplines has also resulted in the favouring of more targeted funding of government research priorities, rather than funding that is purely competitive (merit basis). Paul Kniest, Policy & Research Coordinator
(Image: erikdegraaf/123rf.com)
NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 25 no. 3 • November 2018 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 37
The Dismissal & the fight to release the secret ‘Palace letters’
Photo: Sir John Kerr in 1974 with a portrait of the Queen. (National Archives)
The dismissal of the Whitlam Government by the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, on 11 November 1975 was an unprecedented, divisive and disruptive use of the Governor-General’s putative ‘reserve powers’. Kerr’s actions in removing an elected government which retained its parliamentary majority and the confidence of the House of Representatives, remains one of the most contentious episodes in our political history.
Professor Jenny Hocking Monash University
page 38 • NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 25 no. 3 • November 2018 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate
In place of the Whitlam Government, which had been re-elected to office just 18 months earlier at the May 1974 double dissolution, Kerr appointed as Prime Minister the Liberal Party leader, Malcolm Fraser, whose party had lost the previous two elections and who did not have the confidence of the House of Representatives. Although it is now more than forty years ago since that extraordinary vice-regal intervention the dismissal continues to fascinate and polarise, as the real story gradually emerges. In recent years, dramatic revelations from the private papers, interviews and manuscripts of key protagonists – Malcolm Fraser, former Liberal Senate leader Reg Withers, and in particular Sir John Kerr – have transformed our understanding of the dismissal and recast the previously accepted history of it. From the out-set a carefully constructed ‘dismissal narrative’ masked the Governor-General’s collusion with members of the High Court, with the leader of the Opposition, and his acknowledged deception of the Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, regarding the half-Senate election that Whitlam was set to announce in the House on the afternoon of 11 November 1975.
The curious role of the National Archives of Australia Kerr always claimed that in dismissing Whitlam he had acted alone, that this was a decision taken in solitude, a solo performance in which he ‘made up my mind on my own part’. Archival materials since released, paint a very different story. We now know, from material located among Kerr’s papers in the National Archives of Australia, that the dismissal was marked by an extraordinary level of secrecy and collusion that was kept secret from the Australian public for nearly forty years. The major revelation, which I located among Kerr’s papers, was the previously unknown role of the then High Court justice, Sir Anthony Mason. Kerr left a detailed written record describing months of secret intrigue with Mason in the months before and including the day of the dismissal. It was a startling revelation that highlighted the collusion and secrecy at the heart of the dismissal and revealed the lengthy and active role of a sitting High Court justice, secret from the Prime Minister. Mason was revealed as Kerr’s secret confidante and guide whose role included drafting the letter dismissing Gough Whitlam. Mason’s role was revealed in 2012 in my biography of Whitlam, Gough Whitlam: His Time and The Dismissal Dossier: Everything you Were Never Meant to Know About November 1975, and was confirmed by Mason in his first and only public statement the following day. It is the exemplar of the great significance of the vast official repository of the National Archives, and public access to them, in documenting and understanding our history.
Accessing the ‘Palace letters’ Although we are now much clearer on the reality of the dismissal, one vital file in Kerr’s archive remains secret and closed to public view: the ‘Palace letters’. This is the secret correspondence between the Queen and the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, written in the months before and after the dismissal. Although these ‘Palace letters’ are held by the National Archives, they are not open for public access or even for research purposes, despite their obvious historical significance, because they are deemed to be ‘personal’ and not ‘Commonwealth records’. The Palace letters are embargoed until at least 2027 ‘on the instructions of the Queen’, with the Queen’s private secretary retaining a final veto even after that date. It is quite possible then that they will never be released. In 2016, I commenced a Federal Court action against the National Archives of
Australia, seeking the release of the Palace letters. In pursuing this historic case I was driven by two concerns – first, the undoubted significance of the Queen’s correspondence with the Governor-General to our knowledge of the dismissal, and second, the need to protect and extend the principle of open access to historical records held by our National Archives. The Federal Court action was only possible thanks to the commitment of the legal team, all working on a pro bono basis: barrister Tom Brennan, senior barrister Antony Whitlam QC at trial and Bret Walker SC at the appeal, with Corrs Chambers Westgarth instructing. The case is also being supported through a major crowd-funding campaign on Chuffed, ‘Release the Palace letters’.
Court case The case commenced in the Federal Court in November 2016 before Justice Griffiths. At its heart is the central question of whether the Palace letters are ‘Commonwealth records’ as defined in Section 3 of the Archives Act 1983 or, as Archives contend, ‘personal’ records, which means they do not come under the Archives Act 1983. From a common-sense view alone, it is a difficult to reconcile the label ‘personal’ for letters between the Governor-General and the Queen at a time of intense political upheaval. How is it possible that these formal written communications, which Kerr himself described as ‘despatches’, between two positions at the apex of our system of Constitutional monarchy, the Queen and her vice-regal representative, could ever be seen as ‘personal’?
not Commonwealth records. The Queen’s embargo therefore continues and this historic correspondence remains under lock and key in the National Archives, potentially indefinitely. Despite the great disappointment of this outcome, our efforts to secure the release of the Palace letters continue and we have appealed against this decision. The appeal, led by Bret Walker SC, will be heard in Sydney by the full bench of the Federal Court on 28 November 2018. The full story of the dismissal of the Whitlam Government will never be known while the ‘Palace letters’ between the Governor-General and the Queen, written at the time of our greatest political crisis, remain hidden from us at the quasi-colonial behest of the Queen. Professor Jenny Hocking is emeritus professor at Monash University and Distinguished Whitlam Fellow at the Whitlam Institute, Western Sydney University. She is the author of the award-winning two-volume biography Gough Whitlam: A Moment in History and Gough Whitlam: His Time. Her latest book is The Dismissal Dossier: Everything You Were Never Meant to Know about November 1975 – The Palace Connection. Donations in support of this important legal challenge can be made at: chuffed.org/project/release-thepalace-letters
As Antony Whitlam QC argued to the Court, ‘It cannot seriously be suggested that there was a personal relationship between the Queen and Sir John Kerr’. The consequence of this simple label ‘personal’ is of particular significance for academics and researchers since it locks the letters beyond the reach of the Archives Act 1983, which relates only to Commonwealth records, and keeps them from the usual open access provisions for archives under the ‘thirty-year rule’. The ALP member for Bruce, Julian Hill, spoke in the House of Representatives last year about the implications of the Queen’s control over the Palace letters for national independence and political autonomy; ‘the very notion of “personal” letters between the Monarch and the Governor-General offends all concepts of transparency and democracy’. On 16 March 2018, Justice Griffiths ruled in favour of the National Archives, finding that the ‘Palace letters’ are ‘personal’ and
NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 25 no. 3 • November 2018 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 39
Trade
TPP-11 contorts ALP The Australian Labor Party’s apparent demi tour (180° turn) in relation to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), commonly called TPP-11, has added weight to the argument that the only way to not be disappointed with the ALP is to lower your expectations, and in this case lower them considerably. After months of criticising the TPP-11 because it directly contravenes the ALP’s policies, and rebuking the Government over its failure to consult or provide any modelling showing the economic benefits of the deal, the ALP has seemingly contradicted itself by supporting the passage of necessary enabling legislation through Parliament on 17 October this year. The ALP argued that the enabling legislation was limited to tariff and customs arrangements and some government procurement policies. That having been said however, if the ALP used its numbers to defeat the legislation, the Government, would not in practice be able to ratify TPP11. Under current legislation the Australian parliament does not directly ratify free trade agreements. Opposition trade spokesperson, Jason Clare, was able to gain caucus and shadow cabinet support for the enabling legislation on the basis that, should Labor win the next election, they will change the way future free trade agreements are negotiated and ratified as well as prohibit clauses that waive labour market testing obligations and investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) arrangements which allow
foreign investors to bypass national courts to sue governments. Analysis undertaken by the Australia Fair Trade and Investment Network (AFTINET – aftinet.org.au), of which NTEU is an affiliate, points out there are parts of TPP-11 that, in addition to problems with labour marketing testing and ISDS, also directly contradict other aspects of ALP policy, including: • A restriction on future government regulation of essential services, including education and health (TPP-11 Chapter 10). • A lack of legally enforceable protections for labour rights including failing to ban the products of forced or child labour (TPP-11 Chapter 19). • A lack of legally enforceable environmental standards (TPP-11 Chapter 20). Any changes to laws or regulations covered by these issues would of course be subject to ISDS provisions. AFTINET also points out that while the USA has pulled out of the original TPP, the more controversial clauses in relation to the extension of intellectual property rights and their impact on the cost of medicines have not been deleted from TPP-11, but simply suspended. These provisions are effectively in hibernation, awaiting for the USA to awaken from its free trade slumber. Our concerns about restrictions on the Australian government’s capacity to regulate public education are heightened by the very recent failed experiment with fully contestable funding in relation to the provision of vocational education and training (VET). This experiment not only undermined the financial viability of many public TAFE campuses and courses, but also resulted in the exploitation of tens of thousands of vulnerable students as well as the wholesale rorting of the VET-FEE-HELP scheme by private for-profit providers. The exploitation and rorting was so extensive, that the Coalition Government abandoned the VET-FEE-HELP scheme in January 2017 and replaced it with the VET Student Loans scheme, which had far tighter eligibility requirements. Many private, for-profit providers, some of
page 40 • NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 25 no. 3 • November 2018 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate
whom were no doubt foreign owned, were dramatically affected by these changes. Several were forced to close their doors. The salient point is had Australia been a signatory to the TPP or TPP-11 at the time of this absolutely necessary change to regulation (not only to protect the interests of students but also the probity of public funding) it would have been much more difficult for the Government to contemplate such changes because of the ‘standstill’ or ‘ratchet’ provisions within these agreements. Had the Government nonetheless proceeded with the changes, it may have left itself open to being sued through ISDS provisions by foreign owned providers seeking compensation for losses incurred due to these changes. Presumably these foreign owned providers would be free to take such action even if they had been involved in rorting the original scheme. Therefore the NTEU, along with many other unions, remain puzzled as to why the ALP has decided to, in effect, facilitate TPP-11 by supporting the enabling legislation. In response to questions as to why his party was supporting the TPP-11, Bill Shorten indicated that the ALP intended to ‘change the negatives’ after the election. Either Mr Shorten is being totally disingenuous or he doesn’t fully understand the nature of the TPP-11. As noted above, one of the major issues with the TPP-11 and trade agreements like it, is that they are structured to prevent or make it very difficult for a signatory country to impose new laws or regulations. After signing the TPP-11 the only way to change the effect of its provisions is through the negotiation of side-letters with other signatory countries. Unfortunately, it appears that it may be too late for the ALP to demonstrate their political agility and do a full 360 degree backflip with a pike and twist and reject TPP-11 before it is ratified. Trying to change it after it has become law will be like watching a contortionist trying to fit through the eye of a political dilemma. Paul Kniest, Policy & Research Coordinator
Refugees
#NoMoreHarm I’m writing from Manus Island, a place where I and more than 600 men have been held for more than five years. First I would like to thank all of you for attending this protest to call for our evacuation from this critical situation. It’s extremely significant that Australian academics are joining many other groups to put pressure on the Government to end this barbaric policy. Academics contribute new ideas to society and help instruct the community in many ways, and they can have a huge impact on government decisions. I hope this nationwide protest today will warn the Government that it should end this policy now. I have witnessed many deaths, suicides, and self harm over the past five years. I have a profound understand of the suffering experienced by the people on Manus and Nauru and how they have been damaged mentally and physically. It’s more than darkness and cruelty. I know many people who are separated from their families and children, others have children that have spent their whole lives inside a prison camp, and I know many young people who have lost their dreams and wasted their skills. You are here today to end this policy and help these vulnerable people to get off these two islands. I’m not going to tell you any more about this crisis, you are definitely aware of the situation. Our predicament is part of the bleak historical period we are all living in. What I would like to mention in this statement is that academics have a really important role in researching this policy of exile and exposing it. What I believe from living through this policy and experiencing this prison camp firsthand is that we are only able to understand it in a philosophical and historical way. Definitely Manus and Nauru prison camps are philosophical and political phenomena and we should not view them superficially. The best way to examine them is through deep research into how a human, in this case a refugee, is forced to live between the law and a situation without laws. There are laws that can exile
them to an existence where they have recourse to no law. In this situation, the human is living as something in between a human and another kind of animal. How is the Australian Government able to keep two thousand innocent people, especially children, under these conditions in remote prisons for years in an age of revolutions in information technology? How can the Government convince Australian society to maintain this policy, when so much damning evidence is available? How can majority public opinion be silent on this barbaric policy? It’s not the first time in modern Australian history that the Government is perpetuating this kind of fascist policy. Just remember the Stolen Generations, and what governments have done and still do to First Nations people. The Government has now reinvented those barbaric policies at the beginning of the 21st century, but this time to also inflict them on refugees. We should ask questions about this again and again, and it’s the duty of academics to do research that unpacks where these policies stem from, why they are maintained and how they can be undone. It’s the duty of academics to understand and challenge this dark historical period, and teach the new generations to prevent this kind of policy in future.
Together with other peoples’ journalistic and artistic works I think we have enough material to do significant and transformative research. I believe my book, especially, has this potential as the basis for research and I hope it can be used to educate current and future generations. Finally, I would like to ask you to please read my works, watch my movie and read the book, and if you find them rich enough and strong enough include them in your research and teaching. I am here to do whatever is needed to help in this respect. Behrouz Boochani, Manus, PNG Behrouz Boochani is a Kurdish writer, film maker, scholar and journalist who has made an enormous and ongoing contribution to both documenting and analysing the harms, logic and history of Australia’s prisons on Manus and Nauru. He holds a Masters degree in political science, political geography and geopolitics, is author of No Friend But the Mountains, and a non-resident Visiting Scholar at the Sydney Asia Pacific Migration Centre, University of Sydney. academicsforrefugees.wordpress.com
Above: NTEU members at CDU’s Academics for Refugees National Day of Action (Delia Lawrie) Below: Behrouz Boochani (Twitter)
It’s great that you are protesting today but I would like to ask you to first do your duty as an academic, which is doing research to understand this policy, challenge its precepts, and publish what you find. As you may know I, as a writer, have worked so much to record the history of this prison camp through my journalism, my movie, many media interviews, my book No Friend But the Mountains and a video installation which will come out soon. I did all of this out of my duty as a writer. NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 25 no. 3 • November 2018 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 41
NTEU Lecture 2018
Australia’s brutal past
Photo: Professor Lyndall Ryan with the Colonial Frontiers Massacre Map.
Professor Lyndall Ryan, from the University of Newcastle’s Centre for the 21st Century Humanities, will present the 2018 NTEU Lecture at the University of Adelaide on 22 November. Her lecture is entitled ‘From Myall Creek to Coniston: Telling the Truth about Australia’s brutal past’.
Professor Ryan will demonstrate the scale and extent of frontier massacre and show how they were responsible for the deaths of many thousands of Aboriginal people. She will then consider the map as an example of truth telling and how it is a critical part of the process of reconciliation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians. This year marks the anniversary of two of the best known frontier massacres in Australia: the180th anniversary of the Myall Creek massacre of 1838, and the 90th anniversary of the Coniston massacre of 1928. At Myall Creek, 28 Aboriginal people from the Wirryayaay nation were slaughtered for no reason. Eleven of the 12 perpetrators were brought to trial and seven were convicted and hanged. At Coniston, several hundred Walpiri people were slaughtered by Northern Territory police and stockmen over several weeks in reprisal for killing a stockman. What happened on the frontier in the intervening 90 years? Were these incidents typical of the time? How can we know?
Michael Evans National Organiser
page 42 • NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 25 no. 3 • November 2018 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate
The NTEU Lecture 22 November 2018
“From Myall Creek to Coniston: Telling the truth about Australia’s brutal past.”
Professor Lyndall Ryan
University of Newcastle, Australia
Thursday 22 November 2018 Time:
Pre-Lecture drinks from 5.30pm. Lecture 6.15pm to 7.30pm.
Venue:
Napier 102 Lecture Theatre, Napier Building, University of Adelaide, North Terrace, Adelaide SA
Tickets: Free and open to the public, but space is limited. Reservations essential by Monday 19 Nov Book online at www.nteu.org.au/lecture/2018
The release of stage 2 of the interactive map of frontier massacre sites in Central and Eastern Australia to 1930 enables us to engage with the questions in considerable detail. The map includes a definition of frontier massacre, a template of its characteristics and a rigorous methodology to assess the evidence. The map indicates that between 1838 and 1928, there were at least 200 instances of frontier massacre in Central and Eastern Australia and that several thousand Aboriginal people and others lost their lives. Of these incidents, Myall Creek is the only instance where perpetrators were brought to justice whereas the Coniston massacre is typical of the time. The sobering finding suggests that Australians have yet to understand the extent of frontier massacre and come to terms with the brutal past. Professor Ryan is an Australian academic and historian. She has held positions in Australian Studies and Women’s Studies at Griffith University and Flinders University and was Foundation Professor of Australian Studies and Head of the School of Humanities at the University of Newcastle, 1998–2005. She is currently Research Professor in the Centre for the History of Violence in the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Newcastle. She completed a PhD at Macquarie University
in 1975, her thesis was titled ‘Aborigines in Tasmania, 1800–1974 and their problems with the Europeans’. Her book The Aboriginal Tasmanians, first published in 1981, presented a critical interpretation of the early history of relations between Tasmanian Aborigines and white settlers in Tasmania. A second edition was published by Allen & Unwin in 1996, in which she brought the story of the Tasmanian Aborigines in the 20th century up to date. Her work was later attacked by Keith Windschuttle, thus drawing her into the ‘history wars’. Windschuttle pointed to alleged discrepancies between Ryan’s claims, her cited sources for the claims, and what the cited sources for the claims and the historical record actually reported. Ryan contested Windschuttle’s claims in an essay entitled ‘Who is the fabricator?’ in Robert Manne’s Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle Fabrication of Aboriginal History published in 2003 and further addressed them in her book, Tasmanian Aborigines: A History Since 1803, published in 2012. In 2017 Professor Ryan and her team at the University of Newcastle released a partially completed on-line map showing more than 150 massacre sites in Eastern Australia. Within 6 months the site had received more than 60,000 visitors and has received wide coverage in Australia and also inter-
The annual NTEU Lecture offers a public forum for an eminent Australian to present unique perspectives on aspects of higher education and its impact on the economic, social and cultural frameworks of Australian society.
nationally. The online tool records details and approximate locations of massacres and provides sources of corroborating evidence. The map is an important step in acknowledging the extensive violence used against Indigenous people in Australia’s history. It won the best digital map award at the 2018 New Zealand Cartographic Society GeoCart Conference in September 2018. Stage 2 of the map was released in July 2018 and includes sites in the Northern Territory and South Australia as well as in Eastern Australia 1788-1930. Stage 3 of the map will be released at the end of 2019 and will include sites in Western Australia and an update of sites in other parts of Australia to 1960. For further information, please contact Michael Evans, National Organiser, email mevans@nteu.org.au, 0418 241 664 To book tickets for NTEU Lecture 2018: www.nteu.org.au/lecture/2018 The Colonial Frontiers Massacre Map: https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/ colonialmassacres
NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 25 no. 3 • November 2018 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 43
Technology
Time to disconnect? There is no doubt that we love our electronic devices and particularly our smart phones. They keep us connected to our nearest and dearest, social media and perhaps most importantly to our emails. Ever wonder how many emails the world exchanges every day? London’s Radicati Group estimates that in 2018 more than 281 billion emails have been exchanged among 3.8 billion users – and within five years there’ll be 4.5 billion users exchanging some 333 billion emails annually. These astonishing numbers indicate email remains our most significant universal form of communication. Employees are more and more connected outside office hours and even during holidays. They may leave the office but not work, with out of hours emails acting as an ‘electronic leash’. Remaining connected to work email has significant implications. Managers, supervisors and colleagues would love to have you available 24/7 – but what about you? There’s mounting evidence that working long hours has significant health impacts – workplace mental health issues cost Australia about $1 billion a month and one in five Australian workers take time off due to stress. Is it time for us to update our workplace legislation to protect our hard working employees?
except in emergencies, and Italy is considering similar laws. In New York City, Councilman Rafael Espinal recently introduced a bill that proposes to fine employers US$500 if they force employees to check emails after work. Officially titled ‘Private employees disconnecting from electronic communications during non-work hours,’ it supports employees’ after hours “right to disconnect”. It’s worth noting that the average New Yorker works some 50 hours a week without considering the extra hours. In Asia, the Philippines last year legislated that employees cannot be disadvantaged or disciplined if they don’t reply to after-hours emails. It’s estimated within five years, 4.5 billion users will be exchanging 333 billion emails annually.
Legislating for disconnection
Where does Australia stand?
European countries such as France and Germany are protecting the rights of employees not to remain connected 24/7.
Which brings us to Australia. Under the National Employment Standards legislation employers have the right to ask employees to work reasonable time beyond 38 hours – but the law does not define reasonable.
New French labour laws to minimise workplace stress and limit the use of work-related technology such as work email outside the office don’t ban work-related emails but do require that organisations with more than 50 employees negotiate protocols to ensure work does not spill into days off or after hours. In 2014, Germany prohibited managers from calling or emailing staff after hours,
If email communication is a ‘virtual form’ of work, is an employer who expects after hours email replies in breach of workplace law? Well, yes. Correct interpretation of the law indicates most Australian employees do not need to reply to emails after office hours... but can they afford not to?
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Many feel obligated to reply to after-hours emails to prove their commitment towards the organisation, their loyalty to their superiors, or due to peer pressure. The past 110 years of workplace legislation does not account for the virtual work space. This is a challenge for law makers, HR practitioners and employers. That said, updated workplace rules and regulations will not change the mindset of the employees and employers on how they communicate; it will require cultural change to respect each other’s communication expectations. Smart workplaces will recognise if employees do their work on time there should be less communication after hours. After all, workplace flexibility is now a reality in Australia where more than 30 per cent of people work from home, off site or in flexi mode. So, while email communication will remain vital we need to ‘check our connections’. It’s time to rethink how we work, where we work and how we can ensure that we continue to have healthy workforce, with ‘employees’ right to disconnect’ a key part of any fair and inclusive organisation. Ezaz Ahmed, former MBA Director at Flinders University This article was published in The Advertiser, 20 July 2018. Image credit: Maxime Pradel
Physical Sciences
Flexible crystals wins top science prize Advocate interviewed NTEU member Assoc. Prof. Jack Clegg, University of Queensland (UQ), who has been awarded the $50,000 Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year for his work creating flexible crystals and new separation technologies. Advocate: Jack, what drew you to academia? Were you into science as a young child or at school? Jack: I don’t think I knew what I wanted to do when I grew up, Michael. Going into university I couldn’t decide between going into something arts focused like law or something science based like medicine. So I chose a very general first degree, and studied history, chemistry and German. I had to decide between history and chemistry going into Honours, and I figured I had more to learn from a year of researching chemistry in terms of research skills than I did from doing another year of history, where I had already learnt a lot of skills about research. I went from Honours in chemistry to a PhD. I missed the arts side of things when I went into Honours, so I chose to do a law degree at the same time as I was doing my PhD, which was a lot of fun. Then I went through some post-doctoral work, and time overseas, to this position here at UQ.
When did you get into crystals? Jack: Analysis of crystals is a pretty fundamental part of chemical analysis. It’s a lot of fun! You can use x-ray diffraction to end up with a three-dimensional picture of a molecule. There’s no other real way of directly seeing a molecule.
Do you think research is inherently collaborative?
Above: Jack Clegg. (Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science/ WildBear)
Jack: My work is certainly interdisciplinary. Although we fall inside chemistry, we use techniques from most of the physical sciences, as well as engineering and a few other ideas. I would say I also use the skills I gained from doing history and critical thinking not just from science but as a more general skills set.
some isolated examples. Now we need to take that information and generalise it, find lots more examples so we can make any crystal flexible, because we need additional properties, for electronics for example so that we can program that flexibility into that material.
The problems that we have to address like climate change are going to be inherently interdisciplinary. It’s not going to be just one person or one subject area to deal with that, but from across the physical sciences and the arts, and we’re going to have to work with economics and the wider public and learn from our mistakes through history before we get anywhere.
You have said the practical applications of flexible crystals are some years away. What are the steps/barriers to getting research such as yours to the applied stage? Jack: We’ve made this great observation and we understand how we can use it in
The biggest barrier that we face really is about funding. The success rate for funding from the ARC is abysmally low, and I’ve had some good success getting ARC funding so I acknowledge that, but we get absolutely no support at all from the University. My research program costs somewhere in the area of $50,000 a year to run, and I get $1,000 a year from the University. The other $49,000 has to come from external sources. I am at the first stage of my career where I don’t know that I’m going to get funding next year and I have no idea what happens if my grant doesn’t get up. That also affects all the students that are working on the project.
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Mental health
Achieving the impossible I have been a case worker for the NTEU for some years now and I have become increasingly distressed at the situations our members bring to me and the experiences they share with me. One case led me to write a play, which we later animated, entitled Achieve The Impossible: True-Tales From A Modern University.
Many of these experiences reflect my own and my levels of frustration have grown exponentially as I struggle with feelings of uselessness and anger. So often there is nothing that I can do to prevent what is happening to people (including me) and the only solutions appear to be focused around increasing member resilience which to me, is utterly inappropriate because I believe people should not be subject to treatment in the workplace that requires them to become more and more resilient in order to survive (a classic case of blame the victim). In trying to understand what is happening, and why, I turned to the literature in the hope that a better understanding might help me craft better strategies for change. I have come to the conclusion that my experiences are a smallish part of a much wider issue: neoliberal managerialism. This way of thinking about the world makes workers particularly vulnerable, because they are positioned as the tools used by
management to both achieve wealth and status for those in power, and to reinforce the subjugation of those without power. There are a multiplicity of strategies used by management to achieve these dual aims. Disenfranchising workers is key; for example, managements are attempting to remove panels in disciplinary hearings, to remove requirements for employee input into workload policies, and to reduce employee representation on University Councils and/or Senates (something I experienced directly). Management positions proliferate but, at the same time, we are repeatedly told there are budget constraints making it impossible to employ more of the staff who actually do the front-line work. That means while managers double and triple-check what we do, and appear to hold roles that involve make-work tasks (work that the literature identifies as bullshit jobs) we are asked to work harder and longer hours; all of this in a context
continued opposite...
Flexible crystals wins top science prize ...continued from previous page Will something like this prize change the attitude of the University to funding for your work? Jack: I don’t know. It reflects the wider move in universities towards centralised power and administration, to running like businesses. Ironically it would be different in business. Even having a line item for travel; I don’t have that. I don’t have a line item for stationery to get some pencils. It doesn’t make sense to me why we are trying to
make the university run more like a business without those business processes.
You are involved in the UQ Branch Committee, why?
better returns if we present a unified front. We see that those places that are less unionised get worse results. We have much better conditions where we are all unionised.
Jack: I have always been involved in representative processes. All the way through from undergraduate, I’ve been involved in student unions.
So joining the Union is really important to underpin and support your colleagues in a collegiate sense, but also to get better wages and conditions.
A little bit of the experience that I’ve gained within the university and in other roles with not-for-profits such as in the Australian Youth Orchestra gives me a good set of skills that I can use for the collective good through the Branch Committee. I have the flexibility and the time and skills to contribute, so I should.
If someone asked you why they should join the NTEU, what would you say? Jack: Through collective action we are all stronger and better off. We get much
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Michael McNally, Queensland Division Secretary Advocate was unable to interview fellow PM’s Prize winner, Lee Berger, as she was made redundant by James Cook University because their Division of Tropical Health and Medicine “determined that research around amphibian disease is of limited relevance to the Division’s strategic direction”.
Mental health
where the average Australian academic works around 50.7 hours a week and the average professional staff member works an additional 5-6 unpaid hours a week. Staff are positioned as requiring direct and active supervision and cannot be trusted to get on with the job without this; something that staff experience as micro-management (I recently had to go through 12 steps to get approval for travel for which there was never any chance it would not be approved). This kind of micro-management attacks staff agency, impairs our sense of professionalisation and is a significant component of bullying. Staff, as targets, experience increased scrutiny and questioning of their work, with those who do not have experience dictating to those who do. In my context, for example, a level 5 professional staff member is the gatekeeper between me and the Ethics Committee; without this person’s approval I cannot submit an ethics application. Staff agency is continually eroded so they are made to feel incompetent, untrustworthy and live in fear that they may lose their jobs. Recently, for example, I organised a
group of staff to prepare a joint submission to the School review, given the high level call for anyone interested to submit to the review. The vast majority of staff who contributed to the submission did not feel safe to put their names to it, given it did not paint a positive picture of the school and its culture. In this culture of what I call systemic bullying (where targets are hit by messages questioning their agency and professionalism from many different sources many different times throughout the day) how do we begin to drive change? My research and experience suggest there are a number of things we can do. Firstly we need to speak out. We know that not speaking is, ipso facto, evidence that we accept what is going on. We do not. It is not appropriate and it is not acceptable. Raising awareness is an important first step in driving change. Raising outrage at the unfairness is a useful bonus. We need to ensure our colleagues know they are not alone, and being a target is not evidence that they are incompetent. As part of the process of raising awareness I have made a short film. This arose from
my outrage last year at systemic bullying that led one target to think about suicide. To manage my own anger I wrote a play which we performed live, and then decided to animate so that it could be made more widely available. Raising awareness (and outrage) is only the first step in driving change. We need to ensure that we support each other so that no-one feels alone. That means making it a priority to reach out to others, to talk to people (the topic doesn’t matter, just connect). Research evidence suggests that even informal corridor conversations can play a major role in lessening the impact of bullying. We need to work together and not let neoliberal ideas of competition destroy our ability to be collaborative in our decision-making and in our actions. We need to reclaim democracy so that the voice of the people is heard, and not just heard, but actually listened to. Professor Margaret Sims, School of Education, University of New England View the animation at: www.nteu.org.au/achievetheimpossible
Changes to your NTEU membership card Your NTEU physical membership card is going digital! Your digital membership card is more secure, environmentally friendly and eliminates the need to carry a physical card.
NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 25 no. 3 • November 2018 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 47
NTEU takes on the future of the sector You can tell when a conference or forum has resonated with the speakers and participants. That is when it is hard to end the session, hard to gather people together after a breakout or tea break, and when they don’t want the event to finish. Better still are spontaneous proposals from participants to make lists and discussion groups, and establish ‘communities of interest’ about the whole conference or particular themes and topics.
These responses are a good measure that the NTEU’s Future of the Sector project was well overdue. During August and September, NTEU held a series of ‘roadshow’ events around the country followed by a national conference in early September in Melbourne. The events attracted union officials, local activists and also members who have not previously come to NTEU events. Some of the events were also open to others, including students. Speakers were asked to hone in on the topic, and focus upon what needs to change, noting that we have plenty of information, data and analysis – albeit often poorly communicated and shared. However, what we need is to organise and make change. Our pitch intrigued and attracted people: Everyone seems to have an opinion on what should be done to, and about higher education. This conference and the accompanying roadshow events are an intervention into current debates about the future of higher education, and more broadly the post-secondary education sector, to focus upon the perspectives of the people who work in the sector. … We will focus upon not only what is going on in the sector, but also what changes are needed and how we can make such changes.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION AND TO REGISTER, VISIT
www.nteu.org.au/futureofthesector
Jeannie Rea Immediate Past President
Authorised by J.Rea, NTEU, 120 Clarendon St, South Melbourne VIC 3205
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Roadshows Eight roadshow events were held, with the last one “I’m still not a racist, but…” at Griffith University in early October. While each was a discrete event rather than a real travelling show, speakers were invited from ‘out of town’ and organisers pooled their ideas around the country. The strong message was that we need to make the space and resources for these interventions, or else the NTEU is left out and staff voices are mediated through university managements’ and politicians’ agendas. The roadshow events were primarily for NTEU friends and allies, but depending upon the topic and local conditions, involved other stakeholders, university management and even politicians. Some kept it local, others brought in speakers from elsewhere, and all appreciated their forum being part of something bigger. We started on 2 August in Darwin, debating the future of regional universities and putting local politicians on the spot; while in Adelaide on the same day, the scheduled topic on universities and the future of work and workers was skewed somewhat by the recent announcement that two of the three local universities were in merger talks. In both places, the universities are major employers, as well as responsible for not just educating and re-training people, but also researching and participating in public debate on work futures.
As was also the case in Launceston on 20 August, the economic, research and educative role of the university along with the responsibilities in provoking and facilitating democratic discourse came through very strongly. Participants, staff, students and local community members are all vitally concerned with whether we can do the best we can educating students in the current federal funding, university budgeting priorities and precarious job environment. The Tasmanian Division noted that universities not only have a social responsibility to society, but also to provide a “strong and critical voice that influences society.” At ANU on 29 August, the future of the university was under scrutiny too, but with a firm focus upon how can we organise to make the changes that are needed. We got to practical discussion on improving NTEU delegate roles and structures. Over at the University of Queensland on 27 August the local Branch used the recently published report of the national office’s survey of staff experience of student evaluation of subjects/units to have an increasingly animated discussion about the adverse impact on staff of these pedagogically, insupportable generic online student satisfaction surveys. Participants agreed the current situation of seeking patches to make this fundamentally flawed instrument a bit better
was not good enough. They were excited to hear that in North America universities are suspending them and looking for alternatives, and at Ryerson University Union intervention means that student survey results can no longer be used in performance assessment. The Branch has now put this on the Academic Board agenda. The Western Australian Division landed on the issue for academic staff of the so-called ‘unbundling’ of academic work as parts of the job are moved out either onto precariously employed teaching and research staff, or to professional staff, including the ‘third space’. Some wryly observed that this third space seems to include staff who keep doing much the same job yet switch between being classified as academic or professional on a whim or restructure. However, the destruction of the professional academic role is having serious implications for academic workers, for disciplinary knowledge acquisition and dissemination, and for research. This session was done as a webinar on 4 September. At the University of Technology, Sydney on 6 September, the Branch picked up on funded research on the STF experience (which will be released in December) to focus upon insecure work more generally and how we can do better at stemming and reversing this scourge. The Griffith event on 11 October interrogated how the NTEU can better support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members, staff, students and community as our new report on the experience of racism and discrimination in the workplace revealed that it had got worse not better since the last survey in 2011. Dr Chelsey Bond recommended that the Union focus more upon systems and structures that perpetuating racism and white privilege.
continued overpage... Above: Paul Kniest & Jeannie Rea (NTEU) with Dr Deb Walsh (UQ), Prof Peter Adams (UQ) and Andrew Bonnell (UQ/NTEU Vice President Academic) at Future of the Sector roadshow in Brisbane, Aug 2018. (Lachlan Hurse). Left: Frank Gafa (NTEU Monash Organiser), Frances Flanagan (United Voice) and John Buchanan (USyd) at the Melbourne conference. (Paul Clifton) NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 25 no. 3 • November 2018 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 49
Future of the Sector ...continued from previous page National Conference The conference held on 10-11 September included delegates from all Divisions and most Branches as well as members of the public. The conference was oversubscribed. Speakers included international guests from Malaysia, Canada and New Zealand; and the range of speakers featured some well-known commentators on the sector, but also newer (and more diverse) contributors. We decided not to invite politicians or stakeholder organisations to speak as most would give ‘the speech’ and go. We were interested in listening, learning and talking amongst the group. There were many others who wanted to come and to speak and they offered to participate in ongoing NTEU organised events around these issues. All speakers were invited to be cognisant of and address the key themes in their contributions. These themes were internationalisation, technological change, the public role of universities, students, staff, and diversity, inclusion and intersections. After much debate about topics and questions, we had narrowed down our scope to five topics where speakers were asked to address a series of questions. The sessions covered: • The future of higher education work and workers. • Higher education policy and funding in the 21st century post-secondary landscape. • Creating and disseminating new knowledge. • Democratising the university. • Teaching today’s students for tomorrow’s world. Lai Suat Yan, Director of the Gender Studies Program at University of Malaya and a union activist spoke on the ‘Democratisation of institutions of higher learning in Malaysia: The politics of gender and ethnicity’, which was particularly salient with the change of government in Malaysia and heightened democratic expectations. Steve Larkin, Chief Executive Officer of Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education delivered a provocative address on “Indigeneity and the politics of excellence in Australian universities” reflecting upon his experiences as a researcher and in leadership roles at several universities.
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While Frank Gafa, now an NTEU Branch Organiser considered whether the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment strategies have lived up to our expectations and their potential. A number of speakers grappled with what ‘the university’ and tertiary sector should be, as well as the practicalities of how to fund it. These included David Robinson, Executive Director of Canadian Association of University Teachers on ‘The future(s) of tertiary education: What is it for?’; Stephen Parker, for vice-chancellor and now National Education Sector Leader at KPMG on ‘Reimagining the tertiary education sector’, and Sandra Grey, President of the New Zealand Tertiary Education Union on ‘Can we #KeepItPublic and #KeepItLocal?’ John Buchanan of the University of Sydney issued the challenge of ‘Revitalising universities and TAFEs as anchor institutions’. Frances Coppolillo, Chief Executive Officer of Melbourne Polytechnic got down to the practicalities of dong it differently with her ‘Tale of two tech schools’. Raewyn Connell, Professor Emerita of the University of Sydney got right to the point of not only that we must democratise the university, but also how to go about it. Lucy Turton, Environment Officer at the University of Melbourne Student Union told us how student activists are forcing the issue speaking on ‘Changing corporatisation into collaboration’. Thank you to Amelia Sully for all her great ideas and work and in organising the conference. NTEU National Council meeting in early October voted to continue the Future of the Sector project, to ensure that the Union and staff are at the centre not on the periphery or an afterthought in debating and designing the future of the sector. For more details of the program and video of all presentations: www.nteu.org.au/futureofthesector
Images, from top: Jeannie Rea, Raewyn Connell (USyd), Lai Suat Yan (UM), Pia Cerveri & Jodi Peskett (Victorian Trades Hall Council), Lucy Turton (University of Melbourne Student Union); Kate Seear (Monash); Natasha Abrahams (CAPA); Ahmed Ademoglu (outgoing National Vice-President, Council of International Students Australia); Stephen Parker (KPMG), Steve Larkin (BIITE), Sandra Grey (NZ TEU) and David Robinson (CAUT). (Paul Clifton, Helena Spyrou)
News from the Net Pat Wright
Technology and Trust Facebook recently launched its first hardware product – a smart speaker called Portal, which receives and makes Facebook Messenger calls. It works in much the same way as Siri on Apple’s HomePod, Google’s Home Hub, and Amazon’s Echo, so one can use it to ask for weather or sports updates, and to control smart devices in the home, such as Samsung’s smart fridge. However, Portal adds a camera and a screen, thus adding sight and touch to sound for more immersion to build trust in the technology. Facebook are rightly sensitive to the need to build (or re-build) trust, given the Cambridge Analytica scandal which may have collated the personal data of 87 million of their users to assist the Trump election, and their Sept 2018 security breach in which hackers broke in to 50 million of their accounts. Consequently, the Portal comes with a camera cover to easily block its lens, and the camera and microphone can be disabled with a single tap at any time.
Little wonder, then, that fingerprint-recognition, voice-recognition and now facial-recognition are approached with some caution in many quarters. The high level of trust in banks (perhaps ill-founded) is overcoming resistance to using fingerprint-recognition on smartphones to access accounts and credit cards, the lesser level of trust in telcos is having a harder time in getting voice-recognition accepted, and Facebook will probably have as hard a time getting facial-recognition accepted on the Portal, as Apple is having on the iPhone X. On a much larger scale, facial recognition for surveillance is viewed with increasing concern. ABC TV’s Foreign Correspondent on 21 Sept 2018 reported on China’s plan to combine facial recognition, body-scanning and geo-tracking in a social credit scheme for its 1.4 billion citizens by 2020. A pilot scheme started in 2014 and millions of citizens now have a social credit scorecard with a pointscore out of 800.
In addition, Facebook assures users that their video calls are encrypted and not recorded in any way – and we all know how trustworthy Facebook is. Indeed, the New Daily article on the product launch includes a photograph of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg in which the camera on his laptop is covered with a small piece of masking tape – suggesting that at least some people are concerned that someone might be spying on them.
People with a high score benefit through waived deposits on hotels and rental cars, VIP treatment at airports, discounted loans, priority job applications, and fast-tracking to the most prestigious universities (much like Platinum credit and loyalty cardholders in Australia). People with a low score suffer penalties such as losing the right to travel by plane or train, social media account suspensions, and being barred from Government jobs (much like the poor in Australia). Points are awarded for behaviour monitored by 200 million surveillance cameras, set to become 600 million in the next eighteen months, medical and educational records, and financial and internet browsing histories.
The introduction of smart phones and tablets, with their microphones, cameras, videos and touch-screens, has transformed the way we relate to technology. Gone are the days when one recoiled from the prospect of speaking to a machine, such as a telephone-answering machine, or lived in fear of being seen as an inexpert touch-typist when writing a message – now we use sight, sound and touch technologies to reach out to others. But now the technologies that help us reach out also help others to reach in to our private lives, even without our knowledge sometimes. Consequently, the level of trust in technology is eroded, and many of us live in fear – not only of Big Brother’s Eye in the Sky, but also of Facebook’s Eye in the Kitchen.
Closer to home, the expansion of Peter Dutton’s portfolio to form the mega-Department of Home Affairs included the Australian Federal Police (AFP), the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and Border Force (BF), all with electronic surveillance capabilities to collect information on Australian citizens, but only after securing a warrant to do so from the Attorney-General. They can also seek technical assistance from the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), a statutory body within the Department of Defence, which collects foreign intelligence and hacks into foreign military or criminal networks to plant malware viruses or misinformation to smoke out covert operators and transnational criminals.
In April-May 2018, whistleblowers revealed that Minister Dutton and his Departmental Secretary, Mike Pezzullo, had ambitions to involve ASD in some DHA activities. That alarmed then Defence Minister Marise Payne, who would have joint responsibility for ASD spying on “onshore threats”, then Attorney-General George Brandis, who had responsibility to sign-off on warrants to “collect” information on Australians, but not (yet) warrants to “disrupt” their networks, and then Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, who seemed to think that Dutton’s empire was already big enough. Naturally, the expansion was not proceeded with at that time, given the resistance, but the resistors are no longer in their same jobs, and the DHA duo still are. In general, Australians trust the Government to use surveillance technology on Them, but not on Us, as some recent examples amply illustrate. Fergus Hanson, Head of International Cyber Policy Centre recently wrote “Unlocking the Potential of Digital Identity: Preventing another Australia Card fail” for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. This comprehensive report attracted the attention of our mainstream media with alarmist highlighting of the second face of its title coin, but little mention of its first, more positive face. Much panic about Australia following Chinese tracks towards a social credit scheme, but nary a mention of the benefits to consumers and citizens, nor the efficiencies and savings to Government. Digital ID is a smartphone app developed by Australia Post which provides verified photo-ID on one’s phone so that you can prove who you are when buying a product or accessing a service. This allows you to prove that you are eligible, for example, to be served alcohol or receive a Senior’s discount without revealing all the extraneous detail, such as home address or place of birth on your driver’s licence or passport. GovPass will be a web portal through which one can verify one’s identity for access to government services provided by the Australian Tax Office (ATO), the Department of Human Services (DHS) and, you guessed it, DHA. At present, most of these services are federated on the MyGov website, including Medicare, Centrelink, Child Support, My Health Record, NDIS and the National Redress Scheme for victims of child sexual abuse. There are 30 online services each requiring separate logins at present. GovPass will provide one
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NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 25 no. 3 • November 2018 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 51
Lowering the Boom Ian Lowe
Tam U listed as one of the Top Ten Rural Universities Less Than Twenty Years Old Spring was in the air when I made my annual trek to New England to meet the ever-optimistic Cal D’Aria. It is more than a decade since Cal transformed the sleepy little Tamworth Hairdressing College into Tam U.
stuffy old Adelaide Uni is talking seriously about amalgamating to become a much bigger institution and get a Great Hall. But the older universities up here just couldn’t see the potential of a Combined Regional Academic Program. Why should country kids have to move to the big cities when they could get a CRAP degree locally?”
The feisty little institution has prospered, and Cal with it. From simply being the General Manager of the Hairdressing College he became the inaugural Vice-Chancellor of Tamworth University. Since then he has been successively promoted to President and then Beloved Leader of Tam U.
“Students really appreciate being able to knock over a subject and move on”, he said. “None of that tiresome detailed stuff in semester-long courses they have to put up with at the old universities. It goes with our famous slogan, Tam U will cram u!” But Cal was almost incandescent about a report that another university was now copying his innovation. “Not just pinching our idea, but even boasting about in cinema advertising, one of my friends told me”, he exploded. “Dr Ongo is investigating the possibility of legal action for theft of our intellectual property.”
This year he had a bronze plaque on his desk, proudly bearing the new title conferred by his grateful Board: Supreme Glorious Commander of the Academic Community. And a framed report on his wall showed that Tam U was recognised for the first time in the Bandywallop Bugle listing of the Top Ten Rural Universities Less Than Twenty Years Old. It hasn’t all been plain sailing for Cal and Tam U, although he was being brave about the changed status of his local member, Barnaby Joyce. “Now he’s no longer Deputy PM, he’s just a part-time back-bencher and full-time house-husband! He’s got some new title, something about being a special envoy for propping up rural electorates, so he spends much more of his time in our part of the world. That’s made it possible for me to draw on him for strategic advice on creating new staff positions.” Cal made a bid earlier this year to get together with UNE and SCU to enable mutual recognition of each other’s courses and allow students to do combined degrees, but his approach was unaccountably rebuffed. “I argued that working together creates bigger institutions that are inevitably more influential,” Cal told me. “Even
Cal was eager to boast about the dramatic success of his move from conventional terms and semesters to an academic year consisting of thirteen four-week teaching modules, implemented after a comprehensive needs-based assessment by academic adviser Dr Ongo.
He was also enthusiastic about his negotiations with the Ramsay Centre to introduce their simplistic paean of praise to Western Civilisation into Tam U’s academic program. “I met John Howard and Tony Abbott, and their ideas are just the sort of forward-looking stuff our students need”, Cal said. “I really want our students to trust their instincts rather than being swayed by smart-arse scientific knowledge, and be able to use their ‘field experience’ when there is no data at all. Trust your gut-instinct, I say. That’s the whole basis of Tam U’s success!” I suspect the visit from the other newlyappointed special envoy might have influenced Cal’s thinking about the local traditional owners, because he rushed on to tell me about the plan to include them in his new courses on Western Civilisation. “Our students need to know how the local Indigenous folk have benefited from the arrival of Europeans. They didn’t have any access at all to grog or tobacco before, and
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had to find their food in the bush rather than just being able to get it from our KFC franchise.” We were interrupted by Dr Saba de Todo, Tam U’s Vice-President and newly-appointed Supreme Commander of Regional Education, who arrived to present Cal with the new mission statement for the flourishing institution, developed by a regional taskforce and workshopped through a series of broad-based local focus groups. Sabby moved to the polished walnut lectern with its integrated auto-cue and took a deep breath. “We will achieve ongoing meaningful consumer engagement at this particular point in time going forward in an integrated real-world environment”, she gushed, “with continually improving tangible outcomes through KPI-driven flat management by knowledge-exchange professionals, improving coordination and accessibility through development of quality support networks to engage the community and produce rounded graduates with readily marketable skills and demonstrable uncritical acceptance of prevailing economic understandings.” The stunned silence was taken as breathless admiration. Cal told me that Tam U had been on the brink of recognition by the national broadcaster until the shock removal of Michelle Guthrie as CEO. “Our Sabby had been approached to feature in their proposed new evening program, Jargoning Australia, featuring world-class wafflers and show our nation’s significant achievements in this vital field. Now the whole project is up in the air”, he complained. “We were planning a huge new advertising campaign, featuring this recognition of our place on the national stage.” I left him glumly musing about actors wearing monogrammed polo shirts at the footy grand finals to promote Tam U. Ian Lowe is Emeritus Professor of Science, Technology and Society at Griffith University. M@AusConservation
day by day, or a range of other time series. I have included a screen shot of my hours worked since I installed the app early in the year, which shows how this (sadly Mac only) software displays the data. As a researcher, I find the nerdy promise of this kind of data irresistible, so I have worked hard to try to capture all my hours as accurately as possible. The software is very easy to manage, so in practice I spend less than 5 minutes a day on the record keeping. Taking into account paid leave and sick leave, the data show I’ve worked, on average, 41.3 hours a week this year, so far. This is approximately 18 hours less a week than last year - an excellent result! Inger Mewburn
The Thesis Whisperer Chewing on the FAT At the start of the year I shared my struggles with overwork and my plans to donate less time to my employer this year. October seems a good time to report on my progress. One of the weapons I have deployed against overwork in 2018 is an app called ‘Timing’. Timing watches everything I do on my laptop and categorises it. It also gives me the option to enter in non-computer work, such as meetings. You can set the ‘productivity score’ for each kind of task, enabling you to gauge whether your time has been well spent. Even better, it has a useful, interactive, dashboard view that lets you view your working rhythms, day by day, or a range of other time series. I have included a screen shot of my hours worked since I installed the app early in the year, which shows how this (sadly Mac only) software displays the data. As a researcher, I find the nerdy promise of this kind of data irresistible, so I have worked hard to try to capture all my hours as accurately as possible. The software is very easy to manage, so in practice I spend less than 5 minutes a day on the record keeping. Taking into account paid leave and sick leave, the data show I’ve worked, on average, 41.3 hours a week this year, so far. This is approximately 18 hours less a week than last year – an excellent result! A closer look at the data reveals some interesting patterns. Approximately 37.9 hours a week (2.9 hours more than I am paid for) were spent on ANU work. The rest was dedicated to my own projects, such as blogging. Due to the nature of my role, which is not a conventional faculty position, my work allocation is 50% teaching, 30% service and 20% research. Looking at my graphs, I am adhering to one part of this work plan directive: just over half my time is spent either in the classroom, or doing related tasks like preparing teaching and preparing reports. What is more interesting is the amount of ‘invisible work’ that I do to achieve this goal of 50% teaching – on the pie graph above it’s in purple (communication) and
pink (administrative work, like filling in forms). Invisible work is a term coined by Anselm Strauss and Susan Leigh Star to describe forms of work that are not usually recognised AS work. It’s what my friend Ben Kraal calls “the work you do to do the work you do”. Teaching doesn’t just happen: teaching rooms must be booked, equipment needs to be working, tutors need briefings, guest lectures must be co-ordinated and administration systems negotiated so that marks can be sent to students. All this can be considered invisible work. Although they might not name it as such, academics complain about invisible work a lot – for good reason. This work is rarely, if ever, measured, and so slips away from management view. My analysis shows that every individual email seems like a tiny spoonful of work, but clearing my inbox everyday takes more than 10% of my total time (some academics I know just ignore their overflowing inbox, but the nature of my role means this is not an option for me). Added up, the data show that for every substantive task I must add a 30% overhead of FAT (‘F*^k around time’). To avoid working overtime, I must squeeze other parts of my work to make room for the FAT. I can see the results in my service work, down to 5%, and my research time, currently sitting at 11% (half the time I am allocated). Arguably, this analysis shows I am doing less of the work that would directly benefit ANU (sharing my expertise, or doing research) and doing more of the academic equivalent of sweeping the floor. When the invisible work, like email, is not recognised as work, it can lead to tension between working academics and management. Anselm and Strauss argued that the side
effect of invisible work falling away from management view, is that it becomes devalued by those in charge. When work is devalued it becomes seen as something we just have to do in our own time. For many, this is exactly what email becomes: unpaid work. My analysis shows that if I want to be paid to do email and thus have work life balance, what tends to fall off the table is the work that most directly benefits me. Public facing work, where others depend on me, like teaching, tends to take priority. However, my next promotion will rely heavily on the more hidden labour of my service and research work. I am still donating a couple of hours a week to ANU, but I can probably kiss that next promotion goodbye if I keep refusing to donate more. It’s been my experience that management only really hears and responds to numbers. Well, now I have them and they are shocking. I’ve looked in the literature and I think this is the first time an Australian academic has reported a time and motion study to this level of detail. While this (slightly obsessive?) data gathering exercise might strike some of you as an example of being further colonised by metrics, for me, collecting this data has been liberating. One must fight numbers with numbers and now I have a big spreadsheet to take to my next work planning meeting. I wonder what would happen if we all collected our data and used it in the enterprise bargaining? Want to fund a little research project NTEU? I have 11% of my time to spare. Dr Inger Mewburn does research on research and blogs about it. www.thesiswhisperer.com
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From the Immediate Past President Jeannie Rea
Expectations of Labor in government Last time the ALP was in government federally a foolish decision was made to pay for a school funding reform program by cutting university funding and higher education student financial support. NTEU immediately condemned the decision, arguing that cutting post-school funding to pay for school funding was short-sighted and even cynical. The Australian Education Union, who had campaigned tirelessly for the school funding reforms, stood with NTEU in protesting cutting higher education funding. The consequence was that angry NTEU members rallied under the banner ‘Uni cuts are dumb cuts’ adopting the key message ’cutting universities to fund schools is just dumb’. The call was to restore the funding. It was unsuccessful. Prime Minister Gillard did not listen, but sent her hapless Education Minister Craig Emerson to face the Union’s Special Council Meeting called to consider backing the Greens in the Senate in the next federal election. The rationale was that Labor could not win a Senate majority anyway, and that it was preferable for the Greens to hold the balance of power than the Coalition or their allies. NTEU did not handover any funds to the Greens, but instead ran our own ‘Vote Smart’ campaign. The key message was ‘Uni class sizes have almost doubled over a generation’. A cautious and accurate statement, laden with meaning. Our criticism of Labor went further than the ‘dumb cuts’, as despite much rhetoric and even a major review which recommended that funding per student needed to be increased by at least 10%, Labor in government was demanding more of universities without putting in the resources. They made much of the opportunities for greater participation through deregulating student places, but staff were doing more with less, and the casualisation of academic teaching was relentlessly expanding. Labor lost the 2013 election and retired to lick their wounds. The Abbott Coalition Government was elected, and the Greens were not successful in winning the Senate balance of power, but rather a bunch of
minor parties and independents occupied the crossbench, often with very few votes. To their credit, however, a number of these crossbench senators did the right thing and opposed (twice), with Labor and the Greens, the deregulation of domestic student fees and a 20% cut in university funding. They responded to vocal community opposition, even while the vice-chancellors lobbied for fee deregulation. Labor should win the next federal election due by mid-2019. They should win because the Coalition has put in an appalling performance on any criteria. The ACTU Change the Rules campaign is hitting home because Australia does need a pay rise, and inequality is growing while company profits are rising. The onus is on Labor not to squander this opportunity. Thus the focus shifts to our expectations of Labor in government. The trade union movement was burned after Labor rode to victory in 2007 partially on the back of the Your Rights at Work campaign. The Rudd Labor Government came up with a Workplace Relations Act that has worked for the employers at the expense of workers’ rights to safe, secure, decent jobs, and maintaining ludicrous impediments to the rights to organise and strike. It was better than Howard’s WorkChoices, but Labor supporters set a higher bar. We want to expect better of a Labor government this time round, but the reality is that they are still stuck in the neoliberal paradigm. This was recently demonstrated by the parliamentary caucus’s majority support for the TTP-11 free trade treaty, which even they conceded was not much good, and they would reconsider when in government. Too late. They gained nothing by supporting this, but rather raised the ire of those who they are relying upon to campaign for them. On education, promises are being made to restore the school funding reform plan. In higher education all we have is an ongoing commitment to the Demand Driven System by unfreezing places, yet no more money for each of these Commonwealth supported places. Students will still incur substantial debt, which will be compounded by having to undertake fully deregulated post graduate qualifications (some costing $100K). Students continue paying more for less, and staff, increasingly insecurely employed and overworked, do their best to keep the universities functioning. There have been some funding announce-
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ments around supporting students at regional universities, but it is frankly hard to know if there is any real new money attached to even those announcements. There is much Labor can readily fix, and there will be an appetite for that. But there are big and costly decisions to be made. Earlier in the year, Deputy Leader and education spokesperson, Tanya Plibersek announced the ALP would hold an inquiry into post-secondary education once elected, signalling Labor’s commitment to restoring TAFE. Public VET has been decimated, originally by state Labor opening up the sector and funding private operators, followed by Coalition cuts to TAFE funding and further compounded by the VET student loans scheme scandal. Victoria’s Labor Government is implementing free places in some courses. It is restricted, but the very naming as ‘Free TAFE’ signals an about-turn in the obsession with neoliberal user-pays policy. There are no such indications at the federal level – yet. It is always worth reminding ourselves that the generation currently in the latter part of the their paid working lives are those that benefitted from the Whitlam Labor Government’s opening up of university education with more places, abolition of tuition fees and student financial support. The Technical and Further Education system was also started at this time, with national commitments to comprehensive and largely free education and training and re-training. The reality for those now progressing through their working lives is education and training debt, which continues, as they need new qualifications. Not surprisingly many are questioning the value and the quality of the courses they are undertaking in universities and colleges, which may have some flash facilities but fewer and fewer staff. Labor in government has to do more than resource a few big ‘announceables’. There has to be a fundamental shift in the thinking, planning and resourcing of education and training. I do not want to hear about financial constraints first, I want to hear big ideas and their vision on how education, training and research can contribute to a healthy, equal and just society and sustainable environment. As I have said before – education is too important to leave to the market. Jeannie Rea was NTEU National President 2010-18, and is now working as an academic.
Letter from Aotearoa/NZ Sandra Grey
Hard conversations about prejudice Our actions in life are bounded by values that we hold personally, but also societal values that we agree collectively to live by. These values change and evolve over time, and there are periods when some can be brought to the fore more than others. Recently, the NZTEU was plunged into a debate that challenged us to think about our role in promoting values that help to break down barriers to racial and culture equality. We are a union committed to developing strong Te Tiriti o Waitangi relationships that uphold the sovereignty of Māori. For me, as the TEU President, the importance of this stance comes from a very personal place, as well as all I have learnt from fellow union members. Close to a year ago I was taken aback when my 18 year old niece said she hated school because everyone treats her like a dumb kid because she is Māori. Try to imagine what it feels like to have the people who are meant to inspire and support you – peers, friends, teachers – modify their expectations of you because of your ethnicity. Some of you may not have to imagine as you will have your own story to tell about how prejudice has shaped the person you are today. This prejudice that is now helping shape Caitlin’s future was embedded long before she was born – in institutions, our politics, our media, our education system.
As a union we’re doing all we can to narrow the gap between the promise of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the reality of being Māori in Aotearoa today. For tertiary education to change lives we need to recognise that inequality of access has been passed on from generation to generation. To make our workplaces more equal, we need to acknowledge and address inequalities built on decades of misperceptions and prejudice. Sadly in Aotearoa, including in our tertiary education institutions, a distorted view of our past and future is given air time. These distorted views are centred on demands that Māori cede sovereignty in order to have ‘one law for all’. This view justifies a continuation of racial disparities that have existed here for decades. The same groups have concocted this idea that we are intolerant if we do not allow space for them to share their views. When the Vice-Chancellor of Massey University recently raised publicly whether the leader of Hobson’s Pledge – which denies Māori sovereignty – should be allowed to come onto campus, we were asked as a union what we thought. We weighed up the matter using the values in our Te Koeke Tiriti, in particular the whainga (value) which says we must protect the most vulnerable. Consequently, we concluded that allowing the speaker to visit Massey would violate one of the core values our members have asked us to uphold. This view sparked strong debate in our Union. When challenged about a statement I issued, I provided some context. I would ask those challenging me: “if Roastbusters, the group of young men who think date rape is an acceptable form of sexual activity, wanted to come to one of our university campuses, what would we do? Welcome their ideas onto campus, or say
they weren’t welcome?” Similarly, if climate change deniers wanted speaking rights without dissenting views being heard at university events would we be happy? Recently, an anti-vaccination billboard erected alongside Auckland’s southern motorway was pulled down following complaints that it perpetuated a myth that there are concealed issues with what’s in vaccines – which we all know to be untrue. If this teaches us anything it is that there are reasonable limits to free speech. We decide as a nation what those limits should be, and then we debate within the framework. This means acknowledging that what we say can cause enormous harm to people. My right to say whatever I like does not trump other people’s right not to be harmed by what I say – and, importantly, as a Pākehā I do not get to decide what does and what does not harm Māori. Working out where the balance between ‘free speech’ and protection from harm lay is complex, but it is a job for us all. To live up to our values as an organisation that sees Te Tiriti o Waitangi as a founding document of Aotearoa we must act. We aren’t all in the same place on this journey, but let’s go back to basics. Unions exist to ensure those who have little power can link arms and gain power in all areas of our lives. If those of us linking arms in the NZTEU are strong and mature, we can ensure that none of the people around us feel unsafe and marginalised by racial prejudice, sexism, or homophobia. Sandra Grey is National President/Te Tumu Whakarae, New Zealand Tertiary Education Union/Te Hautū Kahurangi o Aotearoa www.teu.ac.nz
Technology & Trust ...continued from p. 51 Digital Identity login for all government online services. While the Government estimates that it costs $17–20 each time someone tries to prove their identity to access a service, the cost of doing so digitally is somewhere between $0.40 and $2.00. Deloitte Access Economics estimates
savings of $17.9 billion over ten years. Of course, this rosy prospect will only arise if digital identity is implemented properly, with adequate safeguards for privacy and no misuse of the data collected, but Hanson has severe reservations about the implementation process and makes six strong recommendations to improve the process – particularly, to establish a
national taskforce to maintain oversight of the project, lest it degenerate into another Australia Card (or, perhaps, My Health Record) debacle. Pat Wright is an NTEU Life Member. patrite@me.com
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My Union NTEU 2018 elections completed Leadership change and renewal was the framework for the now completed 2018 NTEU elections. Nationally, two out of the three full time elected officers are new, with Dr Alison Barnes from Macquarie University elected unopposed as National President, and former WA Division Secretary Gabe Gooding elected to the National Assistant Secretary position. Matthew McGowan, formerly the National Assistant Secretary, was also elected unopposed as the new General Secretary. The Union has been busy farewelling outgoing foundation General Secretary Grahame McCulloch after 25 years in the position, and outgoing National President Jeannie Rea who is returning to work in the sector after two terms as President. Change was also in the wind for the Victorian Division, with former RMIT Branch President Melissa Slee defeating incumbent Colin Long for Division Secretary.
The newly created full-time positions of Division Assistant Secretary in the Victorian and NSW Divisions were won by Sarah Roberts and Damien Cahill respectively. With Gabe Gooding leaving WA to take up her new position in Melbourne, Curtin University member Jonathan Hallett has been appointed as Acting Division Secretary until an election for the position can be held. Branch Committee elections include the election to designated positions for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members. This year’s elections saw 21 out of 40 of these positions filled.
These elections were also the first time that designated Branch Committee positions for casual members have been elected, in those Branches with more than 20 casual members. Of the 33 eligible Branch Committees, 22 casual representative positions have been filled. We congratulate all NTEU members who have been elected to positions at all levels of the Union. NTEU’s democratic traditions are in good hands. Michael Evans, National Organiser
Above: Jeannie Rea, Gabe Gooding, Matt McGowan, Grahame McCulloch & Alison Barnes. (Paul Clifton)
Colin Long departs NTEU for VTHC Colin Long’s term of office as Victorian Division Secretary ended on 16 October 2018, after 8 years. Colin Long joined the Union in 1998 as a sessional, and became a part-time research assistant on numerous fixed term contracts. In that experience he learnt first hand what job insecurity in the higher education sector feels like, an experience which, alongside his lifelong commitment to social justice, drove him to campaign fiercely for more secure employment in his later career in the Union. Colin became a Senior Lecturer in Cultural Heritage and Director of the Cultural Heritage Centre for Asia and the Pacific at Deakin University, and thereafter in 2005 was elected Branch President at Deakin University. During his time as Branch Pres-
ident Colin led the bargaining at Deakin through two difficult rounds. As Branch President Colin won and maintained the respect and loyalty of NTEU members, in no small part due to his obvious and unwavering commitment to obtaining the best outcomes for members. In 2010, Colin was elected Victorian Division Secretary. In this role Colin has been a champion of the cause of casually employed staff in higher education. During
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his tenure, the Victorian Division became a national leader – not just in the NTEU, but the broader union movement – in terms of campaigning on casual issues. The SuperCasuals campaign, in particular, entrenched the issue of casualisation on the national NTEU agenda. The campaign saw big increases in casual membership and won key conditions including a right to conversion at Swinburne University.
continued on p. 67...
My Union National Council 2018
Celebrating 25 years of tertiary education unionism & a new era The 2018 National Council celebrated 25 years since the NTEU’s inception, as well as the retirement of long-standing General Secretary Grahame McCulloch, and the departure of National President Jeannie Rea, who is returning to the higher education workforce. NTEU Priorities 2018-19 Council carried a resolution that detailed the industrial and political landscape of the sector and the issues facing tertiary education workers. Council agreed that the Union’s key 2018-19 priorities are:
1. Securing and enforcing strong enterprise agreements that maintain and improve salaries and conditions of work. 2. Campaigning for change to the industrial laws. 3. Direct focus on improving union density (recruitment and retention of members) and on membership engagement and activism. 4. Public advocacy and action to change government policy and the political discourse on the funding of tertiary education and research.
Continued support for Treaties Council endorsed the unanimous resolution from the 2018 NTEU Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander National Forum where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander delegates moved to continue the NTEU campaign to see treaties negotiated between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the Crown. The 2018 ACTU Congress resolution (Voice, Treaty and Truth Telling) was understood by Council to be an attempt by the ACTU Indigenous Caucus to bring together the range of perspectives expressed at consultations around the nation.
continued next page... Above: Jeannie Rea briefs new Councillors at the start of National Council. Below: Jeannie Rea, Matt McGowan, Grahame McCulloch with ACTU President Michele O’Neil. (Paul Clifton)
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My Union
...continued from previous page It was accepted that the ACTU resolution supports a process to progress treaties, truth telling and a broader community campaign to ensure a strong, self-determining, First Nations voice.
Secure Jobs & ‘Change the Rules’ NTEU members have enthusiastically participated in the union movement’s Change the Rules campaign for fairer industrial laws and a genuine right to take industrial action.
At the same time, the growing level of job insecurity in the higher education sector is seriously undermining the ability of staff to provide a high quality education experience for students and maintain expectations in research and engagement. NTEU will continue to make campaigning for legislative change and improved job security in higher education a major focus of campaigning priorities, along with seeking coherent government policy and adequate resourcing of public higher education in the lead-up to the next federal election, due by May 2019. This will include active participation in the ACTU
Change the Rules campaign as well as industry specific campaigns.
National Casuals Committee created Council agreed to create a National Casuals Committee, to more ably assist with work on issues and campaigns affecting casual members, as well as provide better representation within NTEU’s structures. The Committee will include delegates from Divisions on a proportional basis, and will be comprised from members elected
continued opposite...
Clockwise from top: Standing ovation for Grahame McCulloch’s 25 years as General Secretary; Laura Wilson (USyd); Retiring National Executive members Jane Battersby (Vice President General Staff), Stuart Bunt (UWA) and Lolita Wikander (NT Division Secretary); Adam Fernandes (Monash) speaking to the Life Membership for Sandra Cockfield; Nikki Balnave (Macquarie), Gareth Bryant (USyd) & Damien Cahill (NSW Assistant Secretary). (Paul Clifton)
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My Union ...continued from previous page to the specified casual positions on most Branch Committees. Council noted the importance of casually employed members taking a leading role in NTEU campaigns on casualisation and insecure work, and will encourage that role by: • Ensuring that the NTEU supports and resources campaigns on casualisation; • Ensuring that we develop casual delegates by investing additional meaning into the casual-identified Branch Committee roles; • Ensuring that casually employed members are able to effectively consult with the broader NTEU on policies related to casually employed members.
Sexual Harassment in the Workplace Survey launched In response to the Australian Human Rights Commission’s (AHRC) national inquiry into sexual harassment in Australian workplaces, NTEU launched a survey about sexual harassment in universities at National Council. The survey has an intersectional focus, and uses the AHRC’s definition of sexual harassment. The survey design will be used in a Malaysian study on sexual harassment in universities, which will make for some interesting comparisons. The survey was open until the end of October.
‘Future of the Sector’ project The 2017 National Council agreed that a Future of the Sector conference be held to provide a platform for the NTEU to intervene in debates about the sector. It was agreed that the conference should be preceded by events across the country that would facilitate greater member involvement and draw Divisions and Branches into the project. Seven roadshow events were held (with a further one re-scheduled for late 2018), culminating in the successful national conference held in Melbourne on 10-11 September. With continuing interest amongst NTEU Branches, activists and members in intervening in the current debates around the future of higher education and research, as well as the broader post-secondary education sector, National Council agreed that the Future of the Sector Project should continue in the following forms: • Continuing to use the Future of the Sector artwork and messaging to promote NTEU debate.
organised around the topics of higher education in the 21st century post-secondary landscape, democratising the university, teaching today’s students for tomorrow’s world, creating and disseminating new knowledge, the future of higher education work and workers, and funding high quality high education for all. • Focusing upon action outcomes at events. • Developing a digital platform to collect and disseminate materials, and a discussion function. Michael Evans, National Organiser
From top: Rob Anders (UTAS); Thomas Morrill (Acting ACT Division President); Jane Battersby, Jeannie Rea and Matt McGowan celebrating the end of National Council; Gabe Gooding presenting Jeannie Rea with a parting gift from the Women’s Action Committee. (Paul Clifton)
• Organising further ‘roadshow’ events, NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 25 no. 3 • November 2018 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 59
My Union Jeannie Rea: feminist, educator, activist and unionist Jeannie Rea, who has stepped down as National President after two terms, has been a lifelong political activist, and has also had a life-long commitment to education, which she has recognised as being a potentially powerful force for social change. Her profound commitments to social justice, feminism, the rights of Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders, and the peace movement have informed her work as an academic as well as a unionist. These values have been in evidence in Jeannie’s progress from being a student activist at Monash, to teaching TAFE students, and to a distinguished academic career at Victoria University as a teacher, researcher, and holder of responsible positions in that university. Jeannie was drawn to VU as an institution that attracted many students who were the first in their family to attend university, and her work there showed a commitment to education as a means of advancing the interests of working people. Jeannie has also been a life-long unionist, and has been a Branch activist and the President of the Victorian Division, before taking on the very significant challenge
of succeeding Carolyn Allport as NTEU President eight years ago. In what could have been a very difficult transition period, Jeannie quickly took charge and put her own stamp on the role. As the political environment deteriorated, the then Labor Government, in its final months, announced budget cuts to higher education. At this time, the NTEU made very strategic decisions to maximise its political leverage in the ‘Dumb Cuts’ campaign. This was followed by the aggressive deregulation agenda of the incoming Coalition Government. Jeannie was indefatigable in leading the resistance of the Union to these attacks on the higher education sector. Her tireless lobbying and campaigning efforts resulted in the resounding success of the NTEU’s ‘$100,000 degrees’ campaign, and strongly reasserted the Union’s position as the main united and reliable defender of public higher education, and as a significant force in public policy debates. Whenever a major policy announcement occurred in the higher education sector, the response of the NTEU was always swift and pointed, as Jeannie ensured that there was always a timely and well-crafted response, seldom missing a beat.
Leading policy debate in the sector While Jeannie established herself as an articulate and relentless advocate of the NTEU’s public policy agenda, she did not rely on campaigning alone, but also ensured that the NTEU remained a major voice in the policy debates through her work with the policy and research unit. Jeannie ensured that the NTEU always occupied the moral and intellectual high ground in public policy debates on higher education and social justice issues. This also meant taking a long view and coming up with carefully reasoned strategic responses to the challenges that arose, and not simply being reactive. page 60 • NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 25 no. 3 • November 2018 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate
Above: Jeannie Rea with a farewell gift of flowers from the Women’s Action Committee, August 2018. Below: Jeannie protesting Dumb Cuts in Canberra, 2013. (Paul Clifton, Helena Spyrou) The respect that Jeannie earned in the wider union movement, as well as in the higher education sector, was reflected in the tributes to her time in office that were relayed to this year’s National Council. These included those from past and present Presidents of the ACTU, Ged Kearney and Michele O’Neil. In a warm, personal tribute, Ged Kearney thanked Jeannie “for saying the hard things when nobody else would and for saying the nice things when nobody else would”, which Kearney had deeply appreciated. Michele O’Neil said that Jeannie had been a “great leader for your union and our movement. As a feminist, as an educator, as an activist and a unionist, you’ve always lived what you believe”, singling out Jeannie’s tenacity and determination, among other qualities. Labor Deputy Leader and Shadow Education Minister Tanya Plibersek thanked Jeannie for her “advice and contributions to policy development”, as well as for her hard work in defending the higher education sector, staff and students, from attacks by Coalition Governments. Former Greens Senator and education spokesperson Lee Rhiannon recalled the defeat – twice over – of Liberal attempts to deregulate domestic student fees: “Jeannie’s organising on campuses, in communities, and in parliament, was fantastic and critical in achieving that win”. As Lee Rhiannon suggests, while Jeannie was at home campaigning on campuses among rank-and-file members, she could also suit up and engage in very effective parliamentary lobbying when she needed to. (I saw myself how effective she could be in persuading key cross-bench senators that
My Union the Abbott-Pyne deregulation plans were just unfair and should not be supported. It worked.) Labor Senator Kim Carr said that Jeannie had epitomised the best of modern trade unionism in her work “to build a better country”, and to build a better higher education system in particular. Former Universities Australia CEO Belinda Robinson, despite the fact that her organisation often found itself on the other side of arguments to the NTEU, also expressed her respect, and personal appreciation, for Jeannie’s contributions to higher education. While speaking out in defence of overworked workers in the higher education sector, Jeannie demonstrated a phenomenal work ethic herself. She travelled regularly to Branches all over the country, and was always ready to respond to emails or questions from rank-and-file members – sometimes, it seemed, 24 hours a day. Jeannie led the National Executive over two four-year terms, and did so in a way that ensured the Union lived up to its best values. In the international arena, Jeannie put solidarity with the world’s most disadvantaged at the heart of our engagement with Education International. At the same time, she also held Australian higher education institutions to the highest standards of academic freedom, autonomy, and social inclusion. Her championing of support for the organisation Scholars at Risk has been one example of her commitment both to human rights in general and to principles of academic and intellectual freedom.
Bluestocking Week revival Jeannie’s strong feminist values informed the daily life of the NTEU, and were demonstrated in achievements like the revitalisation of Bluestocking Week. Jeannie ran all the issues that came to the notice of the National Executive through a feminist
lens. She took on the issue of sexual harassment on campuses, working together with Universities Australia to support their Respect campaign to combat sexual assault, but she also made sure that NTEU Branches kept an eye on the implementation of universities’ promises in this area and held management to account. Jeannie encouraged the Union to look self-critically at its own gender balance in terms of office-holders, and was a warm supporter of the next generation of women activists. Knowing Jeannie, she would have been as deeply appreciative of the many messages of thanks she received from rank-and-file women activists and members of the Women’s Action Committee as she was for the messages from more prominent union and political leaders. Jeannie never forgot that the Union is here for its members. Jeannie also gave strong support to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Policy Committee as it led the national debate on issues such as a treaties process vs. recognition. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander caucus warmly acknowledged her role in this area in a motion at National
Council. Under her leadership, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander membership of the NTEU has continued to grow, and the Union’s culture of according due respect to the First Nations has become even more deeply entrenched. Jeannie was also persistent and vigorous in emphasising that improving the condition of workers in insecure employment had to be at the centre of the Union’s concerns. She was always concerned to ensure that the situation of casual staff was never far from the concerns of the National Executive, and closely scrutinised new enterprise agreements to make sure they were furthering the cause of NTEU members in insecure employment. Jeannie’s decision not to run again after eight years as President, when she is at the top of her game, has been a selfless act, driven by the wish to see the Union continue to renew itself, and to put its members and their role in the wider society first and foremost. We have no doubt that Jeannie will continue to make significant contributions to the higher education sector and to the causes of feminism, unionism, and social justice that she has espoused so passionately and so effectively. It has also been a genuine pleasure to work with Jeannie in the interests of the Union. Not only does she have great values, she also has a down-to-earth and subversive wit and is great company. We are profoundly grateful for her many contributions as our elected President, and wish her all the best for a better future. Andrew Bonnell, National VicePresident (Academic)
Above, left: Jeannie farwelled by NT members during Bluestocking Week in August 2018. Above, right: Jeannie with her daughter, Mali, at the relaunch of Bluestocking Week revival in 2012. Left: Jeannie (centre) at 2016 National Council with Catriona Jackson, UA Deputy Chief Executive and Heidi La Paglia, NUS Women’s Officer. (Paul Clifton) NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 25 no. 3 • November 2018 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 61
My Union Grahame McCulloch’s legacy is the Union itself Ken McAlpine, a colleague and friend of Grahame McCulloch for over thirty years, reflects on the retiring General Secretary’s legacy. I recently listened to a podcast lecture series about the American Revolution. The Harvard professor drew an important lesson from the victory of the American colonists. This was that in hindsight, we tend to see historical events as inevitable. Yet the facts tell us that their defeat of the British was a combination of very good luck, part of which was their remarkable leaders. So it is with the formation of the NTEU in 1993. As a public servant in Adelaide in 1988, I was phoned by Grahame McCulloch and encouraged to apply for a job with a Victorian union representing general staff – the Victorian Colleges and Universities Staff Association (VCUSA). I got the job at a time when the higher education sector and the union movement were both facing radical change. Education Minister Dawkins was breaking up the binary divide between ‘traditional’ universities and other higher education institutions. This undermined the reason for having two separate academic unions representing respectively the university and non-university sectors.
At the same time, the ACTU and the Hawke Labor Government were pushing hard for the amalgamation of unions along industry lines, and the rationalisation of union coverage. Large and politically powerful unions like the CPSU, United Voice and the Health Services Union (current names) had their eyes on carving-up general staff coverage between them. The obvious political fix was to simply amalgamate the two academic unions – Federation of Australian University Staff Associations (FAUSA) and the Union of Australian College Academics (UACA); and to leave general staff to their fate. However, Grahame rejected this easy solution. He had an almost obsessive vision of a single industry-union covering all employees in higher education. This vision was, to say the least, a long shot. I know, because I was involved in most of the discussions about forming a new ‘National Tertiary Education Union’. Even within his own union, some were completely opposed, some saw it as a joke which would never happen, and even some of its supporters saw it as Grahame’s hobbyhorse which he would eventually get off. Among general staff too, there were initially some who were opposed to being in the same union as their academic colleagues, as well as a majority who just thought it would never happen in the face of opposition from other large and powerful unions. But it did happen. How? It is true that really important leaders played a critical role – most notably Kerry Lewis from VCUSA. The proposal for the NTEU also had some support from the ACTU – including the late Laurie Carmichael. The proposal also had some lucky breaks in the Industrial Relations Commission, and most importantly, it was supported by the members of the amalgamating unions.
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All of these factors were important, and in retrospect they can make the formation of the NTEU inevitable, or at least likely. However, to draw that conclusion would be to make the serious error I described above. In fact, nothing is more certain than the NTEU would never have come into existence without the foresight and strategic drive of Grahame McCulloch, who passed over the good in order to get the best. Grahame leaves many legacies – high salaries for members, an effective bargaining strategy, and a financially strong union. But all of these in turn have rested upon the gamble he made on the existence of the NTEU. It is the Union itself which will always be his greatest legacy. Ken McAlpine, Union Education & Training Officer
Above: Grahame McCulloch at National Council 2018 (Paul Clifton) Below: Speaking at Education International Congress 2015 in Ottawa (François Beauregard) Left: Cartoon of Grahame McCulloch leading the charge for amalgamation, 1992 (Campus Review Weekly)
My Union United we stood. We were going to move mountains. Fred van Leeuwen, recently retired General Secretary of Education International (EI) gave the following speech at the retirement dinner for Grahame McCulloch. It is a great pleasure for me, Grahame, to speak here tonight at your retirement dinner. I myself have been the subject of such a dinner a couple of months ago, when I retired as EI GS, so I think I understand what you are going through. And, in the words of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhaur: “The worst is yet to come”. The withdrawal symptoms I mean. In my case, watching Air Crash Investigation has helped. But, let’s not go into that tonight. Let me just say that for some of us being leaders of a trade union organisation is not so much a job as it is a platform, if you will, from where we can help build and strengthen a progressive movement and make a contribution to a better future for our members and society at large. And, there is no retirement from that. Looking back, taking stock of achievements and failures, however, is permitted, even advisable. Although this is first and foremost a personal exercise, in my opinion, you, Grahame, can look back with great satisfaction and pride. Bringing together the Australian higher education unions into the National Tertiary Education Union in 1993 was a huge achievement, as has been guiding and nurturing it into an effective industrial and professional organisation which has made a difference in the working lives of university staff all over this country. So, cheers, Grahame, well done! But, as you yourself wrote in your last Advocate column, despite its successes the Union has not yet halted rising workloads and the rapid increase in casual employment. I was shocked by a recent article in The Age by NTEU Victorian Division Secretary, Colin Long, describing the extent to which casualisation is undermining the entire sector. A national disgrace, he writes. I could not agree more, but I am afraid that Australia is only one of many countries where the prerogatives of market actors are treated as articles of faith rather than areas of legitimate debate let alone concern. As
we all know, some of the worst ‘reforms’ in education are developed by the private sector for widgets, not people. More fundamentally, such ‘reforms’ create a stifling intellectual environment, place low priority on the competencies of democracy while placing high priority on the supposed needs of the economy. Indeed, some of the market-style ‘innovations’ are intrinsically and directly anti-democratic. Grahame, you have always been keenly aware of the international dimension of the challenges confronting our national unions and have done your bit in mobilising the academic and teaching professions globally. Well, more than a bit. As a member of EI’s Executive Board and of our Regional Committee for Asia-Pacific from 2004 to 2015, but also before and after that, you never stopped reminding us of our international duty to protect the tertiary sector from the vultures descending upon it. In fact, your fingerprints are all over EI’s higher education policies. I remember your active and highly appreciated involvement in bringing the member organisations of the International Confederation of University Teachers’ Organisations (ICUTO) into Education International, and I remember the work you did leading to the adoption by UNESCO of the Recommendation concerning the Status of Higher Education Teaching Personnel in 1997. It lists all the principles and standards – from collegial leadership to job security to academic freedom, which are so deliberately ignored today. Why do national unions not make better use of that international recommendation, if only as a stick to poke education authorities and governments with from time to time? Sometimes I wonder whether the dismissive, insularity of some nations is affecting our own belief in the international mechanisms. I think, Grahame, that you and I started our union work around the same time,
Above: Susan Hopgood (EI President) and Fred van Leeuwen present Grahame McCulloch with Education International’s Certificate of Commendation. (Paul Clifton) the late seventies of the previous century. I also think – no, I know – that we both were driven by the same or at least similar ideals: social justice, human rights, peace and democracy, and by the conviction that education, trade union activism and international solidarity could help us move forward. We had the Cold War, we had the arms race, we had Vietnam, we questioned our governments’ allegiance to United States foreign policy, we challenged authoritarian rule around us. All quite simple and straightforward, really. Then in 1989 the Berlin Wall fell. Our ideals were now within reach for everybody -- we thought. It was also that optimism which spurred the creation of EI in 1993. In that same year NTEU was founded. United we stood. We were going to move mountains. Well, did we? Perhaps a few foothills. But there are still some rock solid obstacles staring us in the face. Let me just mention three of them. The further integration of the world economy moving the balance of power from democratic institutions to unelected corporations; the declining respect for our democratic freedoms and civic rights; and the election of Mr. Trump whose America First approach is shaking the international order we have known in the past 70 years, not to mention inciting right-wing populism across the globe. When the world gathered in September 2015 in New York to adopt the Sustainable Development Goals and when it came together a couple of months later to adopt the Paris Agreement on climate change, I sensed a renewed optimism. It was not only a commitment toward building a sustain-
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My Union United we stood ...continued from previous page able future, but a future grounded in the vision of shared democratic values. That was almost three years ago. Today we are in the middle of a crisis; a crisis challenging the resilience of our public and democratic institutions, and a crisis also, if you will, of half-truths and outright lies, as we know when listening to leaders such as Duterte, Orbán, Erdoğan, Putin and Trump himself. Not long ago the Washington Post changed its motto: “Democracy dies in darkness“. A warning not only to the American people but to all of us. “The world is being undone for us. If we do not reimagine Australia we will be undone too.” It is Richard Flanagan who wrote this in an article in The Guardian earlier this month warning of the “destruction of (Australian) democracy”. The “smallness”, he wrote, of your Government’s response to the Uluru Statement (“which was like watching clowns standing on a wet soap bar”) was a public humiliation of an entire generation of black leaders. It is remarkable to observe how ready and willing some main stream political parties – here in Australia and elsewhere – have switched to ‘populism’ moving to the right and, in doing so, sacrificing long held democratic values and principles. Where do they draw the line? Sadly, I think it has already been crossed. Keeping 134 children detained indefinitely on Nauru. What have we become? The answer to this question does NOT lie with the Senator Fraser Annings of this world. Praising the White Australia Policy? Calling for “the final solution to the immigration problem”? Again, what have we become? I draw attention to these contemporary, regrettable developments in your
country because I know that Grahame, someone who has been very vocal on the national and international stage, who has contributed to the advancement of the rights of Indigenous people and the rights of asylum seekers and refugees, would want me to. He would also want us all to recommit, dig deeper to ensure that we continue the struggle for a better society. Silence is not an option. We need to recommit and loudly call out what is happening around us, what is being ‘normalised’ because, before you know it, we will be in unforgiving spaces. Waleed Aly made this point very strongly last week when he said in relation to Anning and co, “it’s the slow, relentless debasement of our politics through an increasing flirtation with race-baiting that has made this possible.” As educators, we stand up for the students in our schools and universities as well as for those who should be in our educational institutions, but who are rejected, who are abducted, who are forgotten and undocumented. We cannot idly stand by when governments and politicians dehumanise illegal immigrants, calling them animals, insects, excrement, invaders, or infestation, terms the President of the United States has shamefully used to refer to immigrants. Friends, there are too many places in the world where politicians think they are bigger and more important than the offices they hold, where they turn their backs to the international community, where they mislead their people and where human rights have taken a back seat. A couple of weeks ago the Director General of ILO, Guy Ryder, said that we seem to have entered an age of new brutalism where it is OK to dehumanise those who are rejected, who are marginalised, who are different or who disagree. Colleagues, it is the brutalism of Europe in the 1930s and we have no excuse – the labour movement least of all – if we don’t learn the lessons, heed them and
Since 1958, the Australian Universities’ Review has been encouraging debate and discussion about issues in higher education and its contribution to Australian public life.
60 1958–2018
Australian Universities’ Review
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act upon them. Being a member of the academic and teaching professions is about moral purpose; about a commitment to making a positive difference in people’s lives, to create bonds within groups and create the bridges across groups and communities. Nation building, but also peace and democracy, are essential mandates and functions for education and research. Let me emphasise that educators see their tasks in line with John Dewey’s seminal text on Democracy and Education where it is the role of the profession to ensure that students become critical thinking and informed citizens who make decisions based on fact and not on political ideology. We must take this responsibility even more seriously in the face of rising populism and rising trends in some countries to undermine or control the free press. We must make it perfectly clear that we have the right to use our professional discretion to interrogate and to reject curricular directives that defy facts, falsify history, or lead to xenophobia and hate. There is a professional and ethical responsibility that may outweigh the authority of education employers, or even of governments where they have abdicated democracy and human rights. This is, I believe, what society expects of us and what we expect of each other. Beyond left and right there is true and false and it is our responsibility to prepare future generations to know the difference. Despite setbacks the NTEU, and you, Grahame, have shown over the past 25 years to firmly hold on to that belief and to be the most effective guardian of the academic profession in Australia. Fred van Leeuwen, General Secretary Education International, 1992–2018
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My Union 2018 Life Members
nights staying back late discussing bargaining stuff and she was always positive about union issues. We should never forget these lovely people like Sandra who paved the way forward for the future needs of Union members at Monash.
The following people were awarded NTEU Life Membership at the 2018 National Council.
Sandra was too unwell to attend Council. She was very moved to receive the certificate, delivered to her by colleagues, and was characteristically humble, wrongly describing herself as undeserving of it. Sandra sadly passed away on 21 October 2018.
Sandra Cockfield
Dianna Kenny
Dianna has performed this outstanding service for our Union while also facing her own serious industrial issues (especially during her time at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music), authoring several books (she held the unusual joint appointment as Professor of Psychology and Professor of Music, and is a leading authority on performance anxiety disorder), and also being directly involved in charitable works internationally. Dianna has continued to be heavily involved in providing support to members since her official ‘retirement’ (which has not really been a retirement at all!). She remains a valued comrade whose counsel is sought by her Branch colleagues.
Bruce Crundwell Sandra Cockfield’s doctoral thesis was in labour history and focused on the metals trades between 1920 and 1929. She used a political economy approach to examine the interplay between the institutional structures, namely wages boards, and the economic and political processes in the regulation of the wage-effort bargain and used as case studies Morts Dock, Metters Ltd and the HV McKay Sunshine Harvester Co. This concern and interest in workers, unions and fairness continued and were hallmarks of Sandra’s research which moved to union renewal and recruitment, unions and community, the organising approach and employment regulation but often went back to her original labour history discipline. Sandra was equally at home at the university or the pub, enjoying a drink with her colleagues. One of my enduring memories is of Sandra at an industrial relations conference in Montreal. The Australian contingent, and one Welsh bloke because he thought the Australians were fun, went to a French BYO restaurant (always a trap). Predictably there was much debate and shouting, with Sandra in the middle of it, encouraged by someone’s enthusiasm to conduct a comparison between Australian and French wine with Yellowtail serving as the Australian comparator. On a more serious note, Sandra’s concern for fairness and her colleagues saw her take an active role in the NTEU. She was a great asset and often never let an issue go until she exhausted Management through continual hammering her point to them. She and I (Tony Lad) had talked a bit about how we could manage Industrial activity in that year and she often asked me about car stuff as she knew I was into that hobby. I remember Hayden and I having coffee with Sandra and she was always very bright and cheery and as we had many
Professor Dianna Kenny has made an outstanding contribution to upholding staff rights and working conditions at the University of Sydney. She first joined the NTEU when she arrived at the University in 1988. She became actively involved from around 2000, when she became a delegate for the Faculty of Health Sciences, identifying industrial issues and then organising industrial officers to come out to discuss issues with members. She was elected to the Branch Committee in 2010, and has served on the Branch Committee since then. Dianna has participated in all of the activities of the Branch, including protected industrial action, picketing, leafletting, member meetings, door-to-door recruitment drives, and more. But probably most significantly, Dianna has for many years been the University of Sydney Branch’s most dedicated and effective case-handler. Where possible, our Branch seeks to ensure that members assist other members, but Dianna has taken this to new levels. She has assisted dozens of members on a range of increasingly complex individual workplace issues, from pushing back against bullying and harassment, to assisting members facing performance or disciplinary processes, and assisting members facing redundancy. In many of these cases, Dianna’s negotiations with management have resulted in positive outcomes that go well beyond the entitlements formalised in the Agreement. She is a determined, fierce and effective advocate for our members’ rights. And in many cases, she has gone beyond advocacy to also provide personal counsel and mentoring for the people she works with.
Bruce Crundwell is a stalwart of the University of Sydney Branch, and his retirement this year and departure from the University will leave a big hole in our Branch – not only because Bruce is a big unit, but because he has been a dependable, good-natured, and outspoken fighter for workers’ rights at our University. This nomination for Life Membership recognises Bruce’s decades of membership and active participation in our Branch. Bruce is a fitter-and-turner who has been employed in the Faculty of Engineering, most recently as a Senior Technical Officer in the School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering – working on field robotics. Bruce’s workmates – both academics and those in the workshop – will miss his ability to not only realise their designs, but to improve on them and find creative workarounds to mechanical problems. While Bruce has always been a union member, it was in the most recent decade that Bruce became even more actively involved in Branch affairs and activities. In particular, Bruce became an important core member of our Campaign Committee during the infamous 2012 round of job cuts at the University of Sydney. Bear in mind that those job cuts were academic job cuts – Bruce’s job was not on the line. But the treatment of academic staff in that episode so disgusted Bruce that he became convinced of the need for active solidarity through the Union to protect those staff and push back against hardheaded management.
continued on p. 67...
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My Union 2018 Life Members ...continued from p.65 Bruce’s active involvement extended into subsequent enterprise bargaining campaigns, especially the fractious 2013 round. Bruce was a powerful presence on picket lines, and no-one who was there will ever forget the feeling of marching through campus on a strike day behind Bruce playing his bagpipes. But perhaps even more importantly, Bruce actively engaged in discussions of strategy and tactics. His hand was often among the first to be raised in big member meetings, and he did not always agree with claims or strategies being proposed by the Branch leadership (Bruce was never afraid to mix it up with either Branch Presidents or academics!). Crucially, these interventions in Branch meetings not only influenced our direction, they also cracked open a space for other members to voice concerns and ask questions – a vital contribution to our Branch democracy that made it more inclusive. Bruce demonstrated an inspiring commitment to social justice. Within the
Colin Long ...continued from p.56 Most importantly, however, Colin has done more than most to allow casual members to not only be part of the NTEU, but to fully participate in the democratic processes of their union. As a negotiator, Colin has led the bargaining for Agreements which significantly improved the pay and working conditions of thousands of employees at most Victorian universities, and in TAFE and Adult Education. Colin’s leadership achieved important advances on academic workloads at several universities and ground-breaking improvements to the relative wages of professional staff. His deep personal commitment to combating family violence was further reflected in his achievement of family violence leave provisions in all Victorian collective agreements, including in the Deakin Agreement in as early as 2013. During his term as Division Secretary, Colin has built the public profile of the NTEU, with high visibility campaigns against the previous Victorian Government’s cuts to TAFE, and widespread public engagement in industrial and professional issues. Thanks to Colin’s direct lobbying efforts, the Andrews Government reinstated elected staff and student representatives to University Councils.
workplace and beyond it, he championed NTEU for Refugees, giving a voice to those people in the most precarious positions through his involvement in this cross-university collective. Bruce never stood for elected office in our Branch or Division. But we believe his decades as a rank-and-file activist and his support for less-experienced delegates warrant this honour nevertheless.
Janet Sincock
Janet Sincock joined the Union in 1995 and during that time she served on the Division Committee as a delegate, a WAC Representative and the CDU Branch and NT Division Vice President (General Staff ).
Janet was a member of the CDU bargaining team for the 2013 negotiations and served for three years on the implementation committee. Her service to the Branch over that time included raising the feminist agenda and coordinating the annual Bluestocking Week event including our inaugural morning tea. Janet was very aware of General Staff issues helping to organise a General Staff event on campus and delivering general staff reclassification workshops. Janet was also a mentor and support person for newly elected officers on the NT Division committee. Janet has been described as the first or in the vanguard of non-academic staff to join us when we could recruit beyond academics and she was a solid supporter and worker for Union activities and well able to get the message of the Union, as a partner in the CDU community, to senior levels of management. NTEU members are the poorer for her absence from the NT Division but she has offered to return as a volunteer to help around the NT Division office as needed.
Colin also deepened NTEU’s links with the broader union movement, with his election as President of the Victorian Trades Hall Council – the first time an NTEU member has taken this position. This is testament to the respect Colin built for our Union across the broader Victorian union movement. But Colin has never been concerned about gratifying his ego as a leader. His solidarity work with other unions and his deep commitment to class politics, including regularly turning up to the picket lines of other unions very early in the morning show that, more than many other academics, he tests the world of books against the world of real life struggle. Colin is an all-round academic and all-round activist and an all-round trade unionist. He is an internationalist in all of these aspects. His work on heritage and globalisation and his work with the people of Laos as an academic, and his work with textile workers in Bangladesh as a trade unionist are examples of how he brings his profound knowledge to practical activism. Colin’s other great passion is advocacy and campaigning on climate change. He is a founding member of Earthworker and is a long term activist on other environmental causes. We are delighted to hear that Colin will be pursuing this important work through his role with Trades Hall in Victoria.
Most importantly, Colin is a person of deep integrity. His commitment to the Union and the Union movement is a natural symptom of his humanity, his empathy for those less fortunate and his fundamental desire for justice. No matter how stressed out he is, he will always ask you how you are, and be genuinely interested in the answer. He is deeply respected and will be sorely missed – but he will of course not be lost to progressive causes because activism flows in his very veins. Finally, many of us will sorely miss speaking with Colin daily, discussing ideas, books, left politics, football, plotting capitalism’s overthrow etc. – but we look forward to finding him for all those things, and a beer or two, in his new role at Trades Hall. Sarah Roberts, Victorian Division Assistant Secretary
Above: Colin Long at a Save TAFE rally in 2011.
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My Union New NTEU staff Katherine Morison Industrial Officer WA Division Katherine has recently joined the NTEU WA Division as an Industrial Officer. She previously worked as an in-house lawyer at a global technology company. Katherine has completed two bachelors’ degrees in science and law along with a postgraduate diploma in journalism. Having worked and volunteered for a number of not for profit organisations in the past, Katherine has always found advocating for others to be the most rewarding work. Katherine is excited to be representing NTEU’s WA members.
Rhianna Keen Branch Organiser WSU Rhianna comes from an academic background having spent many years teaching sociology at Macquarie University. She is a dedicated activist who has volunteered for the NSW Women’s Electoral Lobby, the
Edna Ryan Awards Review Panel and Committee, Amnesty International Australia and The Sydney Feminists. In 2017, Rhianna began her employment at the NTEU as a Growth Recruiter travelling to university campuses across Australia to sign up new union members. She is a committed unionist who is excited to be working alongside her comrades to Change The Rules.
Frank Gafa Branch Organiser Monash Frank Gafa is the new Branch Organiser at Monash University. He has worked in the sector since 2008 and has had a long association with the NTEU. He originally worked at the Australian National University (ANU), working at the National Centre for Indigenous Studies and in varying HR roles. He was the ACT representative on the NTEU A&TSI Policy Committee and was active on the ANU and ACT Division Branch Committees. For the two years before joining the NTEU Frank worked at Deakin University, managing Indigenous Employment and developing their first Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Employment Strategy.
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Kyla-Jayde Johnstone Industrial Officer Qld Division Kyla was recently appointed as an Industrial Officer with the Queensland Division with responsibility for the James Cook University, the Australian Catholic University (Banyo campus) and the University of the Sunshine Coast. Kyla is a practicing solicitor and has worked in a similar capacity with a number of trade unions since 2013. Kyla is passionate about the union movement and is committed to advancing the rights of those she represents. Kyla is looking forward to working with the NTEU members to help change the rules for industrial relations.
Staff movements Wayne Cupido has been appointed to the National Industrial Coordinator position vacated by Sarah Roberts who has been elected to the Victorian Division Assistant Secretary position. Amity Lynch (UNSW Branch Organiser) will transfer to the University of Sydney Branch Organiser position in November 2018.
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