UPDATE NEW SOUTH WALES
UNSW members continue campaign for better job security
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TEU members at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) have vowed to continue their long campaign for improved job security and other provisions in a new Enterprise Agreement.
The campaign has so far involved bans being placed on the transmission of exam results in June and November 2010, rallies outside successive University Council meetings, and various stop work actions. The exam results bans in November led to 34 members being stood down without any pay for two months over DecemberJanuary. Negotiations with UNSW management have now dragged on for nearly two years, with the major sticking points being UNSW’s refusal to reinstate provisions on enhanced job security for fixed term and casual employees, quantifiable and effective regulation of academic workloads, and a raft of other improvements.
VC clings to outdated approach These employment conditions (which UNSW staff previously enjoyed) were arbitrarily stripped away by the Howard Government’s Higher Education Workplace Relations Requirements (HEWRRs) and the discredited WorkChoices legislation. Agreements reached at 32 other universities, including all of the rest of the ‘Group of 8’, have reinstated the employment conditions. Only UNSW and Macquarie University have refused to do so. Unfortunately, UNSW Vice-Chancellor Professor Fred Hilmer has history – in a previous role as head of Fairfax Media – of enthusiastically embracing an industrial relations approach that takes away employment rights and conditions, and enshrines unfettered management prerogative. Despite Australians overwhelming reject10
arguing that the uncertainties around the international student market and on-going funding issues warrant this approach. But since these provisions were stripped from the current Agreement, the use of fixed-term contracts has dramatically increased, leading to high workloads for all staff, gender inequity, deteriorating quality of the education experience for students, declining standards of intellectual freedom and decreased levels of job security that seriously impact on staff members and their families. In reality, UNSW’s circumstances are little different to most other universities that have agreed to improvements in job security provisions. In fact, given UNSW’s relatively strong asset base and university ‘brand’, it is arguably better off than most to withstand the shortterm fluctuations of student demand.
Fighting on ing this at the 2007 Federal Election, UNSW is still clinging to this approach. The campaign has been complicated by UNSW management preparing a sub-standard Agreement covering General Staff in late 2010, which offered a low pay rise and no significant improvements on rights for casual staff members and fixed term contract employees. NTEU campaigned strongly for staff to reject the Agreement, but it was voted up by a small margin. NTEU subsequently challenged the Agreement’s approval in Fair Work Australia (FWA). FWA eventually approved the Agreement, but only after UNSW management gave additional undertakings around particular clauses that may have resulted in UNSW employees being worse off than the underlying Award provisions. This outcome vindicated NTEU’s stand. We have now lodged an appeal against the FWA decision, which at the time of writing is yet to be heard.
Staff conditions deteriorating UNSW asserts that it needs to retain ‘absolute flexibility’ on the ways it employs staff,
NTEU UNSW Branch President Sarah Gregson said that the Branch is planning a range of activities to continue the campaign during first semester. ‘We want to impress upon Council and management the disquiet felt by many staff who view the lack of bargaining progress as a graphic illustration that management does not value staff, students or the quality of education and research that we collaborate to produce’, Sarah said. ‘We all know that these collaborations take time and long-term investments –they cannot flourish in an atmosphere of insecurity and fear.’ UNSW management’s stance means that the University runs the risk of being less attractive to potential staff due to its inferior employment conditions. If UNSW wants to continue to attract and retain high quality staff, it’s important that these issues are successfully resolved during this bargaining round. This is why NTEU members will continue the campaign for as long as it takes to achieve a satisfactory outcome. A Michael Evans, National Organiser UNSW Campaign site c www.unswstaff.org
NTEU ADVOCATE vol. 18 no. 1