Enterprise Bar gai
ning College of Law
Update College of Law staff reject retrograde management Agreement Staff at the College of Law, the largest provider of practical legal training in Australasia, have struck a blow against an unfair Enterprise Agreement. On 15 January, staff overwhelmingly rejected the management proposed Agreement in a resounding 89 to 40 no vote. NTEU Branch President, Michael Holland, said that College of Law management decided in December to put its draft Enterprise Agreement to staff for approval, despite the fact that agreement had not
yet been reached with the NTEU.
Vote No
‘All in all, the proposed Agreement was retrograde. It radically reduced staff rights and entitlements, under the guise of providing a simple Agreement that was easy for staff to understand.’
‘Management wanted to introduce a perforto save your mance pay system, conditions an d protect your moving away from annual salary set annual salary increase. increases and www.nteu.or g.au/nsw/col abolishing the automatic increHolland said manageFor more inf ormation, vis it www.nteu.org .au/nsw/col mental increase ment draft agreement staff receive on was a far cry from the the anniversary current Agreement apof their employment. It wasn’t proved by staff in 2010. clear how performance would be assessed ‘The NTEU opposed the draft Agreement and implemented—the proposed at the bargaining table and actively Agreement did not outline any specific campaigned against the it. We were natuperformance measurement process, which rally pleased when staff overwhelmingly would have made it difficult for staff to rejected it,’ he said. ‘Staff at the College of enforce their rights,’ Holland said. Law are keen to get back to the table to ‘In the initial tabled Agreement, lecturer bargain for an Agreement that values the workloads were to be increased by 20%, contribution staff make to the College of without a proper workload study or Law, and treats staff fairly.’ consultation. Management also proposed The College of Law prepares law gradto strip staff rights relating to consultation uates for admission to practice and when managing change in the workplace offers postgraduate specialised degree and consultation in dispute resolution – by programs and continuing professional deapplication of the Government’s model velopment seminars and workshops. It has clauses in these areas. Although some of campuses in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane the rights were restored after negotiations, and Perth (as well as New Zealand). in the final proposed Agreement, the model clauses remained and lecturer workloads www.nteu.org.au/col were increased by between 6% –14%. Authorised by
Base Funding Review: the Claytons response
Genevieve Kelly,
NTEU NSW Division
Secretary
it would commission a more detailed review of higher education funding.
What does a Government do after two major reviews over a three year period that provide the evidence and the inescapable conclusion that funding per government-supported university students needs to increase by at least 10 per cent on average? The answer, according to John Ross (‘Death by Review’, The Australian, 30 January 2013) is that it sits on the report for 15 months and releases its formal response on the a public holiday while the country is afflicted by floods in the north and fires in the south. It was early in 2008 that then Education Minister Julia Gillard announced the Review of Australian Higher Education to be chaired by Professor Denise Bradley. Amongst the many recommendations in the final report released in December 2008 was one that called for a 10 per cent increase in funding per government-supported student. While the Government adopted many of the Bradley Review recommendations in its May 2009 ‘Transforming Australian Higher Education’ policy initiatives, including the introduction of the demand driven system, it did not adopt the recommendation for a 10 per cent increase in funding but indicated that
After more than an 18 month delay, Dr Jane Lomax-Smith was eventually asked to chair a review of university base funding with the final report being released in November 2011. The evidence presented in the Base Funding Review essentially reaffirmed the Bradley findings that current funding clusters did not reflect the real costs of educating students and that universities were underfunded to educate government-supported students. In its formal response to the Base Funding Review findings and 29 recommendations released on 28 January, the Federal Government: • Rejected 17 recommendations: five being noted, three requiring no further action, and eight not being accepted. • Accepted 7 recommendations of which five maintained the status quo and two had already been implemented. • P artially accepted 6 recommendations which had already been implemented, referred to another department or reflected current Government policy. In other words, the Government’s formal response to the Bradley and Base Funding Reviews is a Clayton’s response – that is, the response you have when you’re not having a response. Paul Kniest, NTEU Policy & Research Coordinator www.nteu.org.au/basefundingreview
NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 20 no. 1 • March 2013 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 7