My Union It was also agreed to scrutinise future enterprise bargaining claims and clauses through a gender lens. More specifically this would mean identifying and monitoring the impacts on women, both positive and negative. University Branches undertook to work with the National Office in ensuring that their universities are complying with the new Workplace Gender Equality Act (WGEA), which replaced the previous EEO legalisation. The new Act is considerably stronger thanks to effective lobbying by women in and out of Parliament. Organisations, including universities (and the NTEU), now not only have to gather and analyse their data but also to measure progress against Gender Equality Indicators (GEIs).
Major issues The decision was made to hold a major conference on insecure work in the higher education sector to draw attention the exponential rise in casual employment in university teaching, the proliferation of research contracts, limited term employment on ‘soft money’ and outsourcing and contracting out. The conference will focus on organising amongst and for insecure workers, as well as public advocacy and campaigning for secure employment. The focus on education and research policy was firmly upon the NTEU doing our own research to provide the evidence and internal knowledge on major issues to enable the Union to better position and campaign for change and improvements. Council voted to focus upon the inequities in external grant funded research processes; review the ERA and stop the misuse in performance appraisal; investigate the negative impacts and outcomes of franchising; take on the ‘quality’ discourse and also the many issues around the increased reliance upon ICTs in teaching, including the current MOOCs enthusiasm. There were three plenary sessions, on enterprise bargaining, the NTEU election campaign and the changing shape of the tertiary sector. Rather than a panel of speakers, this year the plenaries operated as ‘open mike’ sessions, which enabled more delegates to be heard.
Guest speakers Australian Education Union (AEU) Federal TAFE Secretary, Pat Forward addressed the Council on the wholesale destruction of the public TAFE system and the union campaigns. The student union presidents, Jade Tyrell from the National Union of Students (NUS) and Meghan Hopper of the Council Australia Postgraduate Associations (CAPA) spoke of their campaigns this year for university and students funding
Above: National Officers with Andrew Wilkie, Independent Member for Denison. Right, top: Ged Kearney, ACTU President. Middle: Jade Tyrell, NUS President. Bottom: Lesley Francey, NZ TEU President. and expressed their gratitude for NTEU support at national to campus level. NTEU delegates applauded the student unions for their support of staff, especially in contentious bargaining campaigns involving strikes and results bans. ACTU President, Ged Kearney gave a stirring and important speech where she outlined the need for the trade union movement to connect with people. Her address attracted thoughtful questions and comments, which she took on board in further developing the ACTU’s policy and campaigns The President of our sister union, the New Zealand Tertiary Education Union (TEU), Lesley Francey, told a chilling story of rampant neo-liberal attacks upon the integrity of higher education governance, funding and student support. However, she assured the Council that the TEU keeps up the fight mitigating some of the extremes and also making some gains, relying upon the strength of being an industry union and increasing density and membership. Independent MHR for Denison in Tasmania, Andrew Wilkie and Greens MHR for Melbourne, Adam Bandt also addressed the Council to thank the Union for support in their re-election campaigns and pledged to continue being advocates for higher education and workers’ rights.
Workshops For the first time in some years, Councillors had the opportunity to participate in short workshops. These were on MOOCs, negoti-
page 48 • NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 20 no. 3 • November 2013 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate