Casual staff lose if Murdoch Agreement is terminated By Marty Braithwaite WA Division Senior State Organiser
Casual university staff have few enforceable employment rights and protections, and many of those that do exist at Murdoch University stand to be lost if management’s attempt to terminate the University’s Enterprise Agreement is successful. In an action already well-reported, Murdoch University management has applied to the Fair Work Commission (FWC) to terminate the Agreement which covers the University’s 3,500 staff, more than 2,000 of them casual or sessional staff and a further 400 on fixed-term contracts. The FWC hearing concluded on 21 July, but the outcome is not yet known. If Murdoch’s application is successful, the only enforceable protection for terms and conditions of employment would be those in National Employment Standards (NES) and Modern Awards. In almost every case, they are inferior to the Enterprise Agreement, and there are many other rights and protections which would have no enforceable protection at all.
No restraints For the many who view casual and sessional employment as a path to more secure university academic careers, termination of the Agreement will have a significant impact. Setting aside the issue of pay which, could fall by as much as 39 per cent, there would no longer be any restraints on the use of casuals and no obligation on management to look at career development or opportunities for more secure employment. At present, casual academic staff averaging more than ten hours per week can request HR to consider whether a casual contract is the most appropriate type of contract. Where appropriate, those staff could be converted to a fixed-term or on-going contract.
Obligations and commitments gone This is a provision, reinforced under the Enterprise Agreement by an enforceable commitment, that the University only uses casual academic contracts where it is reasonable and appropriate to do so. University managements must also endeavour not to employ more casuals than the industry average. These obligations could be gone, completely, if the Enterprise Agreement is terminated. Significantly, the University has entered into a commitment through the Enterprise Agreement to establish Scholarly Teaching Fellow positions for work which would otherwise be done by casual staff. It was a move designed to counteract the increasing casualisation of jobs at the University and offer some work on a more secure basis. That commitment could also go. Coupled with that, casual academic staff could lose right of access to workplace email, computer networks, library cards, paid induction, along with the current access to funding grants and professional development funds. Rights were negotiated into the Enterprise Agreement to redress complaints from casual staff that they were treated as second class citizens and not included in such things as academic decision-making and workplace meetings within schools and faculties.
Currently, casual staff have access to grievance processes in the Enterprise Agreement to try and resolve disagreements in the workplace. Such access could disappear, and dispute rights could be diminished through the curtailing of the internal University process. The right to take some matters to the FWC for conciliation and/or arbitration could be lost. At a more general level, committees such as the academic and professional staff consultative committees could go, as could the right for staff to be consulted on changes to policies affecting terms and conditions of employment. Currently consultative groups meet with management on a regular basis to ensure the Enterprise Agreement operates in a practical fashion and provide a constructive opportunity to iron out problems before they arise. They form the basis of a collaborative approach to ensuring good employment relationships and stand to be gone. The list goes on: there would be no enforceable access to domestic and family violence leave, staff would be less aware of aspirational provisions such as to environmental sustainability, or rights and obligations around workplace bullying, and casual academic staff protection against improper crediting of publications. It may be that casual staff pay scant attention to Enterprise Agreements, such is the precarious and insecure nature of their work, but these rights and protections are valuable and already insecure work will become even less secure should Murdoch’s Enterprise Agreement be terminated. The time is right for casual academic staff to stand together, join NTEU and ensure that those conditions that have been fought for and won through enterprise bargaining remain, not just for current staff, but for future generations of academics trying to establish and build academic careers. www.nteu.org.au/murdoch/thinkshame
read online at www.unicasual.org.au
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