Current disputes & actions

Campbell Smith, National Industrial Officer

A rundown of disputes and actions the NTEU has been prosecuting on behalf of members across the country.

NTEU members at the University of Newcastle (UON) who were forced to take annual leave at Easter achieved a massive win in the Fair Work Commission (FWC). The FWC ruled management’s direction for staff to take 5 days annual leave, without proper consultation, was unlawful. As a result UON staff should be re-credited in excess of 10,000 days annual leave. Read the FWC decision here. As a quick refresher: over Easter 2020, the University deemed all staff to be on leave for 5 days, regardless of whether that was convenient to them or indeed whether they would be required to work over that period! Staff were only able to get an exemption if they could make a case that it was in the University’s interest to grant it. In the NTEU’s view this was a blatant theft of workers’ entitlements.

In the course of arbitration, the VC and Director of HR both admitted that they did not consider or take advice on whether the direction to take leave was permitted by the Agreements or the Fair Work Act. In hilarious scenes during crossexamination, the University’s witnesses either admitted to colluding in the preparation of their evidence or tried to claim that identical paragraphs (including grammatical errors) in different witness statements were the result of some extraordinary coincidence.

In the end, the FWC found in favour of the Union and told the University it should re-credit all staff who were subject to the direction, meaning we recovered approximately $6 million in staff entitlements management had attempted to steal. It also meant we were successful in a separate dispute where the University was planning on deeming all staff to be on leave for 9 days over the Christmas and New Year period.

The lesson is that where management is looking to ride roughshod over their legal obligations in an attempt to make staff pay for COVID savings, they should expect the NTEU to be standing in their way. Well done to all the members who made this win possible!

Griffith University has just completed consultation on its ‘Roadmap to Sustainability’ change management proposal. Under the proposal, they seem to believe that they are entitled to transfer Dental Assistant staff to 39 week contracts, down from their current 52 week contracts. We say ‘seem to believe’ because they have not provided sufficient information for those staff to understand exactly what is proposed.

The Union has lodged a dispute on the issue and referred it to the FWC for resolution.

Staff and students from the University of Sydney's School of Medical Sciences hosted an afternoon of action in November to protest against proposed cuts to staff and courses, which will have a detrimental impact on the quality of both MedSci research and teaching at USyd.

NTEU members, staff and students at UTS rallied against job cuts in November. Over 350 staff recently took voluntary redundancies, now a new round of forced redundancies has been announced. Many remaining staff are under huge workload pressure, so NTEU members are standing up to defend quality public higher education. •