But enterprise bargaining is not a one-way street. The University of Sydney’s management had a list of its own. This included demanding a removal of the right to 40:40:20 (one’s workload consisting of 40% teaching, 40% research, and 20% administration). Additionally, the University sought to introduce more casual teachingonly roles, remove Academic Workload Committees, and weaken the dispute resolution clause. Furthermore, superannuation is a key feminist issue in the enterprise agreement. Our country’s superannuation gender gap means that women retire on average with 25% less superannuation than men. This is often due to women stopping work at an earlier age, reducing their hours, or taking smaller and lower-paying jobs due to caregiving responsibilities, and also the existing genderpay gap. By increasing superannuation in the higher education sector, particularly for casual, it helps to offset this gap as women predominantly fulfil these roles. However, to achieve this, the aforementioned demands must be met, particularly paid parental leave, conversion of casual and permanent contracts, and flexible working arrangements. Thus, industrial action, with the support of students, will encourage positive change for staff.
Advocating for staff rights additionally means advocating for gender equity in the workplace.
After a month of striking with the support of the Italian, Government, Fine Arts, and History departments, as well as other unions like the Builders Labourers Federation and the Clothing Trades Union, these activists won the first women’s studies course at USyd, and also a new, separate Department of General Philosophy that was autonomous and democratically run by students and staff. This is a notorious example of student and staff working together, taking strike action, and fighting for progressive, feminist change in higher education. That’s exactly what we need in 2026 for the new Enterprise Bargaining round.
So what can we do to support staff and enterprise bargaining? Traditionally, students get involved through organising in and around the SRC, particularly through groups like the Women’s Collective (WoCo) and the Education Action Group (EAG), and also through course and department contingents to strikes. We work with the two staff unions on campus. In particular, we work closely with the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), to help spread the word about campaigns, inform others on how to join the union, and combat counter-productive lines from the University about union bargaining being disruptive or unhelpful for students. When it comes to striking, we stand in solidarity with staff on the picket lines at the University to shut down operations for the day.
Do strikes even work? Strike action has a long history in union movements and at USyd, and you should be a part of it! There are various strategies and forms of industrial action taken by workers, with strikes being a more extreme measure that staff have often had to take to actually make University management listen to them. There’s also a long-standing feminist tradition of strikes and protests at USyd, most notably with the month-long student and staff strike in 1973 that ultimately won a feminist philosophy department and paved the way for the Gender Studies department today. Feminist courses and gender studies, as well as the rights and protections of staff, don’t just appear out of goodwill. They have been fought for and must be won. In 1973, the proposal for a “Women and Philosophy” course was initially rejected by the head of the Department of Philosophy, leading to students and staff having a mass meeting to vote for a “Philosophy of Feminist Thought” course. When their petition and their interruption of a meeting of the Professorial Board were unsuccessful, this group voted to go on strike.
As feminists, it is essential to stand with our staff and to recognise the unique role that students can play in supporting staff and helping to shut down business-asusual during strike periods.
Get involved with the Women’s Collective and Education Action Group now! And follow @usydwoco for more !!
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