The current bargaining round is shaping up to be a key contest over the shape of our workforce, with management’s proposed introduction of teaching associates to cover up to twenty hours face-to-face per week. For the last six years I have been a casual academic, in FASS / SSPS, and I am greatly fortunate to now have a postdoc in Geosciences. Like many of you, I worry these jobs will undermine my future, and the future of our university as we know it.
Our union presents an alternative vision of secure, quality jobs. How we get it is through a strong industrial campaign, which must be founded on effective strike action. In turn, making that so depends on a democratic, open union structure built from local area organising.
Genuine relationships and mutual aid are at the heart of a union branch that can win change – and change not just in our workplace, but in society, as with our union’s commitment to the campaign for a free Palestine.
That’s why I’m a member of Rank And File Action (RAFA rafausyd.com). We’re an open coalition of activists across the university who cohere around strategic militancy within a democratic, inclusive union.
Rank-And-File Action USYD 