On Tuesday, a fortnight later than we had wanted, the NTEU bargaining team resumed negotiations with management in a hybrid meeting on the top floor of the F23 ‘Michael Spence’ building. Since August, we’ve largely met with frustrating resistance to our vision of a better and fairer university. So it’s pleasing to report that on one area at least – different aspects of leave – the Bargaining Team are now making some encouraging progress, which we’ll be in touch about soon.

However, on our major priorities for this bargaining round, management have still not indicated any willingness to accept our proposals. In particular, they still haven’t withdrawn their plan to remove protections against overwork, and they’re still propsing to strip academics’ right to a 40% research component in their workload. Our priorities in this round address the very real problems we all face in our work. NTEU members have proposed solutions that offer real protections against overwork, make forced redundancy a thing of the past, put an end to exploitative casualisation, make performance and change management non-punitive and consensual, establish the right to flexible work and work-from-home arrangements for professional staff, and embody a real commitment to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment targets. I’m sorry to report that on all these crucial issues, our position and management’s are still miles apart.

It’s essential to the integrity of the bargaining process that staff be frankly informed about the union’s and management’s positions. So it was unfortunate that the Vice-Chancellor told everyone in an email last week that under management’s proposal for the new agreement, ‘the majority of our continuing academic staff will continue to be employed in teaching and research positions with a traditional 40/40/20 workload allocation’. Some members have understandably interpreted this as management backing down from their original intention to take the right to 40/40/20 out of the Enterprise Agreement. It’s important that everyone understands that despite the VC’s message, no such backdown is happening, that management’s bargaining position is unchanged, and that they are still proposing to remove the right to 40/40/20 from the EA.

From the start, management have claimed that their intention is to retain 40/40/20 as the reference point for academics on teaching and research contracts. Intentions are all very well – but what matters is the legally enforceable protections staff are given in the EA. Regardless of what Mark Scott claims about what he wants or plans to do, management are still proposing to remove a right to 40/40/20, and still want to force academics to negotiate their teaching-research balance one-on-one with their head of school every year. Our position is very clear: you don’t signal commitment to 40/40/20 by striking it out of the agreement.

The NTEU maintains its belief that this is the most serious attack on staff rights at the university for many, many years. We think that it will only contribute to the intensification of already-out-of-control teaching workloads and degrade the quality of education at the institution. In contrast, our proposal for the future of academic work, which was overwhelmingly endorsed by members at our meeting last week, represents a serious and realistic plan both to regulate academic workload and to end exploitative casualisation.

Bargaining update – bargaining meeting 12, March 29

The bargaining meeting yesterday discussed the following subjects:

Professional staff development fund: We are nearing in-principle agreement on our modest claims for the maintenance of the PSDF, which was established in 2013 in lieu of a better pay-rise. There still is no final agreement that funds can only be used for individual staff career development, not management-imposed training requirements.

Professional staff career and recruitment: There was significant disagreement about the role of internal advertising in professional staff vacancies. The NTEU is determined that institutional knowledge needs to be valued and that professional staff vacancies must therefore be advertised internally first. Management want to be able to advertise externally at the same time. We see this as a significant diminution to staff rights at the university.

Dispute settlement: Management is seeking to make it easier for them to implement changes when we are in dispute. The NTEU is clear that we will not accept this.

Redundancy pay: Management wants severance payments to be based upon the staff member’s average fraction over the whole period of their employment. This would see both winners and losers. The NTEU insists on the most favourable severance conditions for staff possible.

One-hour minimum engagement for casuals: University management want to reduce the current minimum engagement period from three to one hours. The NTEU is very concerned that this will open the door to our most precarious staff being forced to work for less than the existing minimum period. Both parties agreed to think further about ways which will protect casual staff and give the employer more flexibility.

Casualisation: management restated their periodic employment ‘solution’. We reject it because it locks staff in terrible jobs without career prospects; generates workload problems since it doesn’t give staff enough time to keep up with new research in their fields; and breaks the teaching-research nexus, thereby robbing the university, supposedly a research-intensive institution, of its distinctiveness (in contrast, for instance, to schools and TAFEs).

Future of academic work: We have asked management to come back with more information on their position on three areas on our proposals for the future of academic work: what percentage of the academic workforce should be on a balanced teaching-research role; what division of teaching and research constitutes a balanced teaching-research role; and what benefit to the university derives from teaching-only roles.

40/40/20 and individual workload negotiation: Management have not withdrawn their claim to remove the right to 40/40/20 and force academics to negotiate their research-teaching balance annually.

At last week’s Enterprise Bargaining meeting, management continued to refuse our key proposals for badly needed reforms to working conditions at the university. On our vital claims for job security and collegial change management, they refused outright to even engage with our ideas. They have also still not withdrawn their proposal to force academics to negotiate their research-teaching balance annually with their supervisor – the most serious threat to staff rights at the university for many years.

This leaves us with little choice other than to initiate a campaign of industrial action, as authorised by the protected ballot which closes tomorrow. Given our commitment to member-led decision-making, we will be asking you to vote to endorse a strike on Wednesday 11 May of 24 hours’ duration, and to consider the option of extending it into a 48 hour strike on Thursday May 12. We will also be asking you to vote on a possible further strike in week 13 if sufficient progress at bargaining is not made.

Rank-And-File-Action (RAFA) are excited that at today’s USyd NTEU meeting, members endorsed a series of steps to continue building our Enterprise Agreement campaign. 

Over 200 people attended today’s members meeting, with 70% supporting a motion to start escalating our industrial campaign, by calling a mass strike meeting on August 2nd to vote on strikes in week three, followed by strike action on Open Day. A further 24% supported a counterposed motion to call a 48-hour strike immediately. While we’re disappointed that what we regard as a small tactical disagreement was raised to the level of strategy and principle, we’re happy that we can now move together as a branch towards serious organising and equally serious strike action.

We know that to win working conditions commensurate with providing the high-quality education that students deserve, we will need to take further industrial action, including more strikes and pickets in semester two. 

We also know that to make strikes and pickets as effective as possible, we will need to recruit new members to the union, and increase member engagement by organising local area meetings, forums and information sessions. We need to recruit, organise, and mobilise. 

The next step in the campaign is to make sure there is a strong turn out to the mass strike meeting on August 2nd. A resounding ‘YES’ to a strike in week three from hundreds of members will send a clear signal to management that we are serious about conversion rights for casuals and pay for all hours worked; an end to the attacks on the 40-40-20 and the research-teaching nexus; enforceable First Nations employment targets; and, secure and permanent jobs for professional staff. 

Please get involved to help us build awareness and participation in the EA campaign. The first of these will be a phone banking session, which you can sign up for here. Watch this space for more!