Late last year the NTEU and the ANU concluded probably our best collective enterprise agreement to date which contained many new and improved employment conditions. Due to budgetary uncertainties, however, it included only one salary increase of 4.5% and so was deliberately negotiated as an interim one year agreement, which expired on 30 June 2009.

The ANU NTEU Branch has recently begun bargaining for a new three-year agreement to settle outstanding matters from the interim agreement, including further salary increases, and new matters arising from changes to the Fair Work legislation.

The Branch has compiled a log of claims consistent with the agreed outstanding issues. You can see the draft Log of Claims here.

UNSW@ADFA staff struck on 16 September along with their Kensington colleagues. Their purpose was to bring get UNSW management to engage seriously in bargaining towards an acceptable Fair Work Enterprise Agreement to replace the existing WorkChoices era agreement.

Sub-Branch Committee President Graham Freeman and Vice-President Neil Mudford then joined their colleagues on the UNSW NTEU Academics’ Bargaining team in imposing work bans on forwarding exam results on 26 October.

UNSW made the most extreme response possible by standing Graham, Neil and the others down for the day and instructing them to do no UNSW work. This meant they were unavailable to assist students working on end of year assessments and exam preparation.

Bans on working overtime or beyond normal hours on any day are now in place indefinitely at UNSW@ADFA, along with the Kensington campus. All members are asked not to work overtime or beyond your normal hours.

Please call the ACT Division Office at 6125 2043 or the UNSW Branch at 9385 2479 if you would like further information.

University of Canberra staff have voted overwhelmingly to endorse a new Enterprise Agreement for 2009-2012.

A meeting of NTEU members had also strongly endorsed the draft.

It now awaits approval and registration by Fair Work Australia, which is likely to happen in February. The University has already committed to paying a 6% payrise administratively in January.
The new draft agreement provides improvements for parents and carers, general, academic and UC English Language Institute staff, casuals and staff on fixed-term contracts.
After a long and hard bargaining period, culminating in a strong vote for industrial action (which in the end did not have to be taken) UC members also achieved an agreement that reinstates limitations on use of fixed-term staff lost under the last government’s HEWRRs.

This was the chief sticking point in negotiations as UC management had wanted to introduce 7-year fixed-term contracts for all new level B and C staff. These contracts will now be continuing contracts with longer probation periods.