The NTEU has called a 24 hour strike on Open Day – August 8th. More information on the reasons for the strike can be found here.

If you do not work on Open Day anyway, this strike does not affect you, but the NTEU calls on you to come along to the picket line to show your support.

If you have been rostered on to work on Open Day, then the NTEU calls on you to join the strike and come along to the picket line.

If you have been asked to “volunteer” on Open Day, then the NTEU calls on you not to do so and come along to the picket line instead .

Management may ask you to indicated NOW whether you intend to strike on Open Day.  You are not required to answer and definitely should not do so.

Every individual worker has the right under Australian law to decide whether or not to participate in properly authorised strikes like this one.  You can make up your mind about participating at any time up to and on the day.  Your employer cannot require you to make up your mind, or to declare your intention, before then. You are also entitled to change your mind.  Serious penalties apply against the University and potentially your supervisor if you are disadvantaged in your employment in any way as a result of participating in protected action.

Of course, everyone who goes on strike loses pay for the duration of the strike – if you would normally have been paid for that day’s work, or for some hours of that day, then you will not be paid that amount when you go on strike.  So on or after the strike day, the employer is within their rights to ask you or your supervisor to report whether you worked or not.  This enables them to dock pay.

But there is no requirement for you to tell them in advance.

The purpose of the strike is to place maximum pressure on the University senior management to take a more reasonable position on wages and conditions at the bargaining table.  If they get detailed advance notice of exactly who is and isn’t going on strike, then that undermines the effect of the strike by helping management to make contingency plans.  If you support the Union’s claims, then do not tell VU management in advance whether or not you will be striking on August 8.

If VU management ask you to say whether or not you intend to go on strike, NTEU advises you that you are entitled to simply respond that you have not yet decided.

Please circulate this message widely within your VU networks, and encourage those colleagues who have not yet joined the NTEU to join online.

Richard Gough,
President, NTEU VU Branch

Yesterday’s members meeting unanimously voted to call for the Vice Chancellor to step down, and for all NTEU members to strike on Open Day, August 8.  This regrettable step has been taken because;

1/  Management committed to pay rises in 2010 in a written agreement with the union
2/  Management have reneged on this written commitment
3/  VU staff are among the lowest paid in the University sector

The for 4 motionspassed unanimously at yesterday’s meetingare as follows:

1. That this General Meeting of the VU NTEU Branch reiterates its condemnation of:

• Management’s reneging on commitments made last year, in the Heads of Agreement that lead to the 2009 Agreement, to pay salary rises in 2010, which leaves VU staff among the worst paid in the sector;
• Management’s refusal to seriously discuss ways to resolve the dispute and to bargain in good faith for a new Agreement; and
• Management’s continuing and escalating aggressive response to the union industrial action.

2. That this meeting further calls on University management to

• bargain in good faith with the NTEU;
• provide an immediate pay rise comparable with industry standards so that VU staff do not become the worst paid staff out of 42 universities in Australia; and
• immediately and unconditionally reinstate payment of wages for those staff participating in the current results bans.

3. Further, that this meeting endorses an escalation of industrial action and community protest action to protest against Management’s failure to bargain in good faith and attempts to massively increase workloads of general staff and academic staff. This action will include:

• A strike on Open Day, Sunday 8 August;
• Rolling strike action to begin after Open Day, on dates to be determined by the Branch Committee;
• Escalation of the community and media campaign; and

4. Due to the ineffectual and duplicitous manner in which this situation has been handled by the Vice Chancellor, that this meeting calls on VU Council to immediately stand down the Vice Chancellor.

As you will see above in bold, one of the motions calls for a strike on Open Day, Sunday 8 August. We are therefore calling on all members to support the Strike on Open Day to send a clear message to VU senior management that their failure to bargain in good faith, including their inaction in genuinely negotiating a payrise for all general and academic staff, will not be tolerated any longer. We don’t take this action lightly, but enough is enough; the Union demands that VU senior management begin treating VU staff with respect!

Dear DVC Hickman

You claim in your recent communication with staff that you wish to find an acceptable compromise to the current dispute which has involved a ban on transmission of results.

But at the last meeting to discuss Enterprise Bargaining, you and Elizabeth Harman’s management team rejected the solution put forward by the President of the VU NTEU Branch Richard Gough and  the State Secretary of the NTEU, Mathew McGowan..

The NTEU agreed to withdraw all industrial action if VU management agreed to an increase in pay comparable to other universities in 2010, in line with what had been agreed n the Heads of Agreement signed by VU Management and the NTEU last year.

It was put to your management team that it was unreasonable for you not to give this pay rise given that every other University in Victoria will give an increase of at least 4% this year. Moreover the NTEU explained to you if the University did not provide a pay rise this year it would seriously damage the reputation of the University because staff at VU would become the lowest payed in the country.

The NTEU said it was serious about resolving the current dispute and wanted to negotiate a solution.

Your lead negotiators told the NTEU that, despite previous commitments given on salaries, the University would not discuss salaries until other matters were dealt with.  However, they could not discuss what other things needed to be dealt with because they had not considered our proposals and had not finalised their own “agenda” for bargaining.

Not surprisingly, NTEU said you were not treating the current dispute seriously if you had not even got your act together– despite taking more than six months to prepare for the meeting.

After the wreckage and pain which has been meted out against VU staff over the last six years since the beginning of this Vice Chancellor’s tenure, indeed your response showed great contempt for the general and academic staff of the University who you seem to think should now be the lowest paid in the  entire sector as well having some of the worst workloads.

The NTEU gave you a log of claims and a full draft agreement three months ago, in April.

You say you wish to reach a compromise with the NTEU: you will reinstate the staff who have been stood down if the NTEU agrees to release all fail results.  This is no compromise at all.  In effect, you are asking for the bans to be lifted, because once all fail results have been identified, then by simple logic, all remaining students will be known to have passed.  If the bans were lifted, then of course you would be required by law to reinstate the staff who have been stood down.  You are, in effect, offering to obey the law if the Union lifts the bans.

Not only is your offer disingenuous but you are continuing to deny VU staff wage justice and a fair deal. You seem unable to treat VU staff with the same degree of fairness as any other University worker in the sector.

It is the Union that has offered a real compromise.  We will lift the bans if the University honours its 2009 signed commitment to pay a wage rise in 2010.  The University should embrace this compromise and, in the words of our would-be Prime Minister, “move forward”.

The NTEU remains ready to settle this dispute at any time.  It is waiting for VU management to come to the table with a genuine willingness to compromise.

Yours Sincerely
VU NTEU Branch