VU Management Revisits Workchoices

Management at Victoria University are in the process of breaching agreements on workloads, said Dr Jamie Doughney, Victorian President of the National Tertiary Education Union today.

“Victoria University management are using sleight of hand to unilaterally impose higher workloads on fewer academic staff. This means more threats to jobs and higher student-staff ratios,” Dr Doughney said.

“Last year, staff at Victoria University voted in good faith for a new collective agreement. That agreement between the NTEU and Victoria University said there would be no change to existing workloads unless agreed jointly between the union and management.

“The holiday season has caused a technical delay in Fair Work Australia approving the new agreement. There is a short time before the new agreement becomes technically binding, but it is certainly morally binding,” he said.

“The University is relying on relics from the Howard-Government imposed collective agreement from several years ago that technically is still in place until the new agreement comes into effect,” said Dr Doughney.

Dr Doughney continued: “To use a technical delay and the annual leave period to sneak through changes is bad faith. It also means that management with malice aforethought will breach the Heads of Agreement, signed officially by the University last year.”

“No changes means no changes, unless agreed on jointly by the union and management. We just want fair negotiation, without a Howard-Government gun pointed at our heads,” said Dr Doughney.

The NTEU has created a website to raise awareness about this issue with staff, students and the community: www.vufacts.org.

For further information contact:

Alex White, Communications and Campaigns Officer

Email: awhite@vic.nteu.org.au,

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.

After strong industrial action taken by NTEU members last week, the University of Melbourne management today tabled an offer in collective bargaining negotiations.

While it ranged across many of the issues which the NTEU has raised in negotiations, the main elements of their offer are:

Salary offer:

12% (including the 2% already paid from April 2009), with the last instalment of 3% on 31 March 2012;

plus

3 x 1% increases (in March 2011 and March 2012), each contingent on completion and implementation by those dates of various reviews of classifications and performance review processes.

(compare this to 16% at Deakin, 16.5% at Monash, 17% at Sydney Uni, all with no “contingent” component)

Concessions to the Union’s claims:

• separate payment for all casual marking outside the contact hour;
• 9% superannuation for all casuals (at the moment only the more regular casuals receive 9%);
• Increased job security and superannuation for fixed term research academics (still considering their position about research professional staff);
• Restoration of some, but not all of, the protections against the misuse of fixed term employment that were abolished under WorkChoices;
• Right for all staff to payment of pro-rata long service leave on termination after 7 years (instead of current 10 years);
• Right for staff to get off AWAs and back onto the collective agreement;
• Classification standards put back into the Agreement instead of being in University policy;
• Improved definitions of lecture and tutorial to ensure proper payment for sessional lecturing work.

Concessions the University wants:

• capacity to direct staff to take annual leave during periods of University close down;
• retention of greater managerial prerogative bestowed by Howard government policies in relation to matters such as changes to employment policies and appointment by management, instead of by agreement, of “independent” chairs for discipline appeals committees;
• expanded span of ordinary hours for sports centre staff;
• retention of contentious “flexible week” arrangements for professional staff, where Saturdays or Sundays can be substituted for a week day;
• significantly expanding the range of staff on “performance based contracts”;
• a longer agreement, running to late 2012 (instead of June 2012 which would bring us into line with most universities), thus delaying the date of the next round of wage negotiations;
• a comprehensive review of the academic and professional staff classification structures linking incremental progression to “rewarding of high performance”;
• refusing to restore the full award protections against misuse of fixed term contracts which were stripped away by Howard government policies.

In relation to the biggest issue in bargaining this year – job security and change management – the University is seeking an Agreement containing only broad commitments qualified by words such as “The University reserves the right to make adjustments to staffing in areas where restructuring is required”.

In the context of what remains a traumatic year for many staff – with ERP, RDM and other random acts of managerialism – it is disappointing that University management has failed to offer any meaningful undertakings about job security once the current processes are over, or to put forward a salary offer which will see Melbourne University maintain “realistic and competitive” salaries for the staff who have been put through all this upheaval.

There is much detail in what the University has proposed – including on issues such as workload management, Indigenous employment, encouraging early career academics, performance management and research misconduct – which the Union will be examining in detail before responding to management at the next bargaining meeting scheduled for October 6^th.

While the University management have made some important concessions in this latest document, it is not yet good enough to form the basis for a new Agreement.

The Union will continue to consult with members on our bargaining position, and a members meeting will be called in the week of Sept 28^th to report on bargaining developments in more detail and decide on the next steps.  Details of date, time and venue will be circulated soon.