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.

UOW management stonewall negotiations for new Collective Agreements

The Collective Agreement for staff at UOW expired in November 2008. The NTEU served a log of claims on University management midway through 2008 seeking to negotiate a new Collective Agreement to cover all staff.

The Union claims for the  Agreement aim to liberate staff from the shackles of the Howard Government’s HEWRRs/WorkChoices legislation and to provide significant improvements to your overall pay and conditions of work. The claim if agreed to will also significantly improve the working conditions of the University’s underclass of casuals, research only staff and others on precarious forms of employment.

When the Howard Government general staff and academic agreements expired in  November 2008, management were forced to start bargaining with the NTEU. However, nothing has changed over the ensuing seven months.  University management have held fast in their defence of the current Agreements and  not a single issue has been settled.

Unfortunately, management prefer to  maintain the status quo which has promoted unfairness and unbridled management prerogative in your workplace.

Our claims

For general staff, NTEU has tabled clauses which seek to improve current job reclassification processes, regulate general staff workloads, provide opportunities to Indigenous members of our community, and  improve job flexibility for those staff with unpaid carers responsibilities.

In addition, we have promoted clauses on managing change and joint consultative committees which seek to restore the Union’s rightful role in workplace consultation processes.

In bargaining for academic staff, considerable time has been spent arguing over academic workload issues. Management is refusing to recognise the exponential growth in members’ workloads in recent years. They have not yet agreed to the restoration of a University wide workloads committee which existed in the previous Agreement.
This would be charged with monitoring and regulating workload issues across the University. We think much of this opposition stems from their apparent pathological fear of union representation on this Committee and their desire to have unfettered control of workload allocation processes.

Undoing AWAs

Recently, the NTEU also tabled a clause seeking to provide those staff forced onto Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) to be given an opportunity to opt back onto the Collective Agreement.

We see this as especially important at UOW where management were particularly zealous in their embrace of individual contracts.

To date, management have baulked at giving us a commitment on this and also in providing us with any details on the numbers of staff currently subject to these unfair employment arrangements. Which beggars the question, what are they hiding and why are they trying to hold on to the last vestiges of Howard’s draconian laws?

Help us fight for your rights

UOW staff must stay united and resolute in the weeks ahead. We will be calling on you on a regular basis as we prosecute our claims to restore fairness and transparency to your workplaces.

We need you to join our campaign, to achieve fair and manageable workloads, a pay rise which will fairly acknowledge the hard work of UOW staff, and to achieve respect at work for all.

If you’re not currently a Union member, please join.  To be a part of our campaign, you need to join the union today.

If you are already a member of the NTEU, please contact your Union to volunteer in our Campaign Committee work. You can do as much or as little as you like. Every helping hand will help us win the kind of pay and conditions YOU deserve!

Negotiations for a new enterprise agreement at Monash failed to progress at the first meeting for 2009 (the eighteenth over all).

While the major obstacle remains the inadequacy of the pay offer from university management, the other key issues that are unresolved are:

1. Separate marking for sessionals. In addition to paying for time in teaching, the University to pay separately for marking carried out by sessional staff.

2. Severance pay for Research Contingent Continuing Employees. This is a new form of more secure employment within areas funded by research grants for which University management has offered lower severance payments than are currently provided for fixed term employees.

3. Employer contribution to superannuation for fixed term staff with at least one year of service, to be raised from 9% to 17% for all such staff.

4. Limitations on casual staff numbers as agreed for 2005 EBA before HEWRRs
The University shall ensure that in respect of casual employment staffing:

4.1 That over the life of the Agreement the total full-time equivalent number of sessional academic staff will reduce as a proportion of the total full-time equivalent number of academic staff employed by the University.
4.2 A target reduction of an average 5% of the proportion set out in 1.1, including allowance for normal seasonal fluctuations.
4.3 The bench mark date for assessment of the targeted reductions in 1.1 and 1.2 is February 2009.

5. Transition for fixed-term staff to post-HEWRRs environment. Due to the HEWRRs, there are problems with the treatment of fixed-term staff who commenced employment in the period from 22 November 2005 until the certification of a new agreement. There are also problems for those who commenced before the present agreement was certified. The disadvantages for both groups must be fixed.

6. Performance Based Contract thresholds to be defined as being for “threshold annual salary and loadings (including the cash value of any University- provided motor vehicle)”. NTEU seeks to have it made clear that the value of employer contribution to superannuation is not included in this definition. University management says that superannuation is to be included – which then leads us to lack of agreement about the proportion of the salary at which a PBC could be offered. On a “not counting superannuation basis” and based upon the historic values, NTEU seeks:

1. 120% of Level E salary for academics “employed at or above Level E”
2. 145% of HEW 10 salary for professional staff “employed at or above HEW 10”

University management seeks 125% for both groups, inclusive of superannuation.