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and facilities,” the spokesman said.“ The university has already made a number of concessions and remains ready to continue negotiations with the unions, and is hopeful the unions will be willing to make some concessions to their log of claims, which to date have not been forthcoming.”
Speaking at the protest, federal Labor senator Doug Cameron described university management as“ the Praetorian Guard for Tony Abbott”.
State Greens senator Lee Rhiannon, who also spoke at the rally, reflected on The Times Higher Education World University Rankings which saw the University of Sydney in the top 100.
She said the University’ s international ranking would suffer.“ If management persist with their heavy-handed push to downgrade staff working conditions, such changes would inflict great damage on... student learning outcomes and research standards.”
Unions NSW secretary Mark Lennon said other unions supported the strike both as an act of“ solidarity with them but also because we believe in quality tertiary education. Australia faces stiff competition in the decades ahead as Asia develops a flourishing middle class. Slashing the quality of our tertiary education is not in the national interest.”
Other speakers included PSA secretary Anne Gardiner, CPSU Sydney University branch president Grant Wheeler, Sydney students’ representative councillor David Pink and staff members.
The existing enterprise agreement expired in May last year. The NTEU logged enterprise bargaining claims near the end of last year.
“ They’ re treating us in an insulting way, we’ re gonna fight,” said Thomson earlier.
He said the NTEU wanted an enterprise agreement that will enhance career prospects for staff and workforce participation among others.
Thomson also said that university management is“ offering less job security and wants to reduce sick leave entitlements and cut academic workload provisions”.
He said that management refused to limit the number of academic casuals,“ trying to wind back provisions for fixed-term staff to convert to ongoing positions”.
After the record votes gathered in February in favor of industrial action, University of Sydney spokesman Andrew Potter said,“ It is extremely disappointing
that around one in ten staff have voted in favour of industrial action which will only hurt our students.”
Reaching an agreement in the best interests of staff and students is the university’ s priority, he said.
Potter addressed a number of issues raised by NTEU members.
He said the university needed to make changes and budget responsibly to be a modern, competitive university that provided the best facilities for the staff and students.“ A 7 per cent payrise as asked for by the unions would be totally irresponsible and completely at odds with community expectations.
“ The university is certainly not lessening job security. This is a research-intensive university and the current 40:40:20 workload allocation will remain the most common arrangement for academic staff.”
He also said the university is proposing to replace casual appointments with more continuing and fixed-term positions.
As for the issue of sick leave, more flexibility for staff was proposed, enabling them to use their leave for carer’ s leave, extra parental leave and extra compassionate or bereavement leave. n
www. campusreview. com. au March 2013 | 11