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Still at odds
Uni, unions clash over impact of recent industrial actions. By Dallas Bastian
Strikes in recent months have had mixed outcomes and varied effects on universities.
National Tertiary Education Union members have voted in favour of industrial action at the University of Western Australia, the University of Queensland, La Trobe University, Macquarie University and the University of Western Sydney in recent months.
A spokesperson for the University of Western Sydney said the institution was“ deeply disappointed” that the NTEU is continuing with industrial action, stating that it could disrupt student learning and university operations and unfairly target students.
However, only 27 out of the university’ s roughly 3000 staff took part in a recent one-hour work stoppage.
“ All UWS campuses have remained open during the industrial action, and it has been business as usual at the university, with all libraries and student support services also available,” the UWS spokesperson said.“ All classes have been held as scheduled, unless lecturers or tutors directly advised students that they would be participating in industrial action.”
Meanwhile, NTEU UWS branch president Jan Falloon said staff are increasingly frustrated by management’ s failure to address their concerns in bargaining.
“ They are angry at being asked to do more for less,” Falloon said.“ Management are still not prepared to give them fair pay and working conditions. Staff have not seen their pay rise since May 2012.
“ UWS academics have some of the highest workloads in the sector, and we have seen staff in various schools with teaching loads that impact on both student experience and research output.”
A UWS representative said the proposed pay increases and outlines for academic workloads and teaching-focused roles are not acceptable to the university.
However, the institution has decided to approve an administrative salary increase of 3 per cent for all staff, to be paid in mid-April.
At Macquarie University, where a strike followed nine months of negotiations, workload concerns were also a major point of contention.
Macquarie University NTEU branch president, Cathy Rytmeister said staffing levels and the number of casual staff were sticking points from the beginning of negotiations.
“ Rising student-to-staff ratios, increasing workloads, and insecure employment all combine to threaten student experience, teaching quality and research output,” Rytmeister said.“ Macquarie University has one of the highest rates of casualisation in the country. This is why we have called for the creation of more permanent and earlycareer academic roles.”
Macquarie University human resources director Tim Sprague said that during the strike the vast majority of staff attended work as usual and students, most staff and the general public had no engagement with the action or the related issues.
Sprague said the strike had not changed Macquarie’ s position in bargaining, but added negotiations are progressing well and most matters have been resolved.
Furthermore, he said, industrial action is occurring at many institutions across the sector and doesn’ t affect the university’ s reputation.
Matthew McGowan, NTEU national assistant secretary, disagreed that the strikes do not affect public perception.“ The universities don’ t like disruption to their operations but, more importantly, in many instances it’ s as much about the adverse publicity that it attracts,” he said.
McGowan said most universities will say the disruption is minor but it still gives a serious signal that staff are not happy. He added this type of action has been effective.“ It’ s been a long, slow, torturous process but we’ re starting to feel like we’ re seeing the floodgates break open,” he said.“ Our preference would be that the universities talk seriously to us from the start.” ■ campusreview. com. au | 7