NTEU Fightback, a rank-and-file union group of the National Tertiary Education Union at the University of Sydney, is calling on staff to vote No in the upcoming ballot on the proposed enterprise agreement. The campaign was launched at a forum on 25 May, attended by over 50 people. A members’ meeting on 13 June will consider the agreement. This week will probably be the first time that members are provided with a full list of proposed changes to our working conditions.
The bare minimum unionists should fight for in a new agreement should be no diminution of conditions and a real pay rise. That means no setbacks to existing clauses in the agreement, which were fought for by previous generations of workers. “Protecting wages” means a pay rise above the rate of inflation, particularly seeing as our real wages have already gone backwards over the last couple of years.
On both fronts, the proposed agreement fails to deliver.
The changes to the agreement represent some of the biggest attacks on our pay and conditions in decades. Details of these attacks have been covered in the USyd NTEU Fightback <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/12HBL53829Xb0-Pb2QZgcRzprizrRKyVzKEvs6hhomtA/edit">bargaining summary</a> statement and <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/response-rank-and-file-action-sydney-university">recent articles</a> in Red Flag.
To note some of the worst aspects:
A real pay cut. The average HEO5 worker at Sydney University would be close to $20,000 worse off by the end of the new agreement, relative to inflation. These savings go straight to university management, which is already sitting on a surplus of hundreds of millions of dollars.
An explosion of exploitative “education-focused” roles. These roles are 70 percent focused on teaching, breaking from the 40/40/20 research/teaching/admin model. Under the proposed agreement, management will have the capacity to create 650 of these roles, up from a cap of 120 in the previous agreement. Teaching-only academics do hours of unpaid labour. Management has refused to place a limit on the maximum weekly hours to be worked in these roles.
Further attacks on casuals. The new agreement fails to address the crisis of casualisation at the university. According to the university’s records, the <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/business/workplace/sydney-university-denies-full-time-work-to-thousands-of-casuals-20210909-p58qc1.html?fbclid=IwAR3OlmM5d65L1X2qfSTgwEzzOY8pqgbTjLXIRx1QYwYGtW9tovxKmPaXW4A">casual workforce</a> amounts to more than 4,000 people. But of the 110 new 40/40/20 balanced roles to be created by mid-2026, only half would go to long-term casuals, via a competitive application process.
The current offer also introduces a new kind of precarious labour: 350 PhD fellowships, which would result in PhD students teaching anywhere between three to five tutorials each week for around $340. The Sydney University Postgraduate Representative Association has released a <a href="https://supra.net.au/statement-on-proposed-hdr-fellowships/">statement</a> raising concerns about the exploitative potential of these roles.
One-hour shifts. Minimum engagement is also under attack. At the most recent NTEU members’ meeting, it came to light that the new agreement would allow management the “flexibility” of spreading a three-hour shift over two or three days. Yes, you read that right: a three-hour shift that could be spread over three days. No self-respecting unionist should accept this kind of setback. The justification provided by the union’s bargaining team was that this would be allowed only with the worker’s agreement. But a precarious casual who desperately needs every hour of work they can get is less likely to refuse the only shift that may be on offer.
Weakening the minimum engagement clause would save management millions of dollars. The University of Technology, Sydney has recently been forced to compensate professional casuals <a href="https://www.fairwork.gov.au/newsroom/media-releases/2023-media-releases/may-2023/20230511-uts-eu-media-release">$4.4 million</a> for not paying them their full three-hour entitlement. The University of Newcastle and Charles Sturt University have also been forced to <a href="https://www.fairwork.gov.au/newsroom/media-releases/2022-media-releases/august-2022/20220830-newcastle-university-and-charles-sturt-university-eu-media-release">repay millions</a> to casuals for failing to pay them for the minimum engagement hours. These sums demonstrate what’s at stake. Normalising one-hour shifts at Sydney University would set a terrible precedent for other universities and, like all other attacks, would have flow-on consequences to other industries.
Pay for all hours worked. In addition to the above attacks, the proposed agreement includes purported “gains” that don’t stand up to <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/12HBL53829Xb0-Pb2QZgcRzprizrRKyVzKEvs6hhomtA/edit">scrutiny</a>. For instance, the “pay for all hours worked” clause fails to ensure that casuals are indeed paid for all their work. The proposed <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Si_PWF_7Q0hoHuvW-u0hQ1oOgCmsayVnHlJjLDUDyew/edit">clause</a> doesn’t guarantee payment for attending lectures, reading necessary texts, or any other work that may be essential for doing their job properly but has not been explicitly directed by management.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment. This currently hovers at around 1 percent at Sydney University, despite decades of platitudes from management and the union leaders about raising the figure. Jeremy Heathcote, University of Sydney/NSW Division First Nations representative and Fightback member, explained at the 24 May “Vote No” meeting that the fine print of the clause doesn’t require management to lift this figure to population parity, as has been demanded during our industrial campaign.
A new Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Joint Consultative Committee would decide whether “sufficient” progress is being made. The committee has 50 percent union representation—but one of the three union reps is from the Community and Public Sector Union, which has not mentioned parity targets in its log of claims. So there is no guarantee that parity will be achieved.
The real winner with this agreement is university management.
It is fair to ask, then, why it was endorsed by 52 percent of those at the NTEU members’ meeting on 18 April. The meeting took place in the context of a fear-mongering campaign pushed by the NTEU national office and by the right-wing faction of the USyd branch, Thrive.
Members were told that continuing the industrial campaign would risk an employer ballot (over the head of the union), or having the dispute declared “intractable” and shunted into arbitration. Yet employer ballots can be defeated (and have been in the past at Sydney University) by consistent organising. And any application under the new “intractable disputes” clauses of the Fair Work Act would take many months to wind through the system, during which time the industrial pressure on management could be increased.
Added to this was the overstatement of bargaining “wins” by the moderate faction, Rank and File Action, three of whose members are on the bargaining team.
We cannot sell the lie that a deal containing a real wage cut and other major concessions on working conditions is anything other than a victory for management. So let’s not compound the losses in the new agreement by endorsing them.
A vigorous campaign to vote No to these attacks is important. We cannot rebuild union power by doing the bidding of management. We have to fight against this agreement, not point out one or two sweeteners that management has thrown in to make the whole rotten package appear more palatable. We may not win, but we sure as hell need to register our opposition to these historic attacks, rather than embrace them. What credibility could we possibly have as a union that fights for its members if we simply concede?
Campaigning to vote No will be important for future battles. As a recent article in the US union publication <a href="https://labornotes.org/blogs/2023/01/viewpoint-what-message-does-vote-no-campaign-send">Labor Notes</a> stated: “Like all organizing, no effort is ever wasted—even if a particular vote no campaign loses the vote”. What we do today will lay the basis for what we do tomorrow. It can also inspire NTEU members at other campuses to not accept a rotten deal from their own bosses.
I’m voting No, and campaigning for others to do the same. It is the principled thing to do when faced with a concessionary, regressive deal like this one.
The clauses of the proposed agreement are due to be made available to members any day now. Keep an eye on USyd Fightback’s <a href="https://www.facebook.com/FightbackUsyd">social media</a> and <a href="https://fightback.sydney/">website</a> for the latest news and detailed analysis, as well as information about how you can get involved in the vote No campaign.

Alma Torlakovic

Sydney University enterprise agreement: why I’m voting No

This piece is a response to National Tertiary Education Union Swinburne Branch President Julie Kimber, whose article can be read <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/strategy-important-solidarity-matters-more">here</a>.
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Thanks to Julie Kimber for her reply to my <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/bans-versus-strikes-sydney-university">original article</a>. I want to acknowledge the factual errors she points out. Unfortunately, I reproduced an error that was <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/students-caught-in-middle-as-swinburne-staff-locked-out-in-pay-fight-20220819-p5bb4s.html">first published in the Age</a> regarding the wage claim. And I should have checked at the time of publication whether the union did end up going to court, as was suggested in <a href="https://www.nteu.au/News_Articles/Media_Releases/NTEU%20and%20AEU%20condemn%20Swinburne%20attack%20on%20employees.aspx">an earlier press release from our union</a>.
Despite what Julie suggests, at my request an NTEU comrade in Melbourne did speak to members at Swinburne, who did not wish to be named or quoted. They are not to blame for the errors of fact, of course. 
However, the overall purpose of the article, “<a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/bans-versus-strikes-sydney-university">Bans versus strikes at Sydney University</a>”, was not to tell the story of the Swinburne dispute but, as the title suggests, to contribute to a debate about strikes versus bans in the context of the Sydney University bargaining dispute. 
My reason for raising the Swinburne example was to make the point about how Australia’s draconian anti-union laws (the current iteration deriving largely from the last Labor government’s Fair Work Act) allow managers to deduct wages in full in response even to very limited work bans. That is, when workers carry out only a portion of their assigned duties, employers can, as they did at Swinburne, refuse to accept any work from them and refuse to pay them for any work performed. 
The most recent example of this in the university sector was at <a href="https://www.miragenews.com/nteu-members-facing-lockouts-at-james-cook-884268/">James Cook University</a> in late October. Workers there have been threatened with a lockout for implementing bans. Even something as small as showing a PowerPoint slide to students explaining why union members are taking industrial action has been met with this draconian response. As JCU NTEU president Jonathan Strauss pointed out, “if management is going to dock our pay, we may as well strike”.
This is not the first time that the weakness of bans in the context of current anti-union laws has been shown in the NTEU. In November 2010, after the teaching year had ended, union members at UNSW voted for an indefinite ban on processing student results. This was the second time staff had placed bans on the transmission of results that year. After 70 members were stood down without pay in July 2010, NTEU members agreed to lift the ban on the understanding that management would negotiate on fixed-term employment. Once the bans were lifted, management again refused to negotiate. 
The end of year <a href="https://issuu.com/nteu/docs/advocate_18_01/12">exam-results bans</a> involved 34 members with large courses. Stood-down members were paid strike pay from the union’s defence fund for seven weeks, at which point the national executive of the union announced that financial support would be withdrawn, and the bans were lifted. Once again, when the exam results were processed, management refused to negotiate.
This is just one example of the limitations of work bans as a strategy.
As I pointed out in the original article, work bans can lead to victimisation of individuals, especially casual staff who the university can simply cease giving work to. Additionally, most bans can be undertaken only by a minority (and often a tiny minority) of union members. 
By contrast, strike action necessarily involves more people, both academic and professional staff. It also allows students to show solidarity with staff by standing with us on picket lines. 
Strike action is the most effective weapon our side has. It has the potential to disrupt business as usual in every department, even in places with lower union density, precisely because it has an impact on the whole campus. A strike allows us to set up a picket line—a symbolic and physical reminder that union members are taking a stand, and that fellow workers must not cross. 
By contrast, a work ban is done as an atomised individual, behind screens and behind closed doors. If our concern is to rebuild fighting unionism, the broadest possible active involvement of members and the greatest possible damage to the employer should be our key concerns.
The claim that bans yield media publicity and damage the university’s reputation applies just as much, if not more, to strike action. You need only look at media coverage of the six days of strike action already taken at Sydney University this year, as well as prior campaigns. 
And yet the university management remains intransigent. This is the context for a continuing debate in the Sydney University NTEU branch about how to respond. 
I stand by what I wrote in the original article, that “a bans strategy doesn’t represent an escalation, or a smarter strategy, but a retreat from the sort of action that can win”. If existing strike action has not moved management, we need to escalate the industrial pressure. 
We now face a period of preparation for action in 2023 in which the battle over the meaning of the word “escalation” will be key. The cost-of-living crisis continues, and we must fight for a pay rise above inflation, which has just hit 7.3 percent. The way to win is to increase pressure and keep the momentum. That means having longer and more frequent strikes.

A response to Julie Kimber

There has been <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/debates-among-unionists-sydney-university">a vigorous argument</a> over the direction of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) industrial campaign at Sydney University this year. Most recently, those who have been reluctant to argue and organise seriously for frequent enough and long enough strikes are now leading the charge for a “smarter” strategy of administration bans. 
This has involved spending time on a new ballot for industrial action to approve the bans, at a time when every effort should be going into building for an upcoming 48-hour strike on 13-14 October. Instead of rushing to ballot for bans, the union should be organising more strike action before the semester ends and students leave the campus, weakening the industrial strength of teaching staff in particular.
Events at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne last month indicate the pitfalls of a strategy of bans instead of strikes. There, management stood down without pay unionists who had placed bans on some aspects of their work as part of a campaign to improve wages and conditions.
NTEU and Australian Education Union (AEU) TAFE members at Swinburne have been campaigning for a decent pay rise and superannuation, in line with their fellow Swinburne workers, for almost two years. 
Management’s response has been to offer vocational staff an annual pay rise of either 3.25 percent with 15 percent superannuation, or 3.5 percent with 12 percent super. With inflation running at 6.1 per cent, and the Reserve Bank predicting that it will continue to rise, these offers amount to large pay cuts. 
In return for such pay cuts, management wants workers to accept work intensification, the removal of annual leave loading and limits on opportunities for (the very large number of) casual and fixed-term workers to convert to fixed-term or ongoing employment. 
The dispute has dragged on with the outcome only getting worse for Swinburne staff. 
As part of their response to management’s insulting offer, TAFE teachers working at the university’s three campuses imposed limited work bans. The bans include not doing extra duties on top of those set out in the job position description, not recording student attendance, not attending meetings and not using online systems. 
The implementation of work bans is a lawful action, but the university is refusing to pay the staff who are implementing the bans anything at all until the bans are lifted. Current industrial laws allow management to dock the pay of workers engaged in bans, even docking up to 100 percent of pay in response to minor bans. It’s then up to the union to haggle in court over what percentage of pay can be deducted—a process that can result in a major loss of campaign momentum. That is exactly what both the NTEU Victorian Division and the AEU Victorian branch are now doing.
The situation at Swinburne shows the weakness of a union strategy focused on bans. It places the burden of the action on a minority of union members. And it gives management the opportunity to take the initiative by victimising and refusing to pay the workers imposing bans.
To maintain bans, individual workers have to withstand pressure of various sorts from management pushing for the bans to be lifted. Especially where union density is low, this can mean particular workers are isolated, targeted and threatened.
By contrast, a strike that unites different sections of the workforce gives a much greater sense of solidarity and strength. Collective action that involves thousands of staff empowers workers to participate without fear of scapegoating.
The campaign for better pay, conditions and job security at Sydney University this year has been much stronger than at any other university, precisely because it has been focused on strike action. 
It started with a 48-hour strike, followed by a 24-hour strike in May and another 24-hour strike in August. There will be another 48-hour strike on 13 and 14 October. The strikes have been very successful, with well attended picket lines and the union branch has recruited new members as a result. 
In this case, as often in the past, a bans strategy doesn’t represent an escalation, or a smarter strategy, but a retreat from the sort of action that can win—especially in the few remaining weeks of semester.
Pushing to escalate strikes—to make them more frequent, more effective, and even open-ended—is not always an easy argument. To involve wider layers of the workforce in striking and picketing is a massive organising task. But building industrial power is never easy. There are no shortcuts.

Bans versus strikes at Sydney University

Debates among unionists at Sydney University 

Universities around the country are entering enterprise bargaining negotiations and there’s a debate about what the National Tertiary Education Union’s wage claim should be. 
NTEU Fightback, a rank-and-file activist group in which I am active, published an open letter in March arguing to increase the union’s pay demand from the then flat rate figure of 12 percent over 3.5 years (which equates to a real wage cut). Following pressure, this figure was revised by the union’s national executive to 15 percent. This would still be a real wage cut.
On 10 June, a branch committee meeting at the University of Sydney passed the following motion, moved by me and seconded by another union member, Jennifer Huch-Hoogvliet:
“This meeting of the branch committee members at University of Sydney recommends to the membership that our wage claim for the Enterprise Bargaining Agreement 2021-2024 be changed to CPI plus 2.5 percent per year, for the life of the agreement and that this be endorsed at the next members meeting.”
This motion is important for several reasons. First, no union in the country has adopted such an ambitious pay claim. Pegging the pay claim to inflation would guarantee that our living standards are not cut. If inflation climbs to 7 percent by the end of the year, as predicted by head of the Reserve Bank Philip Lowe, we will campaign for wage rises of at least 9.5 percent, which is miles ahead of other figures being suggested elsewhere. 
Second, Sydney University is a “leading site”. Our history of protest and strikes means that we tend to set the bar for wages and conditions in higher education. Third, we have already had three days of strikes. Aiming for a good pay rise means people have something to aspire to and strike for. It changes the dynamic of the campaign to not just being about defending existing conditions, but fighting for above and beyond. It raises the standard. 
The cost of living is skyrocketing. Petrol prices have been at record highs since February. Essentials are up 6.6 percent. The<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/food/2022/jun/03/why-does-this-iceberg-lettuce-cost-1199-and-how-long-will-australias-high-vegetable-prices-last"> cost of vegetables</a> has gone up 12.7 percent in the last year. Some <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-17/food-inflation-hits-decade-high-amid-war-weather-and-pandemic/101034790">pantry basics </a>such as dried pasta have gone up as much as 30 percent. 
We are being warned of skyrocketing gas and electricity bills. The combination of war, floods and the pandemic will continue to drive prices up this year. 
The burden of rising costs is not spread evenly but is felt the most by workers, who spend a higher percentage of our income on essentials like rent and food. 
Meanwhile, universities have profited handsomely during the pandemic by forcing through job cuts and increasing workloads. Sydney University's annual report has just revealed a $1.05 billion surplus. 
Our side needs to fight back. 
Since the motion was passed, two more branches have passed similar motions, the Australian National University and RMIT. 
Unionism should be about winning pay rises for workers, not proposing wage cuts. We should be striking to win improvements to our living standards, not selling off hard-fought-for conditions in exchange for paltry wage rises.

NTEU Fightback members push for real wage rise

A 350-strong members’ meeting of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) at the University of Sydney has voted to take strike action twice in the next month, kicking off our industrial campaign with a 48-hour strike on 11 and 12 May. This follows two years of savage attacks on university workers.
The escalation was provoked by a range of attacks on staff, which intensified during the pandemic. Management has tried to change the current workload arrangements for academics, which are based on a 40-40-20 percent split between teaching, research and administrative responsibilities. Without this provision, teaching workloads would increase for most academics, eating into research time. That would add to the unpaid overtime that is rife throughout the industry.
Professional workers in administration and campus services are also under attack. Management is trying to scrap the requirement that new professional jobs must first be advertised internally. Doing so would allow the university to hire external staff, who are often used to lower wages and conditions and are less likely to be union members. The union is also fighting for a “no forced redundancies” clause, for work-from-home rights, for manageable workloads and for protections against excessive or unpaid overtime. Hundreds of members in several working groups helped come up with our <a href="/C:/Users/ELEANOR/Downloads/USyd+NTEU+Log+of+Claims+2021.pdf">list of demands</a>.
We are also fighting for a pay rise after two years of increased workloads and mass job losses. With the cost of living now rising dramatically, we need a pay rise above inflation. The rank-and-file university staff group of which I am a part, NTEU Fightback, issued a national open letter calling for the sector-wide pay claim to be increased to the rate of inflation, plus at least 1 percent a year. The union leaders have asked only for a 15 percent rise over three and a half years. That means we could end up with a real wage cut; inflation has already reached 5.1 percent and could rise further in the coming months.
The claims also reflect our commitment to social justice. We have included employment targets for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, who are underrepresented in the university sector—the current representation of First Nations people in the Sydney University workforce is barely 1 percent. The second strike will fall on the eve of National Reconciliation Week. We are also asking management to improve working conditions for staff living with a disability and have included demands to support transgender staff with annual transition leave.
Starting the campaign with a 48-hour strike sends a strong message that we are ready for a serious fight—this will be the first time in the sector that an industrial campaign has started with two consecutive days of action. The follow-up strike on 24 May is also significant; we are making it clear that we will keep fighting until our demands are met. If management doesn’t relent, it can expect more of the same after the Winter break.
The Sydney University branch sets the pace for rest of the NTEU and the sector, in terms of both militancy and, as a result, pay and conditions. Strikes in 2013 and 2017 shut down the campus, with picket lines managing to turn away countless staff, students and delivery drivers. Through these actions we have been able to resist many of the attacks that university bosses have pushed through elsewhere.
It took a lot of discussion and argument within the union to get us to this point. NTEU Fightback has argued from the start for an ambitious list of demands and strike action as our key weapon. We made these arguments in many workplaces for months. The vote for the strikes came after a long debate on the NTEU’s branch committee about what kind of industrial campaign strategy can win. Such debates are important.
The first argument was about which forms of industrial action should be on the ballot. More conservative members argued for more symbolic actions, such as administrative bans, in an attempt to downplay the importance of strike action. 
Against this, we argued that strikes are the most effective way of disrupting the university. Also, members can participate in strike action collectively, which is essential for developing a militant union culture on campus. We want to build on the actions of 2013 and 2017, not waste time with ineffective bans. 
Participation in the industrial action ballot was very high. Of the 80 percent of members who voted, 93 percent supported 24-hour strikes, more than the level of support for administrative bans. Almost 70 percent even supported indefinite strikes. There was also an argument about how the campaign of industrial action should start. We argued to begin with a 48-hour strike, eventually winning the vote by a large margin at the members meeting. 
Recent strike action by teachers, nurses, paramedics and transport workers shows there is an appetite for a fight in New South Wales. Workers make society run, and we will not passively accept the attacks on our wages and conditions from the government and the bosses. 
As we head towards the strike on 11 and 12 May, we have mobilised activists to help coordinate picket lines at the university’s entrances and organised rallies on the strike days to build solidarity. A <a href="https://shop.nteu.org.au/product/sydney-strike-fund-please-donate/">branch strike fund</a> has already raised several thousand dollars. We have also set up a strike playlist and are encouraging people to add their favourite union or protest songs to it. 
Activists from the student union’s Education Action Group have helped spread the word among students, passing motions of support in dozens of lectures and tutorials, plastering the campus with posters and leafleting daily. 
We have spent the last few weeks talking to hundreds of staff members about the importance of striking, participating in the pickets and arguing with their colleagues to join the campaign and the union. We have strong student support at Sydney University and are calling on students and staff from other universities and workplaces to join us on the picket lines, starting at 7am on Wednesday 11 and Thursday 12 May.

Sydney University staff begin industrial campaign

There is a rising rank-and-file rebellion in one of Australia’s major unions, the National Tertiary Education Union. It’s the most significant revolt in decades. The upheaval comes in response to the union leadership’s proposal to adopt a “framework” agreement with universities that would cut wages and conditions in exchange for a seat at the table for union officials. This makes it important to all workers whose union officials have tried to cut similar deals with the bosses, from the Australian Council of Trade Unions down. 
Scenes of spontaneous revolt against union officials’ attempts to stifle debate are galvanising new activists across the country. At RMIT University, the branch experienced its own Spartacus moment. A meeting on 15 May maxed out its Zoom capacity of 400, the largest branch meeting in memory. After a lengthy defence of the union’s strategy from an official and a much shorter criticism from NTEU Fightback activist Liam Ward, union officials tried to stop a vote with bureaucratic arguments. With the poll function unavailable and members sick of being talked at for so long, and sick of their voices being ignored by the union, they <a href="https://www.facebook.com/107770750893909/videos/2766930840216578/">suddenly began to unmute themselves to vote, declaring “I support Liam”</a> one after the other. Eight minutes of hundreds of individual members voting in this way decided the matter and sent a clear message to the union leaders present.
More than 1,300 university workers have signed a “No Cuts – No Concessions” statement and vote No pledge. The so-called National Jobs Protection Framework give universities that sign up the ability to cut wages by up to 15 percent as a trade-off for vague promises to use the cost savings to save some jobs. This will be done through variations to local enterprise agreements, which will weaken the ability of activists to fight, not least because they will be fighting against cuts that their union is helping to implement.
After a month of negotiations, union members were finally informed of the deal’s substance in mid-April. Starting with a few dozen activists, the NTEU Fightback group has now connected networks on campuses across Australia, including many where existing activists had no contact before. The local area and campus “vote No” meetings have attracted people who rarely come to union meetings and activated many who attended only passively in the past. 
Hundreds of members have been drawn to branch meetings, which have been scenes of furious discussion and debate – when it’s been allowed by the officials. Dozens of local area meetings have taken place across campuses to discuss the implications of the framework and its political implications for the sector. With the whole union apparatus against the No campaign, rank-and-file members have had to sit down with a list of names, map their campus and figure out how to win the No vote, how to shore up the waverers and how to refute the officials’ lie that cuts in wages or conditions will save jobs.
For activists in the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/NTEUfightback/">NTEU Fightback group</a>, many of whom have been unionists for 10 or more years, this is a tremendous opportunity to play a role in every area of organising. A look at mass members’ meetings at three of the union’s largest branches gives a glimpse of this revolt. 
Sydney University, long considered the most activist and independent of the branches of the NTEU, kicked off the revolt against the framework with a members’ meeting on 9 April that voted 117 to two to reject the plan, which was at that stage in its infancy. The motion included a censure of the NTEU national executive. 
A second, larger, members’ meeting on 22 April carried a “no concessions/vote No” motion 145 to 45, even after the division secretary spoke to defend the framework. The scale of the opposition at the Sydney University meetings surprised everyone. It became a signal for NTEU activists across the country that there could be significant opposition to build on. 
A similar groundswell was evident at a Melbourne University members’ meeting on 1 May. Despite indications from workmates and fellow delegates that there was anger at the proposed deal, NTEU Fightback activists were unsure how widespread that feeling was. The first indication came when an amendment to the leadership motion was put to remove references to specific concessions. That amendment was carried, 69 percent voting in favour. Then a motion to allow national president Alison Barnes to address the meeting to defend the national executive’s proposal was overwhelmingly rejected. The strength of opposition was shown again when, despite being made more appealing by the amendment, the leadership motion supporting a deal was still voted down. 
The counterposed motion called for a serious campaign to protect all jobs and conditions and to vote against EA variations that diminished those. It was carried 79 percent for, 12 percent against, a crushing majority. 
Large members’ meetings at the University of New England, University of Technology Sydney, Western Sydney University and the University of New South Wales, as well as casuals’ networks at universities across the country, have now also voted against the framework. The list may grow if members at other universities succeed in their attempts to force local union branch leaders to hold genuinely democratic meetings.
<div class="column_width_image article_inline_image"><img alt="A meeting of the Victoria University branch of the NTEU votes against the proposed deal. PHOTO: Supplied" src="https://cms.redflag.org.au/sites/default/files/inline-images/GalleryView_UnitedUnion_Captionsv3.PNG" /></div>
<div class="article_inline_caption">A meeting of the Victoria University branch of the NTEU votes against the proposed deal. PHOTO: Supplied</div>
The solid majorities in these members’ meetings have come about because of the detailed groundwork undertaken by NTEU Fightback activists and others. Local area meetings, many in faculties and divisions that have not held union meetings in decades, have allowed members to analyse the framework and see the gaps and the flaws in the strategy it represents. 
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Some union leaders are parroting the Institute of Public Affairs talking point that university workers are privileged and should be ashamed to protect their wages and conditions. But the sector looks a lot like many others. Decades of federal government underfunding and corporatisation of management have resulted in unsustainable increases in workloads and stress, massive casualisation (it is estimated that more than half of university workers are on casual contracts), and constant restructures and redundancies that make the ideal of job security a joke even for those on continuing contracts. And this was all in the supposedly good times.
Thousands of members across the country can see the historic implications of the campaign. It is not just about what happens in the university sector; it is about how unions should respond in a crisis. Should unions be part of committees that oversee cuts, or should they be rebuilding union power by organising members in political and industrial campaigns to fight the cuts? What counts in a union – the posturing of the officials or the organisation of the rank and file?
Many university workers no longer believe that university managers have the same interests as them. Indeed, they believe that administrations will use any opportunity they can to screw us harder. 
Apparently, the union leadership doesn’t understand that university staff don’t trust the bosses to have their best interests at heart. They don’t understand that their members can’t afford wage cuts of hundreds of dollars a fortnight. That is why the NTEU officials are having such a hard time selling their deal.
But it is also because NTEU Fightback has tried to build on every flicker of resistance across the country. This is not just some exercise in “getting the vote out”. To convince members to vote No requires an activist orientation in word and deed. The “vote No” campaign builds strength on the ground. Members are talking through important issues such as the role of unions in society, becoming familiar with their legal rights, figuring out how to organise meetings and talk to workmates about union issues. This is the kind of invaluable training that is a necessary step if we are ever to revive union strength. Unfortunately, the potential of this kind of momentum is being ignored by the official structures of the union in favour of their pay cut deal.
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Facing unprecedented opposition from members, the NTEU leadership has resorted to undemocratic measures that would make a Stalinist blush. At meetings around the country, members have been prevented from putting motions or amendments, calling for debates or even speaking. The chat function in Zoom has been disabled and all sorts of spurious bureaucratic arguments used to stop members from doing what should be a basic right for a union member – talking about and voting on industrial strategy in their branch. 
The national leadership has instructed its paid staff to block the distribution of vote No material and told branch presidents to clamp down on dissent. The national executive uses the argument that because they and two meetings of national councillors have voted for the framework it is now official union policy and therefore must be abided by. There have even been claims that organising against this “official union policy” is akin to scabbing!
But it is bizarre and undemocratic nonsense to insist that members do not have a right to discuss and distribute vote No material when they are all meant to be voting on it shortly! How can the leadership possibly claim that it is a democratic vote when they are using their hold on the machinery of the union to suppress discussion in the lead-up to it? Genuinely democratic votes involve informed discussion and debate beforehand. These facetious arguments are simply cover for a leadership unable to win the argument in an open contest.
It is vitally important that all activists who oppose the framework should campaign to get the highest No vote possible. Despite widespread scepticism about the framework, it may well be voted up. There are plenty of branches that the union has left to become disengaged, where members feel more the weight of university and union admonitions. 
It is also important to campaign on campuses that might not be a part of the framework. While few vice-chancellors have signed up, the negotiations have given a green light to many of them to implement immediate attacks, in particular against those employed on casual or fixed-term contracts. The NTEU officials going cap in hand to the employers to offer cuts to wages and conditions has only encouraged many VCs to dispense with the framework and go after even more severe attacks. A strong No vote is a signal to both VCs and the union that members are strongly opposed to cuts to their existing wages and conditions, and that they do not think university staff should be made to pay for the crisis.
The leadership tried to use the recent National Day of Action for proper federal government funding of the sector to divert attention from their reprehensible strategy and conduct. On social media, the union account harassed members who asked questions about the framework, telling them to go to the NDA instead. On the same day as the NDA, a furore erupted in the La Trobe branch when the president refused to allow any discussion or debate at a members’ meeting. The large and vibrant campaign against the framework on that campus has now organised its own alternative branch meeting in despair at the despotism of the local branch leadership.
The vote matters. It is a debate over the soul and strategy of the union. Are these officials going to be allowed to sell the wages and conditions of members for a seat at the table? Are they going to be allowed to trample over basic democratic rights that members believe they have? While it is necessary that pressure be brought to bear on federal governments to properly fund the sector, there is a very bitter, very real, contest now taking place about the nature of the union. 
The leadership is trying to shut its eyes and pretend that there is no rank-and-file revolt going on. Whether that revolt wins the vote or not, it has the potential to be the basis for a network of members who have learned valuable lessons about how to be an activist. And they won’t forget the role of the current union leadership.
The fight back does not end with a No vote in the national ballot. But it is a crucial first step in establishing resistance to the idea that workers should pay for the crisis. And through the process of organising to reject the deal, members can feel empowered to organise locally. We need to galvanise the largest possible “No” vote precisely because it will make the union stronger for the fights to come.

Katie Wood

The rank and file uprising in Australia's higher education union

A comment in education minister Dan Tehan’s announcement of the government’s fake university rescue package was a very bad sign for university workers. On Sunday, he said that “there are very good discussions going on at the moment between the university sector and the NTEU” (National Tertiary Education Union).
Tehan is an opponent of workers’ rights, decent wages and good working conditions. For him to praise the discussions with our union can mean only one thing: that significant concessions are on the cards. It means that, in talks with our bosses, NTEU officials are prepared to sacrifice their members’ livelihoods for nebulous and unenforceable undertakings about job numbers.
The strategy of making concessions on our hard-won wages and conditions, especially without mounting a fight, has already ignited fierce debate in the union. At the University of Sydney on Thursday, rank and file members overwhelmingly censured the NTEU’s national executive for its willing collaboration in undermining our rights. The motion was carried 117 to two.
Local officials had refused to put the motion on the agenda for the meeting, so rank and file members moved it from the floor.
Censure of national union leaders by dedicated members rarely happens. Unionists at Sydney University had the confidence to take this important initiative because of the long and proud tradition of union activism and militancy there. They struck to achieve better outcomes in disputes over Enterprise Bargaining agreements in 2013 and 2017. And they have taken action in various disputes about restructures and conditions.
That’s why the University of Sydney is widely seen as the campus that sets the standard for wages and conditions for the whole sector.
Following the censure motion, NTEU activists across the country started to mobilise against the sacrifice of wages and conditions. Despite the discontent, and the lack of any prior discussions among the union’s membership, its national leaders went ahead and had (or possibly continued) discussions with the vice-chancellors' industrial organisation on Saturday. This became public <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/branch-censures-national-union-over-coronavirus-concessions-20200410-p54ixl.html">in a comment</a> by that organisation’s executive director to the Sydney Morning Herald, not through any communication to union members.
Within a few days, more than 300 members of the union around Australia have signed a statement along the lines of the University of Sydney censure motion. The statement rejects concessions on wages and conditions and sets out an alternative strategy. The government must pay for a real bailout, without strings attached, to secure the future of the entire workforce, including casuals. There must be a campaign, which may include industrial action. The conduct of the campaign and negotiations with university bosses must be transparent and under member control.
Full-time NTEU officials have, very justifiably, criticised the government’s package. But they still seem to be going along with its attacks on university workers. The government falsely claims it has no room to move. The administrations will claim the same thing. Union members should be at least as determined to keep hard-won conditions intact, rather than giving up without a fight.
There is only one way for NTEU members to draw a line: by voting down any attacks on our conditions and backing that up with an industrial campaign. Such a campaign could reverse the appalling message national NTEU leaders have sent to university bosses and the government – that we are a pushover.
This industry can’t operate without its workforce. The government doesn’t want universities to collapse entirely or be seen to allow them to collapse – so unionists have bargaining power if we are prepared to flex our industrial muscles.
Union militants are demanding that there be no job cuts and that casuals be re-employed to reverse decades of policies that increased our workloads, subjected us to humiliating micro-management, undermined staff-student ratios and damaged the quality of the education we provide.
Such action would find support not only among students but the wider public. And it can provide an example to workers in other industries: don’t accept the government subsidising business profits to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, while allowing workers’ incomes to fall (or, in the case of many casuals, collapse). We can also send a message to bosses everywhere: workers won’t accept attacks on established wages, conditions and rights.
As soon as any details of a deal are made public, members will be gearing up for a no vote. If you are a member of the NTEU and want to be part of this fight, <a href="https://bit.ly/nteufightbackstatement">sign the statement</a>, encourage others to do so and start talking to your fellow unionists.
For more information, email: <a href="mailto:NoConcessions.Fight@gmail.com">NoConcessions.Fight@gmail.com</a>
Watch a livestream discussion about the struggle at universities tonight at <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/238841467236849/">facebook.com/events/238841467236849</a>

Rick Kuhn

University workers prepare to fight union over concessions

The government, university bosses and national officials of the National Tertiary Education Union are combining to attack uni workers’ pay and conditions.
Australian universities’ revenues are falling as international student enrolments decline in the COVID-19 crisis. After decades in which the sector was reshaped to depend on international student enrolments for profits, university managers are forecasting losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars. They’re crying poor and pushing harsh cutbacks.
The University of New South Wales is one of the richest universities in Australia. But it claims to be facing a budget shortfall of $600 million this year. Other universities such as Victoria University say that they are at risk of folding.
University managers everywhere are taking advantage of the situation to cut budgets hard. They’re stopping or pausing recruitment, ending contracts that would have otherwise been extended, sacking thousands of casual staff or significantly reducing the number of hours previously promised to casuals.
All this when workloads have increased in the rush to shift courses online.
Department budgets have been cut. Most universities have imposed a ban on all travel, conferences and capital expenditure. The teachers who remain have been scrambling to shift courses online and to create and maintain virtual classrooms. Materials, curricula and examinations must be re-written to suit the online environment. Then there is the time required to learn new technologies and systems. 
But the university bosses warn us that these measures will not be enough. 
Shamefully the top officials of the National Tertiary Education want to help them cut back. They have responded to management’s demands for concessions, “in order to save jobs” by surrendering, without a fight. In an email to members on 8 April, the general secretary wrote:
“To protect jobs, we may need to consider measures that we would never normally consider. These may include deferral of pay rises, providing the ability to direct taking of leave, or other cost saving measures. Any changes must be temporary and proportional to the loss at each university.”
Deferring pay rises that are in enterprise agreements means cuts in real wages. Giving bosses the right to direct taking leave means we can’t decide on how we use our own leave entitlements. “Other cost saving measures” lets bosses do whatever they like, including sacking people.
The excuse for selling out pay and conditions is that the officials’ “primary aim is to protect jobs and to ensure that job cuts are the last resort”. This concedes job losses.
And concessions now open the way to the 20 percent wage cut uni managements clearly want.
Giving away pay and conditions is not the way to save jobs. Remember that in 2013, workers at Holden were pressured to accept cuts in real wages and in conditions, including shift times, shorter breaks and harsher discipline. Four months later, the company announced that it would be shutting down entirely in a few years.
In the Great Depression, the Scullin government cut public sector salaries and other government payments by 20%, and the arbitration court cut all other wages by 10%. This did not save a third of the workforce from unemployment.
We must demand that there are no job losses, that universities continue to employ all staff, including casuals who were lined up to work this semester but were not hired. The NTEU leadership is calling on us to accept losses “proportional to the loss at each university”. We can’t let ourselves be divided and conquered like that.
In fact, we’ve already conceded too much. Over the last decade and more, university workers have endured increased workloads, overwork, wage theft, unpaid overtime, massive casualisation and more dictatorial control by management.
What we lose now will be much more difficult to win back later. Bosses will not be keen to let us have our old conditions back.
The threat of a university collapse is being used to scaremonger and force concessions from the workforce. It should be rejected. Instead, we should demand that the government immediately boost university funding to make up for the loss of market revenue, that university bosses draw on their reserves and access their lines of credit and go into debt instead of cutting budgets, and that both guarantee that there will be no job losses. 
Universities should also reinstate all workers – fixed-term, casual or continuing – who have already lost their job in the current crisis. This response would protect workers’ rights and conditions, and the provision of education, instead of profits.
Union leaders representing workers in sectors like clerical and hospitality have negotiated award changes, allowing bosses to cut workers’ hours (and therefore pay). In exchange they’ve got only promises of job security, which are unenforceable. The same is true of the deal proposed by the NTEU officials. 
To really protect job security in universities, we need: 
Government funding and use of universities’ reserves and credit facilities to sustain jobs, and the quality of education, with no strings attached.
Full transparency about negotiations between NTEU officials, bosses and the government.
Mass online meetings, with scope for debate, to assess the progress of negotiations and to vote on any proposed national agreement.
A national campaign, including the possibility of industrial action around our demands on government and university managements.

University workers must not accept wage cuts in exchange for ‘job security’

A campaign has been brewing within the University of Sydney’s School of Anatomy and Physiology against the forced evictions of researchers from the Anderson Stuart wet labs. 
Staff learnt of the news via an email from Robyn Ward, dean of the newly amalgamated Faculty of Health and Medicine, on 14 December, one week before the university’s Christmas shutdown. The email cited health and safety risks as reason to close the labs by mid-2019, but management have refused to make public the detail of the health and safety reports, despite repeated requests. An email sent to staff by acting vice-chancellor Stephen Garton, in which he explains the labs were to be shut down due to their being “too costly to maintain”, makes no mention of the alleged health and safety risks.
The grassroots campaign by National Tertiary Education Union members and affected staff and students has inspired both solidarity and creativity. The department is well unionised, and as soon as news of the eviction spread, “Hands off Anderson Stuart” posters started appearing and a “Humans of Anderson Stuart” Facebook page attracted 1,000 likes within two weeks of being launched.
Stories on the page give a feel for the impact on staff and students, one explaining, “The move has already completely changed my life … My lab took years to establish and my supervisor went through extensive consultations with Taronga Zoo, Marine and Fisheries dept and marine experts to set up the ecosystems and reproductive cycles for the specialised work. I really wanted to study the origins of life but there is no way these aquariums would survive a spontaneous move”.
Four temporary locations for the labs have been proposed, but they are a 45-minute walk from the current location. This would not only eat into research and teaching time, but would create a barrier to invaluable collaboration among researchers.
The eviction is happening during a tumultuous time for the faculty. It is currently undergoing a restructure that involves a number of redundancies. Management have tried to intimidate staff by calling them into meetings about the eviction with three management representatives present and without informing them about their right to union representation. Those who objected were told the decision has already been made to shut the labs and there was no point asking further questions. 
The campaign is escalating. A motion of no confidence in the faculty management, signed by 185 affected staff members, was delivered on 8 February. It calls out the faculty for breach of health and safety legislation and the enterprise bargaining agreement clause that requires consultation before any relocation of work units. The union has lodged a dispute on the matter.

Sydney University enterprise agreement: why I’m voting No

A response to Julie Kimber

Bans versus strikes at Sydney University

Debates among unionists at Sydney University

NTEU Fightback members push for real wage rise

Sydney University staff begin industrial campaign

The rank and file uprising in Australia's higher education union

University workers prepare to fight union over concessions

University workers must not accept wage cuts in exchange for ‘job security’

Fighting laboratory evictions at Sydney Uni

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