Two record-breaking union meetings at Melbourne University have voted overwhelmingly for another week-long strike, starting on 2 October.
Members of the National Tertiary Education Union struck for a week from 28 August in support of an ambitious set of demands including filling all vacant positions, a default 40 percent research fraction for academics, a strict limit on restructures, enforceable rights to work from home and a pay rise that catches up to inflation by 2025. Though that strike was limited to five specific areas (Arts, Law, libraries, the Victorian College of the Arts and the main student services hub at 757 Swanston Street), it was the first major week-long university strike in the 30-year history of the NTEU.
Before the strike, management had spent a year deriding one of the union’s key demands—that 80 percent of staff have ongoing jobs (compared with fewer than half of staff currently in ongoing roles). While job security ratios have been won in many workplaces, they are rare in higher education. Management at Melbourne Uni said that they would never agree to any such restriction on their ability to determine the mix of the workforce.
But on 8 September, a week after the strike and less than an hour before a union meeting was due to consider next steps, management dropped a new offer on “workforce planning”. A “flexible” workforce of casuals and fixed-term staff with a contract of less than a year would be limited to 25 percent of the total, with the remaining 75 percent of workers to be classified as “core” workforce.
Management’s inclusion of fixed-term staff with contracts as short as a year in the “core” workforce meant this offer was far short of the union’s “80 percent ongoing” claim. But suddenly, management were moved to start talking on the union’s terms.
Clearly, their 8 September offer was designed to undermine any push to continue the industrial campaign. It failed. Instead, a record 400-strong union meeting voted to ignore a recommendation from the bargaining team to pause industrial action, and voted two-to-one to endorse another week-long strike.
Union members met again on 28 September to consider whether sufficient progress had been made to call off the strike. The meeting was another record, peaking at over 450 members. A whopping 82 percent voted to strike from 2 October. Not a single member spoke against the strike motion.
A large-scale, week-long university strike was unheard of in the NTEU until this dispute. It’s an enormous credit to the dedicated activists in Arts, with a track record of solid organising to recover stolen wages in recent years, that such a feat is now not just thinkable but doable.
It’s also a significant achievement by union members in 757 Swanston, libraries, Law and the VCA to demonstrate in practice during the last strike that serious organising can lead to a serious strike in areas without the recent history of intensive organising that Arts has had. 
This opened the way for the strike to be extended to all union members—a step up on the “area by area” approach of the previous strike. This will allow strikers to spend the coming week inviting fellow workers to join the union, and join the strike, right across the university.
There are serious challenges ahead, of course—and not just the wet weather forecast for Melbourne this week. Week-long strikes have more impact than the half-day or one-day strikes, which have been the stock in trade of the NTEU for many years. But it’s still possible for management to plan around them. And although the Melbourne Uni NTEU branch is now the largest in the country, we’re still a minority of the workforce. 
So we’re still yet to achieve the sort of mass, indefinite strike action that university workers have pulled off in the US recently, which sent management into serious crisis and won major improvements in wages, conditions and job security.
The other significant challenge is the NTEU’s national leadership, which has wound up industrial campaigns and declared a “union win” at many campuses despite achieving only a small number of ongoing positions (most or even all of them teaching-only), pay rises well behind inflation and in some cases (most notably Sydney Uni, the long-established NTEU pacesetter) significant cuts to long-established conditions.
The industrial campaign at Melbourne Uni has demonstrated in practice many of the elements of successful union breakthroughs: the power of serious, consistent organising; the ability of ambitious claims to inspire; how serious industrial action and an active strike (where members are engaged in daily activity, not just sitting at home passively) can generate a whole new layer of activists. 
Being able to push past the limits set by a concessionary national leadership is another ingredient necessary if union members at Melbourne are to win significant gains.

Danica Cheesley

Melbourne Uni staff step up strike action

It all feels a bit surreal. In a few short hours we’re walking off the job and embarking on one of the longest strikes at the University of Melbourne since 1856—when stonemasons downed tools to win the eight-hour day. It’s the longest major university strike in the history of our union, the National Tertiary Education Union. 
The entire university is on a half-day strike, and staff in the faculty of arts, faculty of law, libraries, Victorian College of the Arts and student services (where I work) are staying out for the whole week. We’re fighting for permanent jobs, a pay rise above inflation, an end to constant restructures and manageable workloads. 
It’s Monday and the clock hits 12:00—we walk out.
Our numbers grow as we make our way downstairs, collecting staff walking out on each floor. Union density in our building has grown in the weeks leading up to the strike. Existing members have recruited colleagues after previous one- and half-day actions. For the first time ever, we have more than 100 union members in the building. 
Conditions in the university continue to deteriorate and have given an urgency to the union’s campaign. Workloads are unsustainable as vacancies go unfilled—there are work teams of a couple of dozen in our building with more than ten vacant positions. So our demand for all vacant positions to be filled is important. Restructures and job cuts have piled work on to fewer staff, so there’s a lot of support for our demand for strict limits on the number of restructures management can put us through. The rising cost of living weighs on us—our colleagues earning the median female full-time wage have fallen more than $80 per week in real terms over the past two years. 
We gather on the ground floor and march into the late winter sun. 
We hear about one of our workmates joining the union just 30 minutes before the strike began. He works in the university call centre and had used his short breaks between phone calls to fill out the online form. He’s marching alongside us, smiling from ear to ear, decked out in union merch.
We march on, meeting hundreds of workers from across the university to rally under Vice-Chancellor Duncan Maskell’s office. Maskell earns in a fortnight what many of us in student services earn in an entire year.
After the rally, we plan Tuesday’s actions. We’ll be picketing our building for the first time, and we’re determined to make it a success. 
We speak to everyone coming into the building. We explain our demands, ask them to join the union and to join us on the picket line. We get word from inside that things aren’t looking good in the call centre. Students are waiting more than twenty minutes to speak to someone—last week they were waiting twenty seconds. A cheer rings out across the picket line. 
I meet a worker from the floor above mine. She’s going to work for the day, but feels uneasy about crossing the picket line. She knows she should join us, but she’s nervous about what her managers will do. We talk it all through. The next day she’s with us on the picket, and stays out on strike for the rest of the week. 
People I’ve passed on the stairs or seen in line for coffee are leading chants, running meetings and speaking to crowds of hundreds. Seeing people rise to the challenge and occasion of the strike is deeply inspiring. 
Thursday, four days into the strike, is the university census date. It’s one of the busiest times of the year for us in student services and we’re organising a rally outside our building. More of our workmates have joined the strike, convinced by conversations on picket lines and their own experience working here day in day out. 
At the rally, a worker from the equity and disability support team tells us about chronic understaffing in the team that assists the more than 2,000 enrolled students with a disability. Another from a team that helps people apply for courses talks about workmates going on stress leave as the number of unanswered emails reaches into the thousands. 
It’s the same story across the building: we’re too overworked and understaffed to give students the support they need and deserve. We’re being asked to do more and more, with less and less. 
As the rally is wrapping up, we hear that the university executive, including Duncan Maskell, is meeting a few buildings over. 
We head over, hoping to catch a glimpse. He’s not brave enough to leave the building while the striking staff are outside. Instead, he sneaks out a side door. A few of us spot him and words are exchanged. Maskell thinks we should be happy that the university is offering us a below inflation pay rise. As he slips into his chauffeur driven car, the chant of the week follows behind him. It’s a riff on the football-style chant popularised by the Jeremy Corbyn campaign in Britain a few years ago: “MOOORE PERMANENT JO-OBS!” 
More than half of the workforce of 12,000 are on insecure casual or fixed-term contracts, some for decades on end. We’re demanding a minimum of 80 percent of people be employed on secure, ongoing contracts. 
We don’t know what will happen after the strike, or what impact it will have on our campaign. We’re up against a deeply entrenched business model. And our top union leadership has a long track record of offering concessions (like their 15 percent wage cut idea from 2020) rather than leading a fight. We hope our strike will force management to cede to our demands, but we’re already preparing for more action if necessary. 
For us in student services, it’s been transformative. The decision to strike for a week wasn’t taken lightly, and we weren’t certain we’d pull it off. But, as the week draws to a close, we know we made the right decision. As one our colleagues addressed the rally on Thursday:
“In my role, Just over a year ago, on my insecure contract, I was one of two NTEU members in my team. As of today, we have a union density in our team of 83 percent.
“There is no better way to radicalise your staff than to say that nothing can change for the better, while things are getting worse around you. To be told there is no budget, when management spends $38 million on consultants.
“So we weren’t being heard then. But we are now! This strike is a result of hard work from rank-and-file members. From everyone here today, from the people speaking today, and you yourselves. So let’s just use this as an opportunity to expand our numbers, to raise our confidence, and have our demands met.”
Another of our workmates sums it up: “I swear, every day I hear more stories that just solidify for me why we are striking”.

Melbourne Uni: diary of a strike

After over 12 months of campaigning for a new workplace agreement, Monash University staff will strike on 23 October. 
Management wants to strip penalty rates from staff who work late into the night. Workers in the university sports facilities, residential services and other departments will be working until 11pm without penalty rates if management gets its way. 
While these staff are being hit with a pay cut, salaries for university management have never been higher. Monash vice-chancellor Margaret Gardner recently set a pay record, becoming the first and only female university boss in the country to earn $1 million a year. Clearly, Monash isn’t short of cash to splash around. 
Yet most teaching at the university is carried out by casual staff on conditions inferior to those of permanent workers. Many remain on short term, casual contracts for years, with no access to sick leave or annual leave. For these workers, there is no pathway to secure, ongoing work. 
Most casuals receive only 9.5 percent superannuation, while other university staff receive 17 percent. One of the demands of the upcoming strike is for all university workers to receive 17 percent superannuation.
This strike is a welcome development in our long campaign for a better agreement. But to win the pay rise and workplace conditions we deserve, we will need to continue to up the ante industrially against management.

Strike planned at Monash University 

The 2015 Queer Collaborations conference, one of several student conferences organised by the National Union of Students over the mid-year break, should have been an opportunity for the 100 or so attendees to discuss the continued fight back against the homophobia and transphobia of the Abbott government.
With attacks on social services and health care pushing LGBTI people further into poverty, and the continued denial of marriage equality by the major political parties, there was much to discuss.
Unfortunately, the authoritarian and undemocratic conduct of conference organisers instead became the focus of the week-long event. Before the conference began, attendees were asked to sign an agreement that they would not disagree with the opinions of other participants, in effect prohibiting democratic debate of any kind.
During the week, organisers moved to ban people whose politics they did not approve of. Six left wing activists, most of them members of Socialist Alliance, were banned from the conference. One was also one banned from future conferences. Their “crime” involved objecting to highly secretive and bureaucratic rules that organisers unilaterally imposed on proceedings. In reality, the bans were concocted by people with a right wing political agenda, in an attempt to stifle debate and discussion.
Such authoritarian conduct is counterposed to building the inclusive, united movement we need to fight back against homophobia and transphobia. To be successful, our movement must involve as many people as possible who want to take a stand for equal rights. It must provide transparent spaces where strategy and tactics can openly and democratically be debated. It should not seek to censor or bureaucratically exclude people. This is the historical tradition of the student movement. We need to return to it.

Socialists banned from queer students’ conference

The Australian Retailers Association is no friend of workers. Its executive director, Richard Zimmerman, has declared: “The balance between employment and remuneration would be made right through … [the] reduction of penalty rates.” Zimmerman is just one of a growing number of voices calling for wage reductions for already underpaid workers.
Tourism and Accommodation Australia managing director Rodger Powell argues, “The idea that Sunday is different from other days of the week is a notion from the past.”
In the eyes of the likes of Powell and Zimmerman, working on weekends or at night, and missing out on the opportunity to spend time with friends and family, is not worthy of financial compensation. They would rather leave this money in the bosses’ pockets.
The Business Council of Australia is also behind the push. The council’s July Action Plan for Enduring Prosperity report insisted that something must be done about “the impact of penalty rates on business competitiveness and employment growth”.
South Australian Family First senator-elect Bob Day also considers that the minimum wage, a paltry $16.37 per hour, is “too expensive” for business.
The Liberal Party, a steadfast friend of big business, would no doubt slash the minimum wage and our penalty rates if it thought it could get away with it. Liberal Senator Eric Abetz previously said that wage increases above the cost of inflation will be blocked by his party, unless productivity trade-offs are made.
Increasing productivity always means increasing profits for the bosses. The Liberals have already pledged to review the current industrial relations system.
Unionists have fought for and won the right to a minimum wage and penalty rates. We will need to be prepared to fight again against any attack levelled by Abbott and Co.

Bosses prepare to attack penalty rates

The Australian Climate Commission’s recently released report “The Critical Decade 2013” warns that, unless global carbon emissions are reduced to almost zero by 2030, irreversible, catastrophic climate destruction will occur.
This destruction has already begun. Sea levels are rising at unprecedented rates, rainfall patterns are changing and extreme weather events are becoming more and more common. These changes have brought with them substantial risks to agriculture, natural ecosystems, infrastructure and health.
The report found that in order to stabilise the climate and prevent further ecological destruction, almost all remaining fossil fuels must stay in the ground.
The Climate Commission has concluded, as scientists have been warning for years, that unless we quickly transition away from these destructive fossil fuels, we will face the most acute ecological crisis humans have experienced. Currently, renewable energy represents a paltry 8-10 percent of Australia’s total energy production, with current government plans being to increase it to just 20 percent.
Why is it that, despite overwhelming public support for action, and governments around the world agreeing that “something needs to be done” to address this environmental crisis, these dangerous, dirty, destructive fossil fuels are still being used?
The technology exists to transition to a completely carbon-emission free economy, yet little is being done to begin this transition.
It would cost $500 billion to move to an emission free, sustainable economy – 30 percent of Australia’s GDP. This figure is roughly the same amount of money the Australian government will spend on the military between 2011 and 2020.
The profit motive of capitalism is the barrier to a sustainable economy.
Under capitalism, everything is produced, not to satisfy human need, but for a profit. The tiny minority who control the economy, making decisions every day that affect not just the lives of every single person on the planet but also the planet itself, are locked in competition with each other to produce the largest profits possible.
In this ruthless race to the bottom, environmental sustainability is an afterthought at best.
Those capitalists who make their multi-million and multi-billion dollar profits using technology that destroys the environment have no interest in investing in renewable energy. The basis upon which they make their mega-profits would no longer exist in an economy that used renewable energy.
Even capitalists who are not directly involved in the fossil fuel industry benefit from maintaining this destructive status quo, as they can increase their profits by using cheap non-renewable energy to operate their own industries.
Capitalism is not environmentally sustainable. Under capitalism, a transition to a sustainable economy cannot occur, even though that would be in the interests of the vast majority. In the shift to a sustainable economy too many capitalists would lose too much money, and this goes against the entire logic, or lack thereof, of the system.
A system based on human need is the only solution to the ecological crisis we are facing. We must transcend capitalism if we want to see an end to environmental destruction.

System change, not climate change

In a victory for student activism, La Trobe University has backed down from its attempts to punish students who organised protests on campus last year.
In opposition to a planned $10 million of cuts to the humanities faculty, students organised a campaign that included mass staff and student meetings, rallies and occupations on campus. This campaign forced the university to back down from some of the cuts it wanted to make, the final cuts amounting to $5 million. This all occurred whilst the university as a whole was making in excess of $20 million profit.
In response to this display of student activism, the administration singled out three students and called them before secretive and undemocratic disciplinary hearings earlier this year. At the hearings, at which we were denied the right to legal representation, the students faced expulsion. 
As soon as it was announced that the university was trying to discipline us, we launched a defence campaign. Student unions across the county, which recognised that what La Trobe was trying to do was outrageous, passed motions in support of us and our right to protest on campus. We held meetings to talk about what was going on and put pressure on the university. This resulted in the university backing down from expulsions and suspending only one of us. 
The reasons given for my suspension included that I had “brought the reputation of the University into disrepute”, and also, based on no evidence at all, that I had broken the ribs of a security guard. It was also found that, as someone identified as an organiser of the protests, I could be held responsible for the actions of every single participant in them. The aim of this suspension was quite clearly to discourage me and all La Trobe students from protesting on campus.
Being punished for organising protests on campus is outrageous, so I appealed against the decision, citing an extreme lack of evidence that I had done anything wrong, and asserting our legally protected right to protest on campus.
A university appeals committee has now found in my favour, and my suspension has been lifted. The committee confirmed that students have a right to protest on campus, and that it was incorrect that I be suspended for exercising this right. Organising a protest cannot be considered an offence at La Trobe.
This result shows that we were right, not only to protest against the planned cuts to our education but also to fight against their attempts to punish us and outlaw protest on campus.

Melbourne Uni staff step up strike action

Melbourne Uni: diary of a strike

Strike planned at Monash University

Socialists banned from queer students’ conference

Bosses prepare to attack penalty rates

System change, not climate change

La Trobe backs down on suspension

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