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Students have been dragged into historic industrial disputes at campuses across Melbourne as the union warns more universities are turning to the aggressive strike-busting tactics normally seen in the private sector.
Hundreds of classes were cancelled this month when staff at the University of Melbourne, RMIT and Monash walked off the job. Now, two students at RMIT have been called in for disciplinary hearings after they came out with signs on campus to support their striking teachers.
Amelia Christie (left) and Ersha Mohan were penalised by RMIT University for supporting striking academics.Credit: Paul Jeffers
A complaint sent to a group of students by RMIT accused them of holding “animated conversations” with fellow students, in an effort to persuade them to support the strike by not attending classes.
Amelia Christie said she was shocked when she and fellow student Ersha Mohan were later called in before a formal disciplinary hearing, which can end in a suspension. The university called their behaviour loud and aggressive, something the students dispute.
“Ersha is an international student and she could lose her visa over this,” Christie said.
Alison Barnes, of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), said “hard-headed aggression” from universities during this year’s round of bargaining was unprecedented “and, frankly, baffling, given it’s happening [after] the wage theft scandal, and the sexual harassment and casual employment crises at unis”.
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare has put universities on notice to become “exemplary employers” after the interim report of the government’s Accord review called for an overhaul of university conditions and governance. Rates of casual, insecure work on campus now rival the retail sector, and university councils are increasingly seen as running public institutions like corporations.
Six of Victoria’s eight universities – Melbourne, Monash, La Trobe, Swinburne, RMIT and Victoria University – have been locked in enterprise bargaining negotiations with staff for months, with only La Trobe close to a deal.
The NTEU calls Swinburne’s proposed staff agreement one of the worst attacks on conditions in the sector, with 140 conditions to be scrapped or watered down on its count, including caps on unsafe workloads, bullying protections and academic freedom.
At RMIT, the union says the university is creating a second class of academics – paying some less to teach similar courses across its tertiary and vocational streams – and holding “fireside chats” and ballots unsanctioned by the union.
RMIT did not comment on its disciplinary action against the students who backed striking academics, other than to recognise students’ right to protest. But it said it had different enterprise agreements with different employees because there were “operationally distinct” cohorts.
At Swinburne, where vice chancellor Professor Pascale Quester has previously told staff to “stop thinking like a university and start thinking … like a tech company”, a spokesperson said the university was working to deliver a “clear, modern agreement”. “The world of work and [our] operations have changed substantially over the last two decades but much of the current agreement has not,” they said.
The union says vice chancellors at many of the universities pushing to water down conditions are also on the executive committee of the Australian Higher Education Industrial Association (AHEIA).
The association, which represents 32 universities, was helping Murdoch University negotiate when the university tore up its staff agreement in 2017 – the nuclear option of bargaining.
The union has pointed to a recent AHEIA strategy road map as evidence that the industry group is coaching universities to drive down staff conditions, including by suggesting they hold staff ballots outside the union and take advantage of new intractable bargaining laws that force lengthy disputes before the Fair Work Commission.
At an AHEIA conference in Melbourne last month, Australian Catholic University vice chancellor Professor Zlatko Skrbis, who is also vice president of AHEIA, said staff agreements are outdated, rigid and over-regulated and that the “policy push from government for more secure forms of employment will place greater stress on the sector”.
Australian Catholic University reached a deal with staff last Christmas, but the union has filed a complaint, arguing the university has already breached the deal by announcing a plan to scrap 140 staff members, including world-leading researchers.
Skrbis has defended the cuts as necessary to fix a $30 million budget deficit. He told this masthead that Australian Catholic University worked closely with the unions to negotiate agreements, though “legislative instruments are not best suited for modern workplace conditions”.
Craig Laughton, who runs AHEIA, said universities make their own decisions but the association offers strategic advice and sometimes sits in at the bargaining table.
He rejected suggestions universities were playing hardball or rushing to intractable bargaining, where AHEIA’s advice had said conditions might be driven down to community standards.
Universities were trying to offer more secure jobs and fix underpayments, he said. “The problem is that university funding is below other OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] countries. So fixed-term contracts, especially in research, have become like a safety valve when things are so insecure.”
At the University of Melbourne, which had the nation’s highest wage theft bill, two week-long staff strikes have brought senior management to the bargaining table on job security targets, and talks are under way to turn more than 1000 casual roles permanent.
Meanwhile, the Monash University union is taking management to court over a $9 million backpay bill from casual academics after the university lost its bid to head off the claim by retrospectively altering its staff agreement.
Union president Ben Eltham said some academics had been on rolling contracts for more than a decade. “They can’t structure their lives,” he said. “You try telling a bank you’re a good bet for a mortgage with a four-month contract.”
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