“Twenty one and nothing”: this was one of the reproaches that was directed at management at the Curtin University as staff held a 24 hour strike on Monday.
Union members are also set to boycott Curtin open day and take further strike action in the coming weeks.
It refers to the 21 meetings that Curtin management has had with the NTEU and the response made to the log of claims presented—none. Until the NTEU stop work meeting on Wednesday 11 March no offers from management had been made regarding pay and conditions.
In an effort to come to an “in principle” agreement university management proposed a full day meeting on 11 March. At lunchtime the NTEU bargaining team was to meet with members to inform them of any progress or otherwise.
The university made a below inflation pay offer, the removal of a key workloads clause, rejected proposals to provide all professional staff with a clear entitlement to work from home and rejected any mechanism to convert more casuals to secure employment.
Members were justifiably angry. As the union meeting was in progress afterwards two members of the Curtin management bargaining team walked past. They were met with cries of “shame” from the members. A member of management waved back contemptuously.
Two motions were passed overwhelmingly by members:
This meeting of members endorses a motion to escalate our industrial action campaign to include full day work stoppages, with no more than one work stoppage being held in any particular week.
An NTEU delegate also proposed another motion from the floor, which was also overwhelmingly endorsed:
Given the lack of progress in bargaining, and given the university’s proposal to remove Cl. 19.2(f) from the enterprise agreement, one of the work stoppages will align with Curtin’s open day.
(This is the clause that provides protections on academic workloads, already at unsustainable levels).
In a farcical development later in the day the Vice Chancellor cancelled the ongoing bargaining meeting. She claimed that the management bargaining team had been made to feel “unsafe” by union members and the meeting would cease immediately, halting any further negotiation.
An email was then sent by the VC to all staff condemning the behaviour of the NTEU members at the stop work meeting. Fortunately most members can recognise a pretence when they see one.
Curtin management clearly thought that the union would fold and agree to any offer that was given. That has not been the case and staff at Curtin University are angry at management’s intransigence. Further industrial action is now the only course of action to try and win a decent agreement for workers at Curtin University.
By Phil Chilton
