After walking off the job for 24 hours on 2 September, University of Sydney staff are set for further industrial action—with a two-hour stop work meeting 13 October and a 24-hour strike on 22 October.
Union members are fighting attacks on job security and freedom of speech and demanding improved pay and guardrails on the use of AI.
Management sent an email to all students saying that “almost all scheduled classes will move online” during the strike and that “our campuses remain open and accessible”.
But from 7am picket lines at every main campus entrance, with students joining striking staff, brought the campus to a standstill.
Student activists successfully disrupted multiple strike-breaking classes. In one computer science tutorial the teacher was convinced to cancel the class and vow to join the union. Students also intervened in online Zoom classes, arguing that the classes were strike breaking.
“The university wants free rein to implement AI to replace staff in teaching and professional roles, and degrade the quality of education,” said Riki Scanlan from the School of Geosciences. “We want adequate protections to ensure that doesn’t happen.”
Sydney Uni has signed a multi-year contract with OpenAI in a slap in the face to staff demands.
Staff workloads are a major concern. “The burden of actual work against the time that we’re paid for is unsustainable and not fair,” professional staff member Luke said, disputing the claim the university “doesn’t have any money”. USyd recorded an operating surplus of $194.1 million in 2025 (and $545.3 million for 2024).
On pay, management’s offer will see staff salaries remain below 2021 levels in real terms until at least 2030. The NTEU is demanding a 20 per cent increase over four years which would bring pay back to 2021 levels within the next year and deliver real pay rises after that.
Another demand is for better protections for freedom of speech, including for those speaking out on Palestine. Chancellor David Thodey has rejected a request for a convocation made by more than 600 alumni and academics to discuss the university’s ties to Israel and restrictions on free speech—showing management’s contempt for this.
The last round of USyd strikes in 2022-23 forced management to concede 30 days of gender affirmation leave, sick pay for casual staff and the best university pay deal in the country at the time.
To force management to meet staff demands, further strikes and even more staff and students on the picket lines, and stopping strike-breaking classes, will be needed. This campaign can help build the power needed to make universities work for the social good, not as corporate degree factories complicit in genocide.
By Georgie Marks
