A wave of strikes has hit universities across the country, as NTEU members begin the latest round of enterprise bargaining, and fight back against management restructuring.
Hundreds of workers at UTS, where the Administration is implementing a drastic restructuring program of course and staff cuts, staged a four hour strike on 26 November demanding no forced redundancies, improved consultation, a fair pay rise and more rights for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff.
On 19 November a busload of striking Newcastle University staff (UON) rallied outside NSW Parliament. Inside, the University bosses, who want to axe 140 jobs, joined politicians celebrating 60 years of the University. The staff were on 24 hour strike, the second strike of the campaign, which is demanding job security and wages that match inflation.
At the Australian Catholic University staff took strike action on 15 October and again on 22 October, as they fight for an above-inflation pay rise, extending decasualisation, and stronger flexible work rights.
Staff have already rejected management’s offer of 2.8 per cent a year after the Vice-Chancellor took a 5.8 per cent pay rise last year. A 24-hour strike is being planned for Semester 1 next year unless management meets their demands.
At Curtin University in Western Australia, staff went on a half-day strike on 5 November, fighting for a real pay increase and workload protections.
At ANU, a staff and student campaign earlier this year stopped over 100 forced redundancies and put an end to some of management’s drastic restructuring plans. Staff and students organised rallies, petitions, and carried a vote of no-confidence motion in the Vice-Chancellor, who was subsequently forced to resign. Staff at the College of Arts and Social Sciences also stopped work when a surprising cease-work order was issued by Fair Work due to the psychosocial harm posed by the cuts.
The strike action comes in the face of a concerted management offensive and a crisis in the tertiary education sector. Hundreds of jobs are being cut and courses discontinued as university bosses make staff and students pay with an avalanche of cost-cutting measures. The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) estimates that the announced cuts across universities amount to 3578 jobs lost in just one year, between 2024 and 2025.
Job cuts
The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) management is aiming to save $100 million by cutting 400 jobs and discontinuing 167 courses and 1101 subjects, including by closing down the schools of Public Health, Education and International Studies.
Management’s plan was briefly paused when SafeWork NSW intervened due to the “serious and imminent risk of psychological harm” and recently UTS Health and Safety Representatives (HSRs) have forced further delays on similar grounds.
SafeWork also intervened at Macquarie University, ordering the administration to provide opportunities for staff consultation over a draft proposal that would see 63 positions cut (although the University claims some of these positions are now safe).
At the University of Wollongong job cuts may amount to 10 per cent of the workforce, included cuts to the Safe and Respectful Communities service which provides support to students dealing with sexual assault and domestic violence.
University managements try to blame the cuts on government policies and their unsustainable finances. And while it’s true that Labor should be fully funding tertiary education, the university managements should not be let off the hook.
For starters, the average pay for an Australian Vice-Chancellor is over $1 million. UTS VC Andrew Parfitt was grilled in a recent NSW parliamentary inquiry into university governance over the fact that his lucrative contract had been extended for another five years by the self-selecting UTS Council without any announcement being made to staff.
A number of universities imposing cuts, like UTS and Western Sydney University, are spending tens of millions of dollars on consultants each year. Shamefully, UTS bosses paid $7 million to consultancy firm KPMG to assist with restructuring!
Analysis from the Australia Institute found that at both the University of Newcastle (UON) and the Australian National University (ANU) the financial deficits used to justify course and job cuts were invented.
At ANU, the University claimed a deficit of $142.5 million in 2024 but audited accounts found an $89.9 million surplus, meaning that the University had excluded almost a quarter of a billion dollars in revenue when reporting its financial situation.
Similarly, audited accounts from UON showed a surplus of $61.3 million and a net asset increase of more than $150 million since the previous year.
Strike action is the way to make the university managements pay. And while enterprise bargaining laws supposedly prohibit industrial action against staff cuts already being imposed, the industrial campaign is also the way to beat back those attacks.
By Angus Dermody
