Fighting for TAFE
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AdvocateJOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL TERTIARY EDUCATION UNION Volume 19, Number 2, July 2012 ISSN 1329-7295 REPRESENTING EMPLOYEES IN HIGHER EDUCATION, TAFE, ADULT EDUCATION, RACGP, RESEARCH INSTITUTES AND UNIVERSITY COMPANIES Fighting for TAFE Annual Tax Guide inside! PLUS: AUR archive project NTEU sets WA Libraries Forum agenda for Fighting cuts at ANU and Sydney Improving gender equity at work next round RMIT tells staff: Be happy, or else! of university Inquiry into international student education NTEU revitalising Bluestocking Week bargaining AdvocateJOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL TERTIARY EDUCATION UNION Advocate Publisher ...............................Grahame McCulloch is published by National Tertiary Education Union Editor .....................................Jeannie Rea VOLUME 19, NUMBER 2, JULY 2012 ISSN 1329-7295 ISSN 1321-8476 ABN 38 579 396 344 Production ...............................Paul Clifton PO Box 1323, South Melbourne VIC 3205 Australia Editorial Assistance .................Anastasia Kotaidis ph: 03 9254 1910 Feedback and advertising ...... [email protected] fax: 03 9254 1915 All text & images © NTEU 2012 unless otherwise stated. email: [email protected] In accordance with NTEU policy to reduce our impact on the natural environment, this magazine is printed on Behaviour–a 30% recycled stock, manufactured by a PEFC Certified mill, which is ECF Certified Chlorine Free. On the cover: Advocate is also available online (e-book and PDF) at www.nteu.org.au/advocate NTEU flags and signs adorn a statue at the TAFE4ALL NTEU members may opt for ‘soft delivery’ (email notification rather than printed copy) rally outside State Treasury, Melbourne, 10 May 2012 for all NTEU magazines. Login to the members’ area at www.nteu.org.au to access your membership details. Photo: Justin Westgate REGULAR FEATURES SPECIAL FEATURES FROM THE OFFICERS CAMPAIGNS 2 Strengthening the chain: precarious workers and unions 14 Ted deals TAFE a body blow Jeannie Rea, National President Victoria mobilises to fight savage cuts to the TAFE sector. 3 The Three Rs of Round 6 Bargaining 16 Indigenous education & employment take a battering in Grahame McCulloch, General Secretary Victorian TAFE funding cuts 4 Your next Collective Agreement – why keep it to yourself? Matt McGowan, National Assistant Secretary BARGAINING & INDUSTRIAL 18 Bargaining Conference sets agenda for Round 6 UPDATE Approximately 80 delegates from across NTEU’s university branches met to 5 Australian Education for Sustainability Alliance; debate key strategies and claims. Gender pay gap short-changes women $250.50 a week; 19 Key academic claim: Control workloads and create new jobs Researching conflict in the workplace 21 General & Professional Staff bargaining claim 6 New NTEU Branch for staff at research institutes in Victoria; 22 Is there a future for libraries and library staff? Navitas staff get own NTEU Branch Report of the WA Library Forum. 7 Fighting huge cuts at ANU 24 RMIT tells staff: Be happy, or else! 8 Casual academics struggling to make a living & do their job; RMIT became a laughing stock with its ‘Behavioural Capability Framework’. Tas Division keeping members informed on UTAS review 26 Monitoring impacts of ERA on university staff 9 UC members gain genuine consultation and save their jobs; NTEU is investigating the effects of research quality measures upon staff. Sydney Branch fighting job cuts FUNDING 10 Bronwyn Fredericks CQU ProVC Indigenous appointment; 27 Significance of university education to regional communities A Slavery Free Guarantee NTEU public lecture and Q&A on Thursday 2 August in Armidale NSW. 11 SAHMRI and the implications for SA universities 28 Does the Federal Budget deliver for education? Wayne Swan has delivered a highly contractionary Budget. INDIGENOUS NEWS 29 People in insecure work are putting lives on hold 12 Indigenous Forum 2012 People in precarious work are literally putting their lives on hold because 13 Expanding Conversations Forum they have no job or income security to plan for the future. COLUMNS EQUITY 38 2012 Digital Campus Report 30 Push to improve gender equity at work News from the Net, by Pat Wright New legislation is intended to better encourage employers to remove barriers to the full and equal participation of women in the workforce. 39 Health of Australian science Lowering the Boom, by Ian Lowe 32 Bluestocking Week 2012 NTEU is bringing back a week long celebration of women in academia. 40 AUR: 54 years archived online Guest Columnist, Ian Dobson 34 Muckaty Nuclear Waste Dump Traditional land owners from Manuwangku are disputing an agreement to 41 Democratic councils are crucial to academic independence permit a nuclear waste dump on their land. Letter from New Zealand/Aotearoa, by Sandra Grey, TEU YOUR UNION INTERNATIONAL 35 Inquiry into international student education 42 ACTU Congress 2012: Secure Jobs. Better Future. The IEAC and the development of a national strategy to support the 44 Recent human rights actions by NTEU sustainability and quality of the international education sector. 45 New staff in NTEU offices 36 University of Virginia President ousted in political coup 46 Tax Guide; NTEU tax statement; NTEU gender equity audit When non-academic boards take over running academia. 48 Contacting your Union 37 Microscopes and mozzie nets Results of the ISSUE Foundation’s summer trip to Uganda. FROM THE OFFICERS JEANNIE REA, NATIONAL PRESIDENT Strengthening the chain: precarious workers and unions round forty per cent of Australian workers are in some form of precarious employment. The NTEU made a strong case A to the Howe Insecure Work Inquiry focussing upon the casualisation of university teaching. We argued that while ses- sional tutoring by post graduate students and expert guest lecturers are a valuable feature of university teaching, over the last decade we have seen an explosion in casualisation. The distinguishing characteristic of academic casualisation is that succeeded in regulating outwork after almost two decades of politi- the work is not casual or occasional, but the workers are. There is a cal and industrial campaigning. The outworkers, predominantly need for lecturers and tutors every semester, and while management recently arrived women migrants would have been dismissed as too argues they need flexibility, they have casualised far beyond the mar- hard to organise by some, but the TCFUA persisted. gins. This is the story across the Australian workforce. Jobs that used Some unions, such as those in retail and entertainment, have a to be permanent have been made precarious. history of organising amongst casual workers, and have regularised While many, in and outside trade unions, have expressed surprise employment conditions with varying degrees of success. But unions at the high rate of precarious work, this is not a sudden development. who had successfully made precarious work permanent across con- Two decades ago, Australian labour researchers were warning of the struction, manufacturing and service industries are struggling to rep- social and economic deleterious effects of the growing core-periph- resent and campaign for new precariate, as Guy Standing (2011) calls eral workforce structure. A diminishing core of high skilled, secure the precariously employed proletariat of neo-liberal globalisation. and well paid workers with a growing disenfranchised, deskilled and University employees, and not only academics, feature amongst precarious periphery is a characteristic outcome of neo-liberal eco- this class as highly educated and qualified knowledge workers. nomic planning, and has transferred the financial risks of business Ironically, many of the abovementioned labour researchers are them- onto the precariously employed, their families and communities. selves precariously employed. University research work is now highly Trade unions focused upon protecting the pay and conditions of insecure with both the academic and general staff likely to be on lim- their members, while many of the jobs disappeared. Some actually ited tenure contracts, reliant on the next successful grant submission. disappeared or went offshore; but others re-appeared in unregulated From a union point of view we argue that the researchers, the ‘backyard’ businesses. Australian union membership was in free fall casual academics and the agency hired general staff need to act col- in traditional areas, while whole new areas remained largely unor- lectively rather than individually to improve their position. However, ganised, Outsourced workers were considered to be antagonistic to like other unions, we have usually concentrated upon defending the unions and too hard to organise. Many of these workers were immi- job security of those already in secure jobs. grant and female. And it is a bittersweet irony that now immigrant The strategy with academic casuals was to try and limit numbers workers and women are joining unions at greater rate than Australian and increase the remuneration and conditions of casual workers and born men. convert long term casuals. Whilst this has helped, the reality is that A century ago, Australia was the ‘workingman’s paradise” and trade most casuals want job security and ongoing staff want colleagues unions properly took much of the credit for this as men in unionised with whom they can share the whole workload of university teaching. jobs had better pay and conditions than their counterparts overseas. In the upcoming bargaining round, the NTEU will seek the crea- Most significantly,