In an anti-democratic move, NTEU postgraduate members and non-union members were excluded from an August 5 meeting where members voted on the minutes of union sections` demands for another company agreement with management. In our company agreements, advisory committees are set up in which elected employee representatives work with managers on specific topics. In fact, the corporate bargaining regime first introduced in the 1990s by the Keating Labor Party government and the Australian Council of Trade Unions (CUTA) divided workers into isolated jobs and tied them to the turnover and profit demands of “their” employers, while prohibiting any union action outside of the “bargaining deadlines” for these EAs. The 2018 corporate agreements replace the 2014 agreements. The current company agreements were approved by the Fair Work Commission in March 2019. In May, the university announced that this year`s pandemic would result in a $58 million loss of revenue and that a number of changes would be made to deal with that shock. “Basically, they say, `What`s the smallest number of subjects we can give someone and call them a degree again?` Another academic said he didn`t think the so-called course optimization process would improve a bit. One teacher said the pandemic was a unique opportunity to change attitudes, but it was not the cause of change. He said proposals that the university would end the year with a surplus despite the impact of COVID-19 were “particularly annoying.” “If a course doesn`t end the slump despite its importance, they just want to hack it.” So the university wants to save $35 million a year in the future,” he said. When asked what the mood was, they used all the words like “pauv since then, however, the university has given few details about the plan, except that at least 500 courses are considered shortened or consolidated. The current company agreements were approved by the Fair Work Commission in March 2019.

In May, the university announced that this year`s pandemic would result in a $58 million loss of revenue and that a number of changes would be made to deal with that shock. “Basically, they say, `What`s the smallest number of subjects we can give someone and call them a degree again?` Another academic said he didn`t think the so-called course optimization process would improve a bit. The NTEU meeting, attended by about 70 people, had sought to strengthen support for trade negotiations. This is the system by which all unions have repressed industrial action and reached agreements with individual employers over the past three decades. This has facilitated an offensive by corporations and governments against workers` conditions, including the increasing restructuring of business-friendly public universities. The IYSSE member was abruptly interrupted in the middle of his contribution by Samantha Ramsay, NTEU industry representative. She explained, “I understand the level of frustration from employees who believe that these cuts were essentially approved by the Company Agreement or permitted by the Company Agreement.” She claimed that “if we had existed without a contract of enterprise (EA), what would have happened to us would have been worse.” At UoN, more than 200 university and professional FTE employees have lost their jobs or are about to lose them. A restructuring that led to the merger of 530 of the university`s 2,200 degree programs remained unhindered. The CFPE member was prevented from passing a resolution rejecting the negotiation process between management and the union as nothing more than a decades-old vehicle for further pro-business restructurings and reductions in jobs and working conditions at universities across the country. Damien Cahill, Secretary of the New South Wales (NSW) NTEU Division, attended the UoN meeting.

He said on Twitter that it was an “excellent meeting” with “more than 100 members @NTEUNSW @Uni_Newcastle supporting the union`s campaign for a new company agreement.” An NTEU PhD student and member of UoN`s International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) club called for the union to completely reject the union`s collective bargaining process. “This has led to disaster after disaster for university staff, academics and students,” he said. “Universities have been able to implement all the cuts of recent years thanks to this mechanism and accelerate the restructuring of universities along company lines. This is only a fraction of the university`s staff. Cahill did not mention the exclusion of student members. The joint public meeting of the IYSSE and the CFPE on 17 July calls for the establishment of a network of joint grassroots committees of university staff and students who are completely independent of the unions. This will provide them with a way to lead a national and united struggle against the evisceration of jobs and working conditions, and to connect with students, educators and all workers at the international level who are facing similar struggles. The CFPE is fighting for the establishment of a network of rank-and-file committees independent of the unions in order to unite educators, all education workers and students against the cuts and to connect with workers at the national and international levels facing similar critical struggles against the effects of the deepening global capitalist crisis. This is not an isolated case. The NTEU`s anti-democratic methods went even further in a national online “forum” in New South Wales on August 6 to advance their trade negotiation plans. Although the event was presented as a forum, NTEU members were prevented from speaking and the chat function was disabled, making it impossible for participants to communicate with each other. Union officials are aware that the NTEU is increasingly discredited in the eyes of university employees because it plays a role in cracking down on opposition to historic job cuts and working conditions, which led to up to 90,000 nationwide job cuts last year.

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