A) PAY

Pay – 12% as minimum

A claim of 12% over the life of the new enterprise agreement would be approximately 3.4% per year (between 30 June 2021 and the end of 2024).

It’s important not to retreat on pay:

• Accepting a cut or stagnation in real pay is accepting austerity
• The money is there: Australia’s 31 billionaires have increased their wealth by a combined $85 billion  during the pandemic.
• The previous bargaining round in higher education resulted in an average 1.9% pay rise. This is about the same as inflation – so the result was real wage stagnation on average, with some falling behind inflation.
• We can’t guarantee low inflation will persist.

More detail in Appendix 1

B) ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER EMPLOYMENT

Enforceable clauses for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff numbers

Many enterprise agreements have clauses aimed at increasing employment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff. However, very few of these clauses contain legally enforceable provisions.

The RMIT enterprise agreement  clause on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment is apparently the best in the country for enforceability. The clause states that employment “ will  be increased” from 27.7 to 35 EFT by 2019. This is stronger than many other enterprise agreements (such as Sydney Uni, see below) that only set “targets” which can’t be legally enforced.

From the RMIT EA:

25.5 As at 30 June 2018 RMIT employed 27.7 EFT Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employees. This will be increased to a minimum of 35 EFT  as at 30 June 2019. The ATSIEC will develop and implement an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Employment Target setting mechanism. Such mechanism will set and oversee the implementation of the annual employment targets for each subsequent year following 2019. The annual employment targets will be consistent with the RMIT University Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Employment Plan 2016 – 2020.

In contrast to the RMIT clause, nothing in Sydney University enterprise agreement  clause 17 is legally enforceable. There is only a non-enforceable “target”:

ABORIGINAL & TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER EMPLOYMENT STRATEGY

17 The University will continue its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment strategy with the following targets:

(a) maximising staff development along with the transfer of job skills and information in order to increase Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge, independence, remuneration, job security and self-sufficiency; and

(b) increasing, encouraging and fostering Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment and participation at all levels of work activity; and

(c) facilitating and encouraging the direct involvement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff members in determining their career strategies, goals and objectives; and

(d) increasing the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff to 75 Academic staff and 97 Professional staff by June 2021, in line with its integrated strategy, Wingara Mura Bunga Barrabugu.

Notes:

The RMIT clause could be stronger, for instance by specifying minimum numbers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff who must be employed in years after 2019. The numbers specified in the clause are also not very ambitious. And of course, even an enforceable EA clause still needs to be actually enforced by the union.

RMIT’s stated aim is to reach and then exceed “population parity” – to have the same percentage of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff employed at RMIT as in the Victorian population as a whole. This is 1% (Victoria has the lowest proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of any Australian state). Since RMIT employs around 3,900 full time or fractional full time staff (EFT), there should be at least 39 EFT Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff at RMIT.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff numbers at RMIT have increased from 21.2 EFT in February 2015, to 27.7 EFT in June 2018, and to 36 EFT at the end of 2019 (meeting RMIT’s obligations under the EA clause). However the union branch is now in dispute  with RMIT because numbers of Aboriginal and Torrres Strait Islander staff declined to only 31 EFT at the end of 2020 (32 as of early March, 2021).

The University of Sydney since 2012 has had a stated target of “population parity” in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff numbers – which in NSW and Australia as a whole is 3.3%. However, USyd has made no progress towards this target, with December 2020 figures showing just 85 (81 FTE) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff. This is around 1.1% of USyd’s total of 7,601 FTE “full time or fractional full time” staff – unchanged since 2012.

Enforceable employment targets, specific mechanisms to assist in achieving these targets, and consultative mechanisms, can all be subjects of bargaining.

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Policy Committee of the NTEU is developing national claims for the coming bargaining round.

Sources:

• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff numbers at each institution are here .
• Overall employment figures here .
• Relevant RMIT documents include the annual Indigenous Education Statements  and the RMIT Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Employment Plan  (2016-2020)
• Relevant Sydney Uni documents include One Sydney, Many People  (2021); Wingara Mura–Bunga Barrabugu  (2012);  Unfinished Business  (2019) and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Workforce Strategic Framework 2019-21 .

C) JOB SECURITY – PROFESSIONAL AND ACADEMIC

1. No forced redundancy
2. Restrictions on outsourcing
3. Mandated staffing numbers
4. No sham redundancies
5. Limit on “change” processes
6. Minimum redeployment period of two years
7. Change/consultation clauses: more specifics, more stages

C1 No forced redundancies

Draft claim:

That there be no forced redundancies for the life of the Agreement

‘No forced redundancies’ was a claim advanced by many NTEU branches in the last bargaining round.

With more job cuts being announced every week, the union should be pursuing the strongest possible jobs protection clauses – and this would be one of the strongest.

Even if the full claim is not won, there can be useful outcomes. At Sydney Uni, the outcome in the last bargaining round included an extended notice period of nine months, applying to forced redundancies up to 31 Dec 2019 – see the current Sydney Uni EA  (clause 417). Important improvements in the change/consultation clause were also won (see C7, below).

C2 Restrictions on outsourcing and labour hire

Outsourcing has affected workers in English language teaching, IT, payroll, cleaning, security and beyond in recent years. But it seems that, beyond the general consultation clauses, there is not a single enterprise agreement in the higher education sector which restricts outsourcing. So winning controls around outsourcing should be a major focus for bargaining in this year’s EA round.

Draft clause:

Wages and conditions of contractors' and labour hire companies' employees

The employer must ensure the wages and conditions of contractors' and labour hire companies' employees engaged to do work covered by this Agreement are no less favourable than the wages and conditions provided for in this Agreement for equivalent or similar work.

(from an AMWU EA  approved in February 2021)

Clauses which impose a total prohibition on outsourcing are not lawful under the Fair Work Act. However, many EAs have terms which put strict limits around outsourcing. Importantly, “site rates” clauses (like the one quoted above) ensure that all work covered by the enterprise agreement must be carried out under wages and conditions at least as good as the EA – even if it’s done by an outsourced provider, or by employees of a labour hire company.

Winning clauses like this would remove most of the incentive for outsourcing. For instance, Melbourne University’s proposal to sack its entire grounds staff and use an outsourcing company instead would be much less attractive for management if this tactic couldn’t be used to impose a significant cut  in the pay and conditions of this workforce.  

Background/extra clauses:

Similar clauses were negotiated by the Electrical Trades Union in the ADJ Contracting EA , and were upheld  by an important ruling of the Federal Court  in 2012:

4.3 (b) (v) The Employer shall only engage contractors and employees of

contractors, to do work that would be covered by this Agreement if it was

performed by the Employees, who apply wages and conditions that are

no less favourable than that provided for in this Agreement.

...(viii) No employee shall be made redundant whilst labour hire employees, contractors and/or employees of contractors, engaged by the Employer, are performing work that is or has been performed by the Employees on the particular site or project. This clause does not apply in respect of specialist contractors.

A different agreement  struck by the Electrical Trades Union (clause 52.3) and a Melbourne Woolworths distribution centre agreement  (clause 2.1.6). Further discussion in NTEU Fightback’s document here . Detailed legal discussion here .

C3 Job security and workload – mandated staffing levels

Example clause (drafted by NTEU Fightback):

The employer will increase the number of staff in ongoing roles in the Disability Support Unit from 15 EFT to 20 EFT within one year of the EA being approved, with these positionsto be maintained and filled over the life of the agreement.

It’s worth considering putting in a claim for specified minimum staffing levels for some areas – especially areas such as student support which have been cut to the bone as a result of neoliberal management priorities. The Chicago Teachers Union is famous  for campaigning during bargaining for “social good” claims, including demands  around the numbers of library staff, counsellors, nurses and teachers aides.

There are currently no such clauses (that we know of) in higher education in Australia. However clauses mandating specific staffing levels for particular roles are not uncommon in enterprise agreements outside higher education – especially older agreements won by strong unions (for example clause 19.1 of this  Boral EA; clauses 10.7, 17, and appendix C of this  power station EA).

Some unions bargain for minimum staffing levels in the form of ratios, which can guarantee a level of service and ensure a reasonable workload. For instance, teacher unions bargain over class sizes in schools, while health care unions bargain over nurse/patient ratios in hospital agreements.

In theory, it would be possible to bargain for minimum staffing levels for a particular workload (eg according to the number of queries via email or phone in a student centre). Care would have to be taken that a claim like this didn’t end up as a step towards individual metrics for performance review purposes.

C4 No sham redundancies

It’s common for positions to be made redundant – but for the work involved in those positions to continue, and for this work to be heaped on other workers who survive the redundancy process. Two proposed clauses here.

This clause was in the log of claims by many NTEU branches in the last round:

That retrenchment including voluntary retrenchment only occur where the work performed in the position is no longer required to be done by anyone. The work that is no longer required must be identified to all affected employees, and after retrenchment, cease.

We’d also propose another clause (drafted by Fightback) , to add some strength when workers are trying to avoid excessive workloads caused by redundancies:

The employer acknowledges the serious risk of redundancies leading to increased and unsafe workload pressures, and will take all necessary measures to avoid this. These measures will include:

In advance of any staff departing a work area as a result of redundancy (voluntary or involuntary), management must specify in writing to all remaining staff:

• what work will cease to be done,
• what work will be performed by other workers.

Group and individual work plans must be revised in accordance with this information, and the work plans will be reviewed by the Workloads Review Committee (or similar body) who will consult with affected workers and ensure that the proposed new workload complies with all relevant workload clauses. This consultation is to happen prior to an offer of redundancy being made.

Any dispute over this allocation of workload must go to a Workloads Review Committee (or other disputes procedure) before a final decision is made about the redundancy. Disputes over the implementation of this allocated workload will also go to the Workloads Review Committee.

There will be a review of workloads by the Workloads Review Committee (or similar body), in consultation with affected workers and the union, between six and twelve months after any redundancy to ensure that workload is compliant with all EA clauses.

Notes:

It’s no bad thing to shift the emphasis to whether the work disappears rather than the specific job . In theory, that should mean that there are no workload issues as a result of redundancies.

But in practice, it’s often useful to have specific mechanisms which managements can be forced to comply with, to help workers ensure that workload concerns are addressed. This is why we’re proposing the extra clauses about workloads, or something very like them.

There are already clauses in many agreements which mandate management to give workers information about workloads during consultation on change and redundancy proposals.

For instance Melbourne University branch won a couple of new conditions in the last EA round:

1.40.2. Where the University has made a decision to make a position redundant, the University will consult in accordance with clause 1.36 to (amongst other matters arising): ...

1.40.2.3. discuss changes to workload, work practices or work that will no longer be performed arising from the redundancy and keep Employees affected by the change informed of the outcomes arising from the redundancy .

The proposed clause we’ve drafted above is basically trying to tighten up clauses like this – so rather than just “discuss” and “keep informed”, management would have to go through a formal process to specify workloads, and have them reviewed, before staff are made redundant. This is not an absolute guarantee that management won’t try to pile work on survivors of a redundancy process – but a clause like the one we’ve drafted would be a useful tool to help workers and the union contest these changes.

C5 Limit on change proposals

Continuous rounds of restructuring and redundancies are a fact of life at most universities. In the last round of bargaining a claim stating that any area can only be subjected to one “change proposal” for the duration of the EA was advanced at many universities.

Proposed clause (from bargaining in 2017):

To minimise unnecessary workplace disruption and job loss, no organisational unit may be subject to introduction of major change which is likely to have significant effects on staff more than once during the nominal life of the Agreement.

(This could be strengthened by removing the word “nominal”.)

The claim wasn’t won in full, but a partial version was put into the Melbourne Uni EA:

1.40.2. Where the University has made a decision to make a position redundant, the University will consult in accordance with clause 1.36 to (amongst other matters arising)

1.40.2.1. give genuine consideration to reasonable and financially viable actions intended to:

(a) mitigate the effect of the redundancy (including but not limited to attrition through turnover of labour); or

(b) avoid circumstances where an individual is required to participate in successive redeployment or redundancy processes throughout the life of the Agreement ; …

The loopholes could be closed (eg “genuine consideration” and “reasonable and financially viable” could be scrapped), with the more strict wording of the original claim instead.

C6 Minimum redeployment period of two years

In a redundancy situation, a worker gets a severance payment if they can’t be redeployed to “suitable alternative employment”. But what if the “suitable alternative employment” is a fixed term position, rather than an ongoing one?

Two years of employment should be the minimum for a position to be judged “suitable”, in our opinion.

At Sydney University the EA doesn’t explicitly consider this situation, nor give an exact definition of what’s “suitable” (the vagueness of the Fair Work Act on this question has led to various legal cases ). But USyd’s policy  on redeployment says that no severance will be paid if the worker is redeployed into a fixed term position which runs for any more than 12 months:

20 (6) A staff member who is transferred on a fixed term basis will not be entitled to any severance payment if they:

(a) are redeployed into a suitable continuing position at the University during or at the conclusion of their fixed term position;

(b) accept a contract for an extension, or subsequent fixed term position, beyond the initial twelve months;

(c) resign from the fixed term position.

Two years, rather than 12 months, should be the minimum here, for workers losing access to a potentially sizeable severance payment.

C7 Change/consultation clauses: more specifics, more stages

Change/consultation clauses

1. Summary
2. Sydney Uni (best in the country)
3. Monash Uni (poor)

1. Summary

A strong clause on consultation and workplace change is not a guarantee against redundancies. However, a strong consultation clause allows active union members to have an impact on the scope and speed of job cuts. Some jobs can be saved, inappropriate reclassifications fought, and workloads contested – especially if the strict application of a strong clause is backed by members campaigning to save jobs, services and courses.

The activity of digital research tool trainers (ResCom) at Melbourne Uni is one recent example. They used the consultation period to gather a thousand signatures on an online petition , gathered more than 600 testimonies  about the essential work they do – and saved their jobs !

The best change clause in the sector is probably Sydney Uni, which was significantly improved in the last bargaining round – one of the outcomes of the “no forced redundancies” claim.

The USyd consultation clause:

• Provides for multiple stages of consultation.
• Is quite prescriptive about what sort of information must be given – eg org charts, position descriptions, financial information, and impacts on staff including workload. (The more information which must be given to workers the better, as it enables workers to identify the problems, inconsistencies and outright lies in management’s proposal, which can be useful in pushing back.)
• Provides for “reasonable time” (ie, paid time) for workers engaged in a consultation process.
• States that if a final change proposal has been changed significantly from the initial version, it must be the subject of further consultation.
• Provides for a review of the change, 6 to 12 months afterwards, which provides further opportunities for workers to campaign against adverse effects of any cuts (especially increased workloads)

The USyd clause could be strengthened by wording requiring management to explain, in writing, what work will cease if some workers are sacked or moved, and exactly how the work remaining will be reallocated (see “no sham redundancies” clause, C4 above).

To reiterate – change management clauses are no magic bullet to stop job losses. But a strong clause backed by an active union membership can assist in making a serious contest over job cuts and other “change processes”.

In contrast to Sydney, Monash Uni has a poor consultation clause with almost no enforceable specifics, beyond a two week timeframe to respond to management.

Here are the two EA clauses for comparison.

2. University of Sydney change/consultation clause.

Additions won in the last bargaining round are in bold.

PART I: MANAGING WORKPLACE CHANGE

PRINCIPLES

385 Where the University proposes to introduce changes in programs, organisation, structure or technology that are likely to have a significant effect on staff, the University will consult those staff who are directly affected by the proposed changes in accordance with clauses 385 to 394. For the purposes of clauses 385 to 394 “significant effects” include:

(a) termination of employment;

(b) change to the composition, operation or size of the University’s workforce or to the skills required of staff;

(c) elimination or diminution of job opportunities (including opportunities for promotion or continuing employment);

(d) outsourcing of work;

(e) reallocation of a significant proportion of the duties and responsibilities of staff;

(f) restructuring and/or relocation of work units; and

(g) alteration of hours of work that involve changes of the kind specified in (a) to (f).

386 The consultation process set out in clauses 390 to 394 will provide directly affected staff and their unions with a genuine and timely opportunity to exchange relevant information, participate in discussions, and provide feedback on change proposals and implementation arrangements, and to have their views taken into account before final decisions are made. The consultation process will be collegial, but consultation does not necessarily mean that agreement will be reached. If proposals put forward by staff or their unions cannot be agreed to, reasons will be given. For the avoidance of doubt, the obligation to provide reasons does not apply to suggestions provided by staff at the Preliminary Stage in clause 389.

387 The University will ensure that adequate time for consultation and for staff to give feedback is provided in each step of the process and if required staff will be given reasonable time away from their work activities to enable them to participate in the consultation process.

388 At any stage in the consultation process, staff may involve a Representative of their choice, including a Union representative.

PRELIMINARY STAGE

389 In the interest of collegiality, before any formal Draft Change Proposal is released to staff, unless there are circumstances that would prevent it from doing so (such as commercial in confidence) or unless inappropriate, the University will inform potentially affected staff that it is considering change. The University will provide the reasons behind the possible change, and details of what it hopes to achieve. The University will invite potentially affected staff to provide any information or suggestions they consider to be relevant for the development of any formal Draft Change Proposal.

CONSULTATION STAGE 1

390 Where the University develops a firm proposal to introduce change of the kind referred to in clause 385 affecting more than one staff member, the University will prepare a Draft Change Proposal for consideration by and consultation with directly affected staff and their unions. The Draft Change Proposal will outline the nature, rationale and expected outcomes of the proposed change, and will include, where relevant:

(a) financial information, if financial imperatives form part of the reasons for the proposed change;

(b) anticipated financial implications of the proposed change; [previous clause: “financial implications;”]

(c) organisational charts outlining the current structure and proposed structure, and where possible, draft position descriptions;

(d) copies of any reports, or parts of reports, whether internal or external that have directly lead to the proposed change, unless such reports are commercial in confidence or legally privileged;

(e) expected outcomes including expected advantages and disadvantages;

(f) proposals to mitigate negative effects including training, re-training and redeployment;

(g) ways to minimise any disadvantages to work health and safety in the workplace;

(h) the anticipated timing of the consultation and timing of the proposed implementation of change; and

(i) implications for staff including changes in duties, number of staff, workload and/or work environment.

Upon release of the Draft Change Proposal, the University will include the Draft Change Proposal in the Organisational Change Management report which is circulated to the Joint Consultative Committee and appears on the University Intranet.

CONSULTATION STAGE 2

391 The University will give prompt consideration to matters raised by staff and their unions and will prepare a Revised Change Proposal, which will include:

(a) a summary of any amendments to the Draft Change Proposal;

(b) if relevant to the change being proposed, or if altered from the Draft Change Proposal, an updated organisational chart;

(c) if relevant to the change being proposed, or if altered from the Draft Change Proposal, position descriptions and classification levels;

(d) all feedback on the Draft Change Proposal, with the exception of feedback that contains sensitive, confidential or personal information; [previous EA: “a summary of the matters raised by staff and their unions”]

(e) the University's response to feedback received including reasons;

(f) if relevant, indicative mapping of positions to the new structure; and

(g) a draft implementation plan.

392 The draft implementation plan will include:

(a) the way in which the proposed change is implemented;

(b) the anticipated timing of implementation; and

(c) a mechanism for evaluating the change with affected staff to allow affected staff to have input into the evaluation of the proposed change .

393 The University will consult with directly affected staff and their unions on the Revised Change Proposal and consider their views before making a final decision in relation to the proposed change and its implementation.

394 Where the feedback on the Revised Change Proposal results in significant changes, the University will issue a further Revised Change Proposal allowing staff to provide further comments on the Revised Change Proposal.

IMPLEMENTATION

395 A Final Change Plan will then be issued setting out the University’s decision and implementation plan. The Final Change Plan will also include a summary of the matters raised by staff and/or the unions and the University’s response to those matters.

REVIEW

396 The University, in consultation with directly affected staff, will conduct a review of the change implemented as a result of the Final Change Plan, against its rationale and expected outcomes within 6-12 months of the Final Change Plan’s release.

CHANGES AFFECTING INDIVIDUAL STAFF

397 For each proposed change of the kind referred to in clause 385 affecting only one staff member, the University will consult the staff member concerned (and where requested, their Union or other Representative) and provide them with an opportunity to provide feedback on the proposed change and implementation arrangements before any final decision is made. The processes in clauses 385 to 395 are not required to be applied. Matters affecting an individual staff member which are not resolved may be dealt with under clauses 456 to 458 or clauses 469 to 472.

CHANGES TO ROSTERS OR HOURS OF WORK

398 Where the University proposes to change a staff member's regular roster or ordinary hours of work, the University will consult with the staff member or staff members affected and their representatives, if any, about the proposed change, in accordance with clause 399. The processes in clauses 386 to 396 are not required to be applied.

399 The consultation process will include:

(a) the provision of information about the proposed change;

(b) the ability for staff members and their representatives to give their views about the impact of the proposed change (including any impact in relation to their family or caring responsibilities); and

(c) consideration by the University of any views about the impact of the proposed change that are given by the staff member or staff members concerned and/or their representatives.

400 Clauses 398 to 399 should be read in conjunction with other provisions in this Agreement concerning the scheduling of work and notice requirements.

401 Where the changes referred to in clauses 398 to 399 have significant effects on staff, the University will regard clause 385 as applicable.

3. Monash University consultation clause

This is a stark contrast with the strong USyd clause – note the lack of specifics in terms of information to be provided, the lack of multiple stages, the lack of a specific right to paid time, etc. From the Monash Uni enterprise agreement :

13. CONSULTATION ABOUT CHANGE

13.1 The University will notify affected staff and the NTEU where a proposed significant or substantial change will affect staff. Such change includes, but is not limited to, outsourcing or contracting out and changes to University Policies that have a significant and substantial impact on staff terms and conditions of employment.

13.2 Consultation will be initiated with the provision of a written document outlining the proposal and rationale for proposing the change and proposed impact on staff. Following initial consultation the University will provide written responses to the issues raised in writing by affected staff and/or the NTEU. In order to facilitate this consultation, staff and the NTEU will be provided with up to two weeks to respond in writing to a proposal presented by management.

13.3 If a decision to proceed is made by the University, management will consult with the affected staff and with the NTEU about the implementation of that change, particularly where the change is likely to have an impact on the work, conditions or career prospects of staff. The consultations will be conducted within a frame-work which acknowledges the statutory obligations and responsibilities of the University management and there will be no power of veto over the University's decision-making processes.

13.4 A staff member may be represented by a representative for the purposes of consultation under this clause and under clause 82.

13.5 For the purposes of section 205 of the Fair Work Act 2009 and this Agreement, clause 82 and this clause constitute a single consultation term and are to be read accordingly.

D) PROFESSIONAL STAFF – JOB SECURITY AND WORKLOAD

1. Increased redundancy pay for professional staff
2. Vacant positions to be filled
3. Workload committee
4. No individual metrics
5. Rest breaks in high intensity contact areas

(See also – Automatic conversion from fixed term in section E)

D1. Increased professional staff redundancy payments

Professional staff are a lot cheaper to sack than academics.

At University of Sydney, a 45 year old academic staff member made redundant after 20 years employment would get 82 weeks salary. If that same worker was professional staff, they would be entitled to 56.25 weeks salary.

This is pretty archaic. Like many academics, many professional staff also have specialist skills that don’t necessarily transfer easily into other work.

Boosting the separate, lower scale for professional staff redundancy pay towards what academic staff get would be an important equity measure, and give an increased disincentive against management targeting professional staff for redundancy.

D2. Vacant positions to be filled

One major problem leading to excessive workloads, especially in professional staff areas, is positions remaining unfilled for months or even years. It’s possible to win clauses mandating that vacant positions be filled in a reasonable time.

Clause (drafted by NTEU Fightback drawn from the examples below):

Recognising the serious workload implications of positions remaining unfilled, when an existing position becomes vacant, the University shall fill such vacancy in a reasonable time, which means advertising no later than 21 days after the departure of the employee.

Similar clauses from agreements outside of higher education:

From DP World EA 2020  (adopt text in black)

8.14 Where an existing FSE position becomes vacant, the Company shall , in normal circumstances, fill such vacancy in a reasonable time which means advertising no later than 21 days after the departure of the employee . If circumstances change, the Company shall provide Employees and the Union with the reasons for non-replacement of existing positions.

From St Luke’s Hospital EA :

47.5 Replacement of vacancies: The employer will ensure that vacant positions will be filled with appropriately qualified and/or experienced permanent staff where practicable.

47.6 Where agreement cannot be reached, the parties may exercise their rights pursuant to Clause 38 Resolution of Disputes.

D3. Workload review committees

Generally workload clauses for professional staff are very short, and have no specifics to help with enforcement. A general statement that workloads will be “reasonable” is quite hard to enforce.

Committees aren’t the answer to everything – but an evenly balanced union/management committee, together with an active union membership, can provide an opportunity to formally contest ridiculous workloads.

Possible clause (drafted by NTEU Fightback)

Upon request of the union, a Workload Review Committee will be established to review workloads in a work unit.

a) The committee shall consist of three union nominees, three management nominees, and an independent agreed chair.

b) the Workload Review Committee shall be able to review evidence including

• records of breaks and overtime (paid and unpaid) from work areas
• testimony from staff and management, HSRs and the union
• any other relevant evidence

c) findings of the WRC will go to management, staff and the union, along with a recommendation about how staffing levels and workloads shall be adjusted to meet the obligations of the workloads clause

d) findings shall be implemented. The WRC shall review the situation three months after implementation.

Background:

The Sydney Uni NTEU branch won a Workload Monitoring Committee in the last bargaining round. The WMC has five nominees from management and five from the union, and oversees the workload allocation policies of each academic work unit.

A body similar to the WMC could be created to cover professional staff work areas, and it could be given a greater role in deciding disputes (not just at the level of a work unit eg school or department, but also disputes affecting individuals or groups after a redundancy, for instance).

D4. No individual metrics

Draconian, stress-inducing KPIs or metrics are commonplace in many workplaces, especially call centres and contact centres. NTEU policy opposes individual metrics, but there are no clauses in enterprise agreements limiting their use.  

Possible clause (drafted by NTEU Fightback):

The employer’s use of individual metrics and KPIs (eg, set times for resolving email or telephone queries) can cause enormous workload stress for staff. Metrics also take no account of difficulties including language, student distress, and the complexity of the query, and can therefore be an obstacle to providing students and other service users with a quality service. Therefore:

1. Performance Review processes under this EA will notinclude individual metrics, nor individual staff level performance in regard to any service level metrics or targets.
2. No wall boards or other methods of publicly displaying individual staff performance will be used.
3. There are sufficient means to address staff performance without the use of individual metrics. Therefore service wide targets shall not be the subject of individualised pressure on workers.

Notes:

Point a) above is based on an agreement reached in USyd’s Student Administration Services after a dispute in 2019.

Opposition to metrics is official NTEU policy. The NTEU Policy Manual  states:

METRICS

NTEU notes:

6.18 The increasing reliance on metrics to measure the performance of work in the University is an increasing imposition of control by employers over employees. This new method of control over employees extends deeply into their lives across a variety of their duties.

6.19 This method of control reduces the variety, quality and enjoyment of work in the University.

NTEU believes:

6.20 The use of metrics by employers to monitor work in the University sector should be resisted, even when conducted on a voluntary basis.

NTEU will:

6.21 Work to regulate and ultimately eliminate the use of metrics by employers.

...

D5. Rest breaks in high intensity contact areas

Staff in inbound contact centres are often intensively monitored and micromanaged. Some of these workers are subjected to indignities such as having to notify management when they wish to take a toilet break. In some contact centres, workers are virtually prohibited from taking time off during peak periods, and are pressured to take only short lunch breaks, adding to voice strain and general fatigue.

Possible clause (drafted by NTEU Fightback):

Where intense public contact is a feature of the work (including in inbound call centres, the Student Centre and ICT Contact Centre), the following measures are to be implemented to protect the employees from the stresses of such work:

1. Employees are entitled to take breaks each hour, including breaks for toilet, physical comfort and refreshment as they require.
2. Wherever possible, periods of public contact will be broken by periods of similar duration away from such contact.
3. Staff preferences for shifts will be taken into account when rosters are being arranged.
4. Roster cycles will be provided to staff at least 4 weeks in advance.
5. Staff may not be directed to have less than 45 minutes for their lunch break.
6. Staff may access a day of annual leave per calendar month even during sustained high workload periods.

This is based on a clause developed for the Monash NTEU Log of Claims in 2017, and on AMSRO/NUW call centre EA ( here ) clause 18.5.

See also Victorian govt/ASU code of conduct for call centres here :

Organisations should implement practices that improve occupational health and safety, through:

...

• providing regular rest breaks away from the telephone for a minimum of five minutes every hour;...

Similarly on breaks: Worksafe Qld here ; Comcare here .

It’s a testament to where things are in Australian workplaces, including in higher education, that unions are having to fight for the right to visit the bathroom.  The legal right of workers in Australia to take toilet breaks was recently upheld, here .

As with many other conditions, having an EA entitlement can be a big help to workers actually enforcing basic rights.

E) CASUALS CLAUSES

There are a series of straightforward measures which would make life better for precariously employed workers, and which would remove some of the cost incentive for management to casualise their workforce. These basic measures should include:

1. Payment for all hours worked

2. Equal superannuation

3. Increased casual loading

4. Payment for university breaks

5. Sick leave

5. Entitlements ( induction, email, meetings, payment for lecture attendance, etc)

We’re also in favour of the sort of multi-pronged attack on casualisation which has been effective in other industries, as outlined in section F of this document.

E1. Casualised academics – payment for all hours worked

The ludicrously low time allocations assumed for academic work like marking and preparing lectures and tutes means ridiculous workloads and wage theft (see section G). For casualised workers, this often means poverty.

In the previous bargaining round, Melbourne University branch of the NTEU won a clause guaranteeing payment for casuals for all hours worked. In 2020, a dispute using this clause – and backed by an active public campaign by union members – won $6 million in back pay  for underpaid casuals in the Arts faculty. Every NTEU branch should be insisting on a similar clause, and launching a similar campaign, in the current bargaining round.

The Melbourne Uni EA  specifies “derived rates” for sessional lecturers and tutors (based on eg 2 hours preparation for a one hour lecture, plus a 25% casual loading). This is not unusual, but the UniMelb EA also includes this clause:

2.8.5. The University when offering Casual employment will, as a minimum requirement, inform the individual in writing:

2.8.5.1. that they are employed as a Casual;

2.8.5.2. the applicable classification level;

2.8.5.3. the hourly rate of pay;

2.8.5.4. the anticipated number of hours required; and

2.8.5.5. for Sessional Teaching, that additional hours not contemplated by, and in excess of, the derived rate will be paid at the Casual hourly rate  set out at clause 2.8.3.

It’s one of the most basic legal requirements of Australian employers that workers are paid “ for all time worked ”. The fact that every university in the country gets away with brazenly flouting this requirement speaks to the importance of putting basic entitlements into easily enforceable enterprise agreement clauses – and then strictly enforcing those clauses, with the backing of an active membership.

E2 Equal super for casuals

Ongoing and many fixed term staff generally get 17% super in higher education, while casuals are left on the legal minimum (currently 9.5%).

Although 17% super for all was a claim on many campuses in the last bargaining round, it was achieved only for fixed term staff (often phased in over time) and not for casuals. Lower super for casuals is an added injustice experienced by some of the lowest paid people on campus – and gives management an extra incentive to casualise the workforce.

Everyone should support a claim for 17% super for all.

E3 Increase casual loading

A 25% casual loading is standard in Australian awards and enterprise agreements. This is meant to compensate for lack of sick pay and annual leave, and for the general uncertainty of “casual” employment. But unions can and do bargain for higher loadings in some circumstances, as a disincentive to casualise workers.

Even if they were paid for all the hours they worked, casual academics would still be chronically underpaid compared with ongoing academic staff because they:

• Are only paid during teaching periods (around half of the weeks in the year)
• Have no paid time for research or administration
• Do not benefit from increments
• Are not promoted (they are always employed on the same level, potentially for many years)

In recognition of this fact, casual academics should get a higher loading. 50% or 75% might make up some of the difference, and provide a disincentive for managers to continue casualising their workforces.

A recent CFMEU (Vic) pattern agreement  includes payment of a 75% loading for workers if they are employed as casuals for more than six weeks.

13.4 (c) Casual Employees, other than irregular casual Employees, who have been engaged by Probuild for a period of employment in excess of six weeks shall thereafter have the right to request to have his or her contract of employment converted to permanent employment if the employment is to continue beyond the conversion process. If the casual employment continues after 6 weeks, the causal loading will increase to 75%.

This higher loading could be incorporated into the rates for casuals or sessional staff specified in each EA.

E4 payment for holidays

Another approach to compensating casualised academic staff for part-year employment could be that payment for teaching for a semester means payment for the holiday or semester break that follows, pro rata for those employed for only part of a semester.

The log of claims being advanced by the Australian Education Union for education support staff in Victoria includes:

24 (5) (a) (ii) … Education support class employees employed on fixed term contracts for term 4 or a full school year will conclude at the end of the term 4 school vacation period.

E5 sick pay for casuals

In the last bargaining round, Sydney Uni branch’s log of claims included:

4.4 Introduction of sick leave for casual employees as it is a WHS issue for all staff

The pandemic has demonstrated just how dangerous it can be – for everyone – to have workers with no sick leave entitlement.

E6 Entitlements (induction, email, meetings, payment for lecture attendance, etc)

Casualised academic staff are commonly expected to work without basic facilities like access to a desk, often have their email account suspended as soon as they finish teaching (even while still having to communicate with students), and often get no paid time for studying policies that they are expected to be familiar with.

All of these matters can be bargained over. Here’s a sampling of clauses:

Access to staff card, email and library for 12 months: The Sydney Uni EA  has this clause:

ACCESS TO A STAFF CARD, EMAIL AND THE LIBRARY FOR CASUAL ACADEMIC STAFF

479 During the first 12 months of the Agreement the University will implement the provision of a staff card, email address and library access for Casual Academic staff who are employed for more than one semester for a minimum 12 months period . The progress of this implementation will be reported on at the Joint Consultative Committee meeting as set out in clause 447(l). Staff whose employment is terminated due to misconduct will not be provided with access post their termination with the University. The University has ultimate discretion over when to terminate access of any Casual staff member to buildings, email and the library.

This clause could be strengthened by removing the requirement to be employed “for more than one semester” in order to qualify for 12 months of library, email and staff card use.

Payment to attend meetings – The University of New England enterprise agreement  has this clause:

21.4 Supervisors will encourage casual staff who have casual employment for a whole teaching period to attend appropriate meetings of their work units. Attendance at all relevant meetings will be properly remunerated in accordance with the casual rates provided for Other Required Academic Activity.

Paid time to update on policies and procedures – Sydney Uni again

57 Casual staff who are employed on a regular and systematic basis will be eligible to claim up to 4 paid hours per annum, at times agreed with their Supervisor, to familiarise and update themselves on University policies and procedures relevant to their engagement.

…

This clause could be strengthened by removing the need for the worker to apply for the 4 hours; it should be paid automatically.

Catchall clause – from the University of Queensland EA :

20.1. c. Casual staff will be provided with reasonable access, commensurate with available resources, to University facilities to enable them to perform University work. These include access to the library, email and internet, a working space, and out-of-hours access to the office as appropriate. The University supports the inclusion of Casual staff in the activities and life of the Organisational Unit.

This could be strengthened by removing the reference to “commensurate with available resources”, and specifying a minimum time period for the access to library etc (eg a year, as per Sydney Uni above)

Lecture attendance and more

It’s ridiculous that casual tutors aren’t paid to attend lectures in subjects they are tutoring. This should be written into enterprise agreements.

The Sydney Uni branch log of claims from last bargaining round is here  – the list of casuals claims (clause 4) is worth a look and includes:

A guarantee that casual academics receive payment for all work undertaken including but not limited to:

• Attending lectures;
• Consultation time;
• Any marking allocation must provide sufficient time for staff to complete the required work;
• On-line work;
• Attending faculty/school/discipline meetings;
• No work will be required prior to the approval of the contract.

In addition, a clause stating that the employer has to pay for any required working with children checks would be useful.

F) CLAUSES TO REDUCE CASUALISATION

Casualisation is one of the biggest issues in the sector. The NTEU has bargained for clauses which are meant to reduce casualisation but only weak clauses have been won. Unfortunately, this has discredited measures which have worked successfully in other industries. Conversion clauses with massive loopholes, for instance, have created the idea that “conversion doesn’t work”.

However, other unions have demonstrated that a series of strong clauses – including mandated conversion of large numbers of casuals, mandatory casual conversion after a fixed time, and maximum ratios on casual labour – can be combined in an enterprise agreement to significantly reduce casualisation. See NTEU Fightback discussion document .

Winning strong, effective clauses along these lines is possible. It would destroy a poisonous, decades-old business model, and so would require a huge amount of industrial power.

Step one should be that we actually demand clauses that will fix the problems. We think the clauses below would make a decent start.

1. Casual conversion – close the loopholes

2. Casual ratios

3. Mandated conversion of prescribed numbers of workers

4. “Early career” positions to include full research fraction

5. Conversion from fixed term

6. Conversion for research staff

7. Restrictive definitions of where casuals can be employed

At the same time, we should vigorously pursue claims such as those in section E, above, which make life more liveable for casualised workers and also increase the cost of casual labour, reducing the current massive incentive for university managers to employ workers precariously rather than in ongoing positions.

Because of the huge variety of weak existing clauses, what follows is generally more a discussion of what’s possible and what the pitfalls are, rather than hard and fast ideas for draft clauses.

F1 Casual conversion

Casual conversion clauses – the good, the bad, and the ugly

1. Summary
2. What a strong conversion clause looks like
3. What a weak conversion clause looks like

Summary

Casual conversion clauses in higher education have (so far) all been failures. NTEU Fightback doesn’t know of any effective conversion clauses for academics in the entire sector.

This is not because of some fatal flaw in the idea of conversion clauses – there are plenty of examples from other industries (explained below) where conversion clauses work quite well to limit casualisation.

However, every conversion clause that we know of in higher education has enormous loopholes – again, we have examples below.

A strategy to reduce casualisation should not rely primarily on casual conversion clauses. We have a detailed discussion , including examples of where conversion clauses play an important role in an overall strategy that includes ratios, definitional limitations on casual work, and mandatory and rapid conversion of large numbers of casuals.

What a strong conversion clause looks like

The ideal conversion clause (apart from outright prohibition on casual labour) would be something like this, from a CFMEU agreement  in 2011:

23 … an Employee engaged by the Company pursuant to this clause, on a regular or systematic basis for a sequence of periods of employment for more than six weeks shall not be a casual Employee and shall be entitled to all the conditions of a permanent Employee.

There are four factors which make this a very strong clause:

a) Eligibility is universal. Apart from being employed for six weeks, the worker doesn’t have to meet any other qualifications to achieve conversion.

b) There are no grounds for rejection by the employer, eg conversion can’t be refused by the employer on “reasonable business grounds” or for any other reason.

c) There is no application process: conversion happens automatically. This is important because management can often create a culture of fear, victimising the few workers who insist on their workplace rights. Requiring precariously employed workers to put their hands up to demand conversion in these circumstances is a serious obstacle to reducing casualisation.

d) Conversion is to permanent employment, not to some half way house employment category with lesser rights.

Of course, a great conversion clause in higher education won’t be exactly the same as a great conversion clause in construction. However, every single NTEU-negotiated conversion clause we know of falls short on most or all of these grounds. To win strong conversion clauses means first of all demanding it, and then building real industrial power to win them.

What a weak conversion clause looks like

On the surface of it, the University of Sydney conversion clause (67-74) doesn’t look terrible. But close reading shows that it fails each of the tests that the CFMEU clause above passes.

Application is limited:

68 Casual staff… may apply for conversion to Continuing, Funding Contingent Continuing or Fixed Term employment if they have:

...(d) demonstrated the capacity to meet the future expectations of the position, including any new duties or skills that may be required, according to their P&D Plan and the strategic directions of their Faculty or Unit.

Strong conversion clauses presume, like any sensible person would, that someone who has been doing the job for years has demonstrated that they are totally qualified to do the job. By contrast, it’s pretty much impossible to “demonstrate the capacity to meet the  future expectations of the position,  including any new duties or skills that may be required”, when management can (and do) just say that they are planning to restructure – which is true all the time at Sydney Uni and most other universities.

Grounds for refusal are wide:

70 The University may refuse an application for conversion from a Fixed Term or Casual staff member only on the following reasonable business grounds:

...(b) there is insufficient revenue or funding streams to provide continuing support for the staff member's employment;

So this means a department can cry poor, and that’s the end of the story.

And there is nothing in the clause which guarantees conversion to ongoing rather than fixed term – and having to apply can and does open up long term casuals to retribution from management.

Each of these major loopholes could be removed – if there was enough industrial pressure brought to bear.

F2 Casual ratios

Winning a maximum ratio of casual employment can be very effective in forcing management to hire staff as ongoing. However, there aren’t many ratio clauses in higher education in Australia. Here are the three that we know of.

• Swinburne  EA 2009 :

9.2.3 The University agrees it shall not increase overall usage of casual staff above the levels for the twelve month period ending 31 March 2009 which based on Swinburne Payroll figures were 21.5% FTE for academic staff.

This is the strongest conversion clause that we know of in Australian higher education. Application of the clause was the subject of a dispute  in 2012 which resulted in 30 staff being converted to ongoing employment, and 30 (without PhDs) converted to fixed term employment. These were teaching-focused jobs, although other clauses enabled conversion from teaching-focused roles to jobs with a substantial research fraction at a later point.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

• James Cook

This looks like an interesting attempt to reduce casualisation by 10% over the life of the current agreement. Unfortunately, the circumstances of Covid probably mean that items (iii) and (iv) in the clause below may be the favoured methods of driving casualisation down.

From the James Cook University EA  

19. Decreasing 'Teaching' Casualisation

(a) The University will over the life of this Agreement reduce the proportion of casual academic teaching FTE by 10% as compared to the 2016 data reported to the Commonwealth, currently via Department of Education and Training excluding students, and Staff whose primary place of employment is elsewhere. This reduction may be through (but not limited to):

(i) Casual conversions through Clause 18.1; 28

(ii) Appointment of Staff on a fixed term or continuing basis;

(iii) Reduction of the number of courses/subjects taught;

(iv) Implementing a significant change in accordance with Clause 42.

(b) Where it becomes apparent that the target is not likely to be achieved, after consultation with the JCC, the parties will then agree to a course of action that will allow the University to work towards meeting its obligations under this clause including consideration of an extension to the timeframe in which the reduction is to occur.

(c) The University will report on this percentage as part of its report to JCC by 1 August in each year demonstrating progress towards meeting this target.

• University of Sydney EA  

65 The University will review the use of Casual teaching within each Faculty at the end of each year. Where more than five per cent of a Faculty’s face-to-face teaching hours at Level B and above is being performed by Casual staff (excluding staff who are students or who have other primary occupations) for two consecutive semesters, the Faculty concerned will, as far as operational needs permit, establish sufficient positions to bring the use of casual employment within the five per cent threshold by the end of the following year.

This ratios clause only applies to Level B and above – and because the huge majority of casualised academics aren’t formally classified as “Level B”, the clause is next to useless. In addition the clause excludes students, and has a big loophole in the form of “as far as operational needs permit”.

All of this problematic/weak wording could be removed to achieve a much stronger clause:

The University will review the use of Casual teaching within each Faculty at the end of each year. Where more than five per cent of a Faculty’s face-to-face teaching hours… is being performed by Casual staff… for two consecutive semesters, the Faculty concerned will… establish sufficient positions to bring the use of casual employment within the five per cent threshold by the end of the following year.

Even with a much higher percentage such a revised clause would be very useful, even more so if it required regular reporting of numbers and ratios to the union.

F3 Mandated conversion of specified numbers of existing casuals

It is possible to bargain for set numbers of casuals to be rapidly converted.

See below for an example from another industry, but an ambitious clause in higher education might look something like this:

Within six months of the EA becoming operational, the following numbers of casual staff will be converted to ongoing with a full research fraction. The casual staff to be converted will be selected from casual staff who have been employed for three of the last four years.

• Arts – 120
• Engineering – 100
• Medicine and Health – 100

Conversion clauses like this – specifying large numbers of casuals to be rapidly converted to permanent work – can and have made a huge impact on casualisation in other industries, especially when combined with ratios and an active membership to ensure enforcement.

For example, this clause was won by warehouse workers  in Melbourne a few years back, after a three day strike. To remove management discretion as much as possible, conversion was based on seniority.

14.4.9.1 The Employer will, within six (6) weeks of the approval of the Agreement, directly employ an additional fifty (50) Team Members. Those additional Team Members will be employed from the current indirectly engaged pool of supplementary labour working at the Laverton CDC at the time of the making of the Agreement… The Employer shall offer employment based on an indirectly engaged worker’s length of continuous service with the third party labour provider at the Laverton CDC at the time of the approval of the Agreement.

14.4.9.2 The Employer will, within six (6) months of this Agreement being made, directly employ an additional twenty (20) Team Members. Those additional Team Members will be employed from the then current indirectly engaged pool of supplementary labour working at the Laverton CDC…  

14.4.9.3 The Employer will offer indirectly engaged workers continuously employed at the Laverton CDC for a period of six (6) months direct employment with the Employer. This clause shall have effect from the time that this Agreement is made and service prior to that day will not count for the purposes of this clause.

The only thing stopping such a clause being won in higher education is the union’s long term failure to build industrial strength. Low expectations and a weak industrial strategy combine to produce a weak result, which in turn reinforces the low expectations of most union members.

Breaking this cycle will not be easy – we’re going to need bold claims and a plan to organise to win them. But that’s what we have to do unless we’re content to let the problem of casualisation drag on, literally, forever – and get worse.

F4 “Early career” /“teaching fellow” positions must include full research fraction and easy conversion

The problem with “scholarly teaching fellow” - type roles

The main debate about the rash of “teaching focused” type initiatives in Australia’s universities is whether they have been a disappointment, or a disaster.

The two main issues are the teaching fraction of many of these positions, and an inadequate conversion clause.

Overview

A substantial report  on the NTEU website gives an overview. Obviously enough, regular income, if only for a few years for a small number of academics, has been positive – but the cost is enormous. The ludicrously low time allocations for academic tasks have a massive impact on “teaching heavy” academic staff, to the detriment of research, teaching quality, and mental health, according to the academics quoted:

I mean most of my time is just frantically delivering to large numbers.

So I would say that my health has deteriorated markedly in the last 18 months since I've been working in this job…

I'd never been that anxious and worried, to a point where it was physiologically – something was happening where I was just kind of shutting down.

Meanwhile, managers state that these “teaching heavy” positions replace staff with research fractions.

I just think it's created a subclass… My understanding from the faculties and just talking to them is that this guy here who's fantastic at teaching and does great research is going to kill himself to try and get out of there and back up into normal.

…we would not have created or appointed these STFs unless there was a requirement. …, we would have created … normal 40:40:20 positions which would be at lecturer level or associate lecturer level. These people are predominantly teaching fellows, not 40:40:20.

Sydney and RMIT don’t have ideal clauses, however they seem to be better than the average.

Sydney

At Sydney, “Scholarly teaching fellows” have a teaching fraction of up to 70% (clause 111), which is more “teaching heavy” than Sydney’s standard 40-40-20 mix.

However, the conversion clause is good. There is no need to apply – conversion is automatic:

113 An Academic Fellow employed in a position which includes teaching will, after:

(a)having completed a minimum of 3 years as an Academic Fellow, or

(b)having achieved promotion to Level C,

be converted to a Continuing academic role. …

Clause 106 provides that as “Scholarly Teaching Fellows” are made continuing or resign they are replaced, to maintain the number of STF positions at 120. The main problem here is that this number is far, far too low to make any dent in casualisation.

RMIT

At RMIT all “Early Career Development Fellows” include a research fraction equal to other academic staff (though this fraction is RMIT’s standard of 30% for research and engagement, not the “classic” 40-40-20 split).

Though ECDF staff have to apply for conversion, it is relatively easy, with no enormous loopholes.

The main problem at RMIT is the tiny number of positions created – just twenty per year. Yet this is actually one of the better outcomes for these “early career” type positions.

The conditions won at RMIT or Sydney should be the absolute minimum of conditions for any similar positions. But there is just no way that this approach is going to touch the sides of the problem of casualisation without massively bigger numbers of rapid conversions.

Here is the RMIT clause. One of its attractive features is what it doesn’t include – there are no different academic workload clauses that apply to these positions. And the conversion clause, while not spectacular, at least doesn’t have the massive loopholes of some other clauses.

Early Career Development Fellowships (ECDF)

39.3 Over the life of this Agreement the University will advertise Early Career Development Fellowships and make offers of employment for a minimum of 80 appointments. The University commits to a minimum of 20 offers in each year commencing from the date of approval of this Agreement by the FWC.

(a) All ECDF appointments will be fixed term of up to 3 years duration.

(b) ECDF roles will be advertised internally and externally as they arise.

(c) The field of ECDF applicants will be restricted to applicants who during the past three years:

(i) have performed casual teaching work for an Australian University; and

(ii) have not been employed on a continuing basis at an Australian University.

(d) Successful candidates will be selected from eligible candidates on merit.

(e) Successful candidates who have a PhD at the time of appointment will be appointed at Level B, otherwise the level of appointment will be A6.

(f) The teaching and teaching-related duties performed by the ECDF employee must be work which would otherwise be performed by Academic Employees employed on a casual basis.

39.4 Conversion of fixed term ECDF’s to continuing employment

(a) At the conclusion of the fixed term contract, the employee will be entitled to apply for conversion to continuing employment.

(b) The ECDF will be appointed to a continuing role if:

(i) they have met required standards of performance; and

(ii) they have met required standards of conduct; and

(iii) the work that they performed is still required to be performed.

(c) This sub-clause will apply to all Academic Employees employed on ECDF fixed term contracts at the time of approval of this Agreement.

39.5 If the application for conversion to continuing employment is rejected the University will supply the reason in writing.

39.6 An ECDF employee whose contract expires and who is not subsequently offered continuing employment due to the work no longer being required and who is not offered any other kind of alternative continuing or fixed term work at RMIT will be entitled to a severance payment calculated in accordance with TABLE 7.3.

Further discussion here .  

F5 Conversion from fixed term

There should be automatic conversion of fixed term staff after two years.  

The University of New England EAs , both professional and academic, have a fixed term conversion clause that is apparently the best in the country. It mandates an offer of conversion once an employee is past 18 months (or two separate contracts totalling 12 months), regardless of whether there has been a merit based hiring. We should all be fighting for a clause like this.

Conversion to Continuing Employment

9.6 A Fixed-Term Employee can apply for and will be offered conversion to Continuing employment in their position provided the following criteria are met:

a) the Employee was previously subject to Merit Selection for an advertised position; or

b) the Employee is on a second or subsequent contract and has served a minimum period of 12 months; or

c) the employee has been engaged for a minimum period of 18 months; and

d) the Employee has performed satisfactorily in that position.

9.7 The University will not be required to offer conversion where it can demonstrate that there is no ongoing requirement for the duties that have been undertaken in that position nor in a substantially similar position.

9.8 The University will not be required to offer conversion where it can demonstrate a lack of funding that is directly related to the position in question.

9.9 The University will determine the application within 30 days of the application being made, and write to the employee confirming the conversion to Continuing employment, or demonstrating the duties are no longer required in accordance with this clause.

Importantly, there is no loophole for management to avoid conversion based on what they say might happen in the future (unlike the Sydney fixed term conversion clause, which suffers from the same defects as the Sydney casual conversion clause, see above). If the work is still there, and the money hasn’t disappeared already, the conversion will happen.

Melbourne Uni’s clause is apparently the next best – which is a worry, as it’s a long way short of the UNE gold standard. Clauses 2.9.2.2. (academic) and 3.13.2.2 (professional) require five years of employment, including at least one merit based selection. There is wide management discretion to reject the conversion requests if there is “an unreasonable or unsustainable financial effect”, or if it is “known or reasonably foreseeable” that the work will cease within two years.  

As well as fixed term conversion, there are clauses for fixed term renewal which vary widely.

F6 Research staff – Contingent Continuing Research Position

Sydney University has a category of employment called  Funding Contingent Continuing Employment: basically as long as the funding (eg for research) is there, the job is ongoing.

It’s not a bad concept, but it’s a weak clause – eligibility after ten years(!!) and totally  at the discretion of management:

46 Externally Funded Fixed Term contract staff who have worked at the University for over ten years will be converted to Funding Contingent Continuing Employment on a case-by-case basis, subject to having been assessed in accordance with the P&D Program as at least meeting expected standards or satisfactory (as applicable), with defined objectives and key performance indicators.

For fixed term staff, conversion is as hard to achieve as it is for casual staff – the same “outs” for management on the grounds of “future expectations” and “skills that may be required”, and refusal allowed on the basis of “insufficient revenue”.

F7 Job security – definition of casual

Clauses which strictly define when casual labour can be used could, with strict enforcement, make real inroads into the casualisation of the sector. However many “definitional” clauses are weak.  Here are clauses from four universities to illustrate some of the strengths and weaknesses.

1. A reasonably solid clause at RMIT:

At RMIT,  this clause was used to secure back pay and ongoing work for one worker in a 2019 dispute . It has now been used in a dozen or more cases to win more secure employment.

41 CASUAL ACADEMIC EMPLOYEES

Principles of casual academic resourcing and collegiality

41.1 The parties recognise that casual employment is not in all circumstances an appropriate employment mode or a substitute for fixed term or continuing employment. The University will therefore not use casual employment in circumstances which require significant numbers of hours per week for the conduct of long term regular and systematic work.

Without going totally down the legal rabbit hole, it’s worth breaking the key words in this clause down a little. The phrase “regular and systematic work” is a phrase with a definite meaning in industrial law, and is actually a pretty low bar to hit. The Fair Work Commission explains :

The term 'regular' implies a repetitive pattern and does not mean frequent, often, uniform or constant.

The term 'systematic' requires that the engagement be 'something that could fairly be called a system, method or plan'

The phrase “long term work” and “significant numbers of hours per week” are probably more debatable – but plenty of casuals could clear this hurdle. That could then open up possibilities for conversion, to remedy the incorrect employment of these workers.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

2. A strong and a not-so-strong definition of casual employment at Griffith

Spot the difference: The Griffith University Professional  EA  puts quite strict limits on the employment of casual professional staff:

12.4 Casual Employment

It is acknowledged that casual employment will continue to be appropriate in some circumstances. Casual employment will occur to meet peak load demands, cover short-term staff absences and intermittent additional staff requirements or where there are irregular or short-term patterns of work to be completed.

Casual employment will not be used where there is an on-going or regular work requirement. Continuing appointments (either full-time or part-time) will be utilised in those circumstances. The University will not engage in “casualization” of bona fide continuing jobs.

However, this strict wording is absent from the Griffith Academic EA . The equivalent clauses are much weaker for academic staff:

12.5.3 It is acknowledged that casual employment will continue to be appropriate in some circumstances. The University will not use casual employment as a substitute for continuing and fixed term positions, but rather only to supplement.

The use of casual employment is primarily to ensure flexibility within the academic environment and enable the University to respond quickly to change.

12.5.4 The University undertakes to reduce the overall usage of casual employment from the levels in place at commencement of this Agreement. Usage of casuals will be reported as a percentage of payroll on an annual basis to the ASCC.

The Academic EA wording is much more rubbery, but the “undertaking” to reduce casualisation and zealous enforcement could have an impact.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

3. Some loopholes at UTS:

The University of Technology Sydney EA  also has definitional limitations on casual employment.

45 CASUAL ACADEMIC EMPLOYMENT

Principles

45.1. The parties acknowledge that the UTS model of practice-based student-centred learning is important to the student experience. The parties also acknowledge that casual employment is an essential component of this model. Through its workforce planning process, the University is committed to the use of casual employment to circumstances for which it is appropriate. Such circumstances are:

a. provision of industry or professional experience to teaching programs;

b. for the supervision of teaching or nursing practical classes;

c. covering short-term absences;

d. provision of employment opportunities to post-graduate students;

e. where the work is of a temporary, irregular or intermittent nature.

Subclause (d) obviously allows limitless employment of post grad students. However, many casuals would probably be found to be incorrectly employed and therefore eligible for ongoing or fixed term employment if this clause was zealously applied.  

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

4. Very weak – Sydney Uni

Many enterprise agreements have no clause defining the circumstances in which casual labour can be employed. For instance the Sydney Uni EA states:

CASUAL EMPLOYMENT

Definition

49 Casual staff means Professional staff who are employed and paid on an hourly basis or in the case of Academic staff, on an hourly or sessional basis. Sessional employment may be for a single session or a number of sessions over the course of one or more semesters.

50 It is not the intention  of the University to utilise casual or sessional employment to fill positions of work that could reasonably be filled on a Continuing or Fixed Term basis or to increase systematically the level of casual employment. During the life of this Agreement the University will seek to reduce its use of casual and sessional employment and will provide annual reports to the Joint Consultative Committee.

Good “intentions” are not legally enforceable. And so long as the University “seeks” to fulfill these intentions, it has fulfilled its obligations under these clauses.

G) ACADEMIC WORKLOAD

Academic staff are chronically overworked. The time allocations given to academic work (including preparing lectures and tutorials, marking and course coordination), are usually ludicrously low.

Fixing this will require a variety of measures given differences in the complexity of existing workload clauses and their diversity. This partly reflects the history of various institutions. Some universities, because of their history as teachers colleges or technical institutions, have never had the research fractions common at most Go8 institutions.

For instance, RMIT has never had a 40/40/20 split and among many academics there is no real expectation that they should have such a split. But academics there do attempt to guard their “research day”, even though it’s not formally written into the agreement.

So, the focus here is not so much on finding “the” perfect clause, but more on identifying some of the more straightforward ways of addressing chronic workload issues through bargaining.

1. Write specific, realistic time allocations for academic work into enterprise agreements
2. Hanging on to and strengthening research fractions
3. Workable mechanisms to set, appeal and review workload models

G1 Bargain for specific, realistic time allocations for academic work

The most straightforward way of achieving meaningful improvements in academic workload would be to bargain over the actual time allocations given to each task.

These allocations are usually ludicrous (eg two or three hours to prepare a new one hour lecture; marking at 4,000 words per hour). They are usually set at a school or faculty level. However there is no reason why minimum time allocations can’t be part of the legally enforceable enterprise agreement.

How do we find out what time allocations to bargain for? A recent, large-scale survey of academics at Sydney Uni’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences showed useful results – as well as a huge amount of exasperation over workloads and the obscure and unaccountable way in which workloads are set (Fightback summary here , survey results here , discussion here ).

A few results:

• New lectures – Standard allocation is two hours for preparation of a new one hour lecture. 84% of respondents said at least 4 hours were required for this task, with 48% saying eight hours or more were required.
• Repeat lectures – “Of those surveyed, approximately 65% of staff spent 2 hours or more preparing for a repeat lecture, despite being only allocated 30 minutes for this task.”
• Tutorials – “Some 62% of staff surveyed spent 3 hours or more preparing to teach an hour-long tutorial for the first time.” Time allocations for preparing a new tutorial are generally 2 hours or less.
• Marking – “Only 14% of respondents estimate they are able to grade a 2000 word essay within the time allocated by the FASS workloads (27 min/ 0.44hours)”

The survey includes hourly estimates for a full range of academic tasks – here is an extract:

There is nothing to prevent some version of these findings being the basis of a solid log of claims which, if won even in part, would significantly ease workload pressures – and also increase job opportunities.

An alternative path would be to win clauses in the enterprise agreements mandating an evidence base, in the form of staff surveys conducted with union oversight, of exactly how long it actually takes to perform these tasks.

G2 Hang on to (and strengthen) research fractions

There is enormous and growing pressure on research fractions – and we can expect a full scale assault in the coming bargaining round. Exactly this has been flagged by outgoing Sydney Uni VC Michael Spence. You can read NTEU Fightback’s report on the issue here . 

But there’s no need to just take our word for it. ANU academic Andrew Norton writes :

The problem for universities is that combined teaching and research academic employment, still the single most common role for academics  who are not casually employed, assumes a link between teaching and research funding. That is how the same person can be funded to undertake both activities.

In reality, however, apart from money that would be lost in the Tehan reforms, no links remain between undergraduate teaching and research public funding at the university, faculty, department or individual academic level.

Elsewhere Norton also notes :

The COVID-19 crisis will re-expose what international student dollars partially covered up – that a large-scale teaching-research academic workforce is not viable on domestic higher education policy settings.

In some places, preserving research fractions will be a matter of fighting to keep the clauses which are already written into the enterprise agreements.

The University of Sydney EA , for instance, has a pretty straightforward, “classic” 40-40-20 workload clause:

319 (d) for teaching and research staff (i.e. staff other than “research only” and “education focused” staff), academic work will be assigned to ensure a well-balanced portfolio encompassing, unless an alternative allocation is agreed in accordance with clause 332, on average:

(i)teaching and teaching-related activities – 40%;

(ii)research and scholarship– 40%;

(iii)professional & community engagement and administration – 20%.

...

332 The total amount of teaching and related activities for teaching and research staff will not exceed 40% of the total workload over a 12 month period, unless otherwise agreed by the staff member and their Supervisor.

Other places might face greater challenges. At RMIT, for instance, this is as specific as the EA gets in regard to a research fraction:

38.8 Within the annual 1656 hours, the University will ensure that:

(a) Academic Employees will normally have a minimum of 30% of their workload allocation in each year as a combination of:

(i) engagement (including professional development/activities);

(ii) research; and/or

(iii) student support and development, scholarly teaching and the scholarship of teaching, design and development of learning and assessment;

(b) an allocation for engagement (including professional development/activities) must be included as part of each workload allocation.

Traditionally, academics at RMIT have zealously and (usually) successfully defended their “research day” as part of this 30% allocation. However this is now under enormous pressure. It could be that fighting for a more explicit percentage as a research fraction would help workers organising to defend current practice from a very vigorous management attack.

One thing not to do – don’t agree to a hideous, concessionary deal without a serious industrial fight. In response to serious employer aggression at Murdoch University in the last bargaining round, NTEU’s leadership promoted a concessionary agreement that allows management to impose an 80% teaching fraction on all academic staff – which management used with zeal  at the start of the pandemic.

From the Murdoch University EA :

14.1 e) An Academic Employee will have a teaching workload within a range inclusive of 80% or below depending on the mix of teaching, research, scholarship and administration duties for each Academic Employee.

How did it end up so bad? Find out here .

G3 Mechanisms to set and review workload

Nobody in my department (really nobody; not even the most senior members) is able to clearly explain the mechanics of our workload. All we get are impositions from administration to simply teach or not teach such and such unit. We have been understaffed for at least two years now, and our teaching workload just gets more and more unmanageable.

– Academic quoted in Sydney Uni FASS survey (see G1, above)

Many enterprise agreements have some degree of collective or “collegial” process for setting workload guidelines and allocating actual workloads. However these arrangements vary a lot, and will need to be strengthened to help withstand the attacks to come.

It’s worth looking at the current USyd EA  to see the improvements made in the last bargaining round. None of the changes result automatically in better outcomes, but they do provide some important opportunities to hold management to account – the FASS survey quoted above was part of one such agitation.

The sections added to the agreement in the last bargaining round are in bold.

Workload allocation policy

320 Each academic work unit must have in place a workload allocation policy that complies with the provisions of this Agreement. For the purposes of this clause, academic work units will be determined at the Faculty level in consultation with Academic staff, and may comprise the Faculty, individual Schools or other organisational units.

321 Workload allocation policies will be developed in a way which identifies a transparent correlation between the measure applied and hours of work generated.

322 Workload allocation policies will ensure that all aspects of academic work as appropriate and relevant for inclusion in a workload allocation policy for the particular work unit are addressed, and work allocated to casuals will take into account the principle in clause 59.

323 Workload allocation policies in each Faculty or University School will be developed by a collegiate committee involving members of the academic staff including a representative of casual academic staff. They will then be put to a specially convened meeting of academic staff in the academic work unit for approval (including casual representation). If there is a dispute over workload allocation matters that cannot be resolved internally, these will be referred to the Workload Monitoring Committee.

[replaces this wording: “261 Workload allocation policies will be developed and reviewed in consultation with staff, and for the purposes of this consultation, Deans will provide staff briefings on the Faculty’s financial and strategic directions, overall staff and student profile and staffing and development needs.”]

324 Workload allocation policies will be reviewed regularly by each Academic work unit, and in any event, at least every four years. Workload allocation policies in place at the commencement of this Agreement will continue to apply until reviewed and as part of those reviews the requirements of clauses 322 and 323 will be applied. The initial review should commence within 12 months of the commencement of this Agreement.

325 Copies of each workload allocation policy will be provided to the Workload Monitoring Committee and posted on the University’s intranet.

So a requirement for generalised, non-specific “consultation”, and for the Dean to “provide staff briefings”, has been changed to a process involving a “collegiate committee” (which at least provides the opportunity for a contest) and an all staff vote, with potential to appeal to the Workload Monitoring Committee (which has equal numbers of management and union reps).

None of this is a substitute for establishing some basic minimum time allocations for academic work in the EA. Even close to the nominal expiry date of the Sydney EA, there are few real gains in workload to talk about. If an EA clause takes more than three years to produce a result even in a well unionised and active section of the workforce like FASS at Sydney Uni, the EA clause is not strong enough.

Nor are collegiate committees and processes a substitute for organising to defend existing research fractions and write them explicitly into EAs where they aren’t already (see RMIT, below).

However, these changes in the current Sydney EA at least put some obstacles in the way of management steamrolling through whatever ludicrous, obscure and/or dangerous workload scheme they want.

The RMIT EA  has provision for Academic Workload Model Committees at a school level. Well-organised workers have been able to use these AWMCs over the years, to push back against management attempts to increase workloads.

The RMIT clause could be strengthened by mandating a minimum proportion of staff to sit on the Academic Workload Model Committees in each School, and by putting some procedural requirements around the AWMC including wide notice of items to be discussed.

Academic Workload Model Committees

38.13 An Academic Workload Model Committee, which includes relevant academic managers and elected Academic Employee representatives, will be established to oversee the timely development of an Academic Workload Model in each school or discipline area, which must be consistent with this Agreement.

38.14 The process of developing these models will ensure that:

(a) Relevant documentation is open to scrutiny and discussion and review by all affected staff.

(b) An Academic Workload Model is in place by the end of November in the preceding year.

(c) Copies of each Academic Workload Model will be readily available to affected employees.

Also of note: The Academic Workload Review clause in the Federation University EA  allows a review of workload in any school to be initiated by 60% of staff. The Federation Uni clause allows the Dean to conduct the review, but there is no reason why this couldn’t be amended to have the review carried out by a more neutral (or at least, evenly balanced) review body.

From the Federation Uni EA:

Review of School academic work allocation models

35.16 Where at least 60% of academic staff in a School covered by an [Academic Workload Model] (and associated research expectations model) request a review of the A WM or part(s) of the A WM, a review will be conducted in accordance with clauses 35.17-35.24

G4. An oldie but a goodie. The late, great UNE workload clause.

For completeness, we should record that the University of New England EA 2014-17   (teaching and academic) had an excellent academic workload clause which, unlike so many others, actually set enforceable upper limits on teaching work.

20.4.3 No employee will be required to engage in teaching that exceeds 220 hours (pro rated according to fraction and period of employment) over the year. An employee may be required to teach an additional 46 hours per year (pro rata) if the teaching is exclusively tutorials, demonstrations or laboratory sessions, and meets the other obligations of clause 20.3.1.

...

20.7.1 The Teaching and Supervision Index (TSI) is a measure of the Effective Full Time Student Load (EFTSL) plus the Higher Degree Research (HDR) EFTSL (weighted times 2) to one Full-Time Equivalent (EFT) employee.

20.7.4 … TSI loads will routinely fall within the cluster ranges shown below, which schools use in the development of their workload policies.

This is an excellent academic workload clause that should have been a model for the rest of the country. Unfortunately, the national and divisional leadership of the NTEU didn’t see it that way. For more on the disgraceful series of events that led to the destruction of this clause in the last bargaining round, this interview with Tim Battin  is informative.

You can compare the good old clause with the new workload provisions in the current EA  (clause 14). The current clause at UNE is not the worst in the country (unfortunately there’s a stiff competition for that!!) – but it’s a big step down on the excellent clause above.

H) PANDEMIC/OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY

Unions around the country (and around the world) are scrambling to write effective provisions into industrial agreements to bolster health and safety structures, provide for pandemic leave, and deal with the issues of working from home.

The clauses assembled here are far from the last word on this subject – but some food for thought.

1. All HSRs to have access to safety incident reports
2. All work groups to seek to elect HSRs
3. Minimum time release for HSRs
4. Pandemic leave without deduction from other leave
5. Working from home – employer to provide what’s needed

H1 All HSRs to have access to safety incident reports

Information is power. Health and Safety Representatives elected by workers have a right under law to access relevant information held by the employer – but it’s often a struggle to actually exercise that right. A strong EA clause on access to information is one important tool in this particular battle.

From the Australian Education Union (Vic) Victorian Government Schools Agreement log of claims 2020:

10 (6) Sub-branch representatives and health and safety representatives will have confidential access to telephone, photocopying and email and Internet facilities, for the purpose of carrying out their role, including full access to EduSafe reports for health and safety representatives.

...

33 (11) The Principal will provide a copy of incident reports to the Health and Safety representative within 2 days of an incident report.

H2 All workplaces to seek to elect HSRs

Every worker in Australia has the legal right to an elected Health and Safety Rep, with legal powers to enforce consultation and stop unsafe work processes. However, many unions have never developed these structures or have let them decay.

It’s not easy to draft a clause which unionists can use to facilitate these HSR elections (employer opposition, foot-dragging and victimisation can be a big problem) – but not actually produce a whole lot of employer-aligned HSRs who see their main role as not rocking the boat.

From the Australian Education Union (Vic) Victorian Government Schools Agreement log of claims 2020:

33 (1) The Employer will further enhance its commitment to occupational health and safety and the injury management of all employees by:

(a) Ensuring that workplaces seek to identify a Health and Safety Representative selected by the designated workgroup(s).

(b) Ensuring that each workplace post and maintain current the names and relevant contact details of elected health and safety representatives for the designated work group.

H3 Minimum time release for HSRs

Elected Health and Safety Reps are legally entitled to sufficient paid time to perform their HSR duties. However writing a minimum time release into the EA means this is more likely to be taken seriously in workload planning.

From the Australian Education Union (Vic) Victorian Government Schools Agreement log of claims 2020:

33 (9) Where a teacher is elected as the Health and Safety representative in a school, time release of two hours per week from face to face teaching must be provided to allow the representative to consult with staff regarding OH&S issues.

H4 Pandemic leave without deduction from other leave – if employee potentially exposed at work, or if waiting for test results.

Unions everywhere are scrambling to win provisions for pandemic leave. Here are three possible clauses:

From the current Monash University EA :

Isolation Leave

44.19 A staff member who contracts an infectious disease classified as notifiable to the Victorian Department of Health or who is required by a medical practitioner to remain in isolation by reason of contact with a person suffering from a notifiable infectious disease, will be granted paid isolation leave for the period that the staff member is required to be absent and will not have such leave deducted from sick leave credits.

From the Australian Education Union (Vic) Victorian Government Schools Agreement log of claims 2020:

INFECTIOUS DISEASES

14 (c) If an employee’s duties expose him or her to the risk of contracting an infectious disease and a medical practitioner certifies that by reason of contact with a person suffering from an infectious disease, an employee is unable to attend work, the employee will be granted leave with full pay without deduction from personal leave. The period of leave granted under this sub clause will not extend beyond the earliest date at which it would be practicable for the employee to return to work.

(d) An employee awaiting test results for an infectious disease (as prescribed by the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services, its successor or the Chief Medical Officer) will be paid leave to self- isolate without deduction from the employee’s leave credits.

(e) An employee with an infectious disease may request to work from home prior to taking leave under this clause or clause 26(3) – Personal leave.

(f) Where a medical practitioner certifies that it is likely a casual employee contracted an infectious disease in the course of their engagement, the casual employee will receive a payment of five days pay.

From Victorian Public Service Agreement 2020 :

48 Infectious Diseases

Upon report by a Registered Medical Practitioner that by reason of contact with a person suffering from an infectious disease and through the operation of restrictions imposed by law in respect of such disease, an Employee is unable to attend work, the Employer may grant the Employee special leave of absence with pay. The period of leave must not be for any period beyond the earliest date at which it would be practicable for the Employee to return to work having regard to the restrictions imposed by law.

This clause could be significantly strengthened by changing the word “may” to “will”.

H5 Working from home – employer must provide what’s needed

The ACTU’s working from home charter  is an ok starting point for EA clauses. Some extracts:

Working from home should be offered to all suitable workers to accept on a voluntary basis. Working from home should not be imposed, except in response to Government directives – such as in response to a pandemic…

It is the responsibility of the employer to ensure that appropriate equipment, systems, and technology to support remote working are properly installed, are functioning and maintained and that workers have the required training to operate those systems…

The employer will provide an adequate allowance or full cost reimbursement for all work related expenses including water, electricity and gas, stationery, equipment, amenities, telephone and internet expenses.

I) DISPUTES AND UNION CLAUSES

A strong enterprise agreement will have clauses giving union access to staff inductions, paid time for union business for office bearers and workplace delegates, facilities for the union branch, and much more. These are two crucial clauses, but there are many more.

1. Paid time for union business and union office bearers
2. “Status quo” clause: employer not to change anything which is subject to a current dispute

I1 Paid time for union business and union office bearers

On many campuses, arrangements about paid time for union office bearers (especially the branch president) and office space are left to convention, or management discretion. It’s much more sensible to protect these arrangements in an enterprise agreement.

As well as an office, email, and payroll deduction of union dues, the Sydney Uni EA has this clause giving time for union business:

474 The University will provide sufficient funding to each Union Branch President’s work unit to cover 50% of the Branch President’s University salary to enable them to be released to undertake Union work relating to the University and for the work unit to provide replacement staff. Staff members who have been appointed by a Union to be a Union representative will be given reasonable time off during working hours for the conduct of essential Union affairs.

In any industry it can be a tussle to define “reasonable time”, and another tussle to get replacement staff so that a union rep’s workmates aren’t loaded up with work while they engage in union work including consultations and negotiations. But having a clause like this at least means the union is in the fight.

I2 “Status quo” clause: employer not to change anything which is subject to a current dispute

Every enterprise agreement has a dispute settling process, usually leading to Fair Work, which unions can use to enforce the legal rights in an EA. However managements will often create “facts on the ground” by just going ahead and implementing a disputed change, even before the union has exercised all its rights under the dispute settling process.

A “status quo” clause is necessary to stop managements from doing this, and to make sure that the legal rights for workers in a strong EA are actually enforced.

The Sydney Uni EA  has this status quo clause, which should be a claim at other campuses:

470 Except where a genuine safety issue is involved, staff will continue to work in accordance with their contracts of employment while the procedures outlined in clause 469 [“dispute settling procedures”] are being applied, and during this time:

(a)the University will not change anything which is the subject of the dispute;

(b)the parties to a dispute must not take any industrial action or any action to make the dispute worse.

However, nothing in this clause 470 prevents the termination of a staff member’s employment during or at the end of a probation or confirmation period or on grounds of unsatisfactory performance, Serious Misconduct, redundancy or ill health or the cessation of a Fixed Term contract.

Institution

Expiry

Institution

Expiry

Adelaide

30 June 2021

Western Sydney University

30 June 2021

ACU

30 June 2021

Tasmania

1 July 2021

ANU

30 June 2021

Charles Sturt

30 September 2021

Central Queensland

30 June 2021

La Trobe

30 September 2021

Charles Darwin

30 June 2021

Newcastle

30 September 2021

Curtin

30 June 2021

Melbourne

31 October 2021

Deakin

30 June 2021

Federation University

31 December 2021

Edith Cowan

30 June 2021

Macquarie

31 December 2021

Griffith

30 June 2021

Murdoch

31 December 2021

James Cook

30 June 2021

QUT

31 December 2021

RMIT

30 June 2021

UNSW

31 December 2021

Southern Cross

30 June 2021

Canberra

31 March 2022

Swinburne

30 June 2021

Flinders

30 June 2022

Sydney

30 June 2021

Monash

30 June 2022

University of Queensland

30 June 2021

University of New England

30 June 2022

University of Southern Queensland

30 June 2021

University of the Sunshine Coast

30 June 2022

UTS

30 June 2021

Wollongong

30 June 2022

UWA

30 June 2021

Victoria University

1 September 2022