NTEU members at the University of Sydney have overwhelmingly endorsed a strong campaign of industrial action at a 350-strong mass meeting today.
Members voted to strike on May 11 and 12 as the opening move of an escalating industrial campaign, and to strike again later in the month if sufficient progress at bargaining is not made.
‘It’s a strong move to open our industrial campaign with a 48-hour strike,’ said the president of the University of Sydney NTEU branch, Dr Nick Riemer. ‘But our members have had enough – of casualisation, of overbearing managerial control, of job insecurity, of overwork, and they’re determined to do something about it.’
Union members were presented with a choice between a 24 and 48-hour strike. Over two-thirds of the meeting voted for the stronger option. A near-unanimous number voted ‘to plan an escalating strike campaign for the remainder of the year in pursuit of our objective of secure, quality jobs in an efficient and respectful university.
Among the union’s objectives are an end to job-insecurity and exploitative casual work, protection of academics’ right to a 40% research component in their workload, which university management is proposing to remove, enforceable targets for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island employment, improved rights for professional staff members, and more.
‘Our claims are both ambitious and realistic,’ Dr Riemer said. ‘They’re the product of many hundreds of hours of collective analysis and deliberation. We’ve presented management with detailed and concrete ideas for how Sydney University could, and should, be improved. It’s high time they started listening.’
NTEU NSW Secretary, Dr Damien Cahill said, ‘Staff at the University of Sydney have been pressing for significant improvements to job security, an end to the endemic culture of unmanageable workloads, proper rights for casual staff, gender affirmation leave and a pay rise for almost a year. ‘Management has yet to agree to our demands, so staff have been left with no choice but to take action, and they don’t take this sort of action lightly’, Dr Cahill continued ‘The University of Sydney is structurally dependent on insecure employment. We’ve seen the devastating consequences of this throughout the pandemic. Sydney University is a very wealthy institution, it can afford to convert significant amounts of insecure employment into ongoing jobs and at the same time give staff a fair pay rise’, said Dr Cahill.
