NTEU Sydney Uni Counter-Report

NTEU Sydney University Branch

The University of Sydney in 2017: A Counter-Report

Counter-Report

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Contents Introduction..........................................................................................................................3 The NTEU at the University of Sydney............................................................................ 4 Evidence-based change and the corporatisation of university management............. 5 An NTEU perspective on the University of Sydney’s new undergraduate education.............................................................................................................................. 8 The importance of secure work – the Faculty of Science restructure........................ 11 The ‘reimagination’ of the Sydney College of the Arts.................................................. 13 Casuals: Just the First Casualties.................................................................................... 17 Fixed-term academic employment.................................................................................. 20 Report from the front: predatory managers and workplace fairness........................23 Overwork and work-life balance.....................................................................................27 Staff participation in decision-making ...........................................................................28 Sexual assault on campus: institutionalizing the ‘second rape’...................................33 Workspaces and gender................................................................................................... 36 Racism at the University...................................................................................................37 The university and China .................................................................................................41

Produced by NTEU Sydney University Branch of the National Tertiary Education Union. This work, or parts of it, may be freely reproduced on condition that the contents are not altered or distorted, and that attribution to the NTEU is clearly signalled.

Cover image: Liam Kesteven Photography 2

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Introduction Welcome to the second edition of the University of Sydney Counter-Report, produced by the local branch of the National Tertiary Education Union – the union that represents academic and professional staff at the University.

Working at the University of Sydney these days can generate very mixed feelings.

Many of us are deeply committed to the work we do – the services we deliver to students and our colleagues, the education we offer, the research we conduct, the contributions we make to our disciplines and our community. Many of us are also believers in the idea of the university as a precious space for the development and discussion of new knowledge that can change the world for the better.

And yet such commitments and beliefs increasingly seem to put us at odds with the management of our actually-existing University.

This is partly about the endless marketing and spin that has become part and parcel of the corporatizing university. We’re confronted daily with hollow slogans on posters, flags, university documents and merchandise – ‘Leadership for Good Starts Here’, ‘Unlearn’, ‘If You Change Nothing, Nothing Changes’.

It’s partly about our everyday experiences in the workplace, where we’re faced with a torrent of top-down initiatives from managers who seem to be making things up as they go, dismissive of the knowledge of folks on the ground who know how things actually work, and oblivious to the impacts of their thought-bubbles on our working life.

And it’s partly about the lack of any genuine collective discussion about where all this ‘leadership’, ‘change’ and ‘unlearning’ is taking us as a community. We get stage-managed town halls, tokenistic consultation, carefully crafted staff ‘news’ and yammer – but these certainly don’t add up to a public sphere in which ideas for our university are shared and shaped by its staff and students The articles assembled in this Counter-Report seek to burst that bubble, to bring the direction of our university into dialogue with some of the values and aspirations that matter to us as staff. They have Counter-Report

been written by NTEU members in response to a call for contributions at the beginning of the year. They tackle a wide range of issues, from the University’s Strategic Plan and curriculum ‘reform’ to matters like casualization, management culture and the University’s engagement with China.

We’re proud to provide a space for these critical voices and engagements – because we believe that our university is advanced, not undermined, by robust debate. You may not agree with everything in these pages, but we’re sure you’ll be productively provoked – and that’s the point.

We’re also proud to highlight some of the ways that staff, working together as members of the NTEU, have fought back against the injustices – by supporting one another in the face of individual bullying managers and/or in the face of structural change.

If we insist that the University should not be above criticism, so it must also be for our own Union. We should be proud of what our Branch of the NTEU does, and what we have achieved in the past year.

But we should also engage in honest evaluations of our own efforts and their limitations. Several articles make suggestions for how our collective efforts could be strengthened.

The articles in this report were mostly written before the conclusion of our 2017 enterprise bargaining campaign. While this does not matter for some, it does matter for others which were written with that campaign in mind. Several of these pieces – like the article written by the Casuals’ Network – were published and promoted during the year as part of that campaign. While such pieces have now been over-taken by events, we think it’s worth collecting them together in this report as they were written.

On issues like casualization and job security, these contributions now serve to highlight both the considerable progress we have made on a range of issues in our bargaining campaign, and the progress we have yet to make.

So, happy reading, and I look forward to working together with you in 2018 to continue to build our union and improve our university.

Kurt Iveson President, NTEU University of Sydney Branch November 2017 3

Counter Report The NTEU at the University of Sydney The staff unions at the University of Sydney are currently negotiating the Enterprise Agreement covering all university staff.

Only the NTEU – which represents all staff, academic and professional – is strong enough to defend staff against management’s continual attacks on their working conditions and job security. The numerous positive changes for staff in the current Enterprise Agreement were initiated, and won, by union members’ action, including industrial action.

A strong NTEU is a precondition for a fair and principled workplace.

Unionism as an institution has rarely been as beleaguered as it is today. The current Federal Government is intensely hostile to unions, and the image is frequent of unions as sinister organisations controlled by faceless bureaucrats.

These representations are stereotypes, and they are wrong. The NTEU is no more and no less than its members. We are run at Branch level by an elected leadership – last year, Associate Professor Kurt Iveson succeeded Michael Thomson as branch president – and coordinate with other branches nationally via a democracy of elected representatives. Nothing in the union happens which is not directly voted for either by members themselves, or by the representatives they themselves have elected. The NTEU is directly responsible for the favourable aspects of the working conditions enjoyed by staff at the university, just as the union movement historically is responsible for the institution of major progressive social changes – weekends, sick-leave, annual holidays, limits to the working day.

management militancy ever seen on an Australian campus. The Enterprise Agreement 2014-17 ensured that wages stayed in line with inflation. It protected and extended key conditions - intellectual freedom, anti-discrimination, sick-leave, general staff development – and established a sector-leading and quantified commitment to Indigenous employment.

It secured a General Staff development fund, and prevented management removing the review committees that allow staff an avenue to challenge management decisions. It established Scholarly Teaching Fellowships and Early Career Development Fellowships, both of which provide secure employment to replace work previously performed by casuals. Some of these reforms have subsequently been ‘owned’ by university management itself.

In the current Enterprise Bargaining round NTEU members have voted to campaign for urgent reforms, articulated around the themes of secure jobs, decent pay and a fair say, that will make the university a fairer, more pleasant, and also more efficient place to work.

The counterposed interests of management and staff in any workplace, including a university, mean that staff self-organisation is the only conceivable mechanism by which our interests as employees can be defended. Management hire and fire us. They have no intrinsic commitment to the well-being of their staff. Only a strong union can hold them to account.

The Enterprise Bargaining campaign of 2013 secured important victories for staff at the university, in face of some of the most aggressive and unreasonable 4

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Evidence-based change and the corporatisation of university management Details of the 2017 Federal Budget’s impact on universities – disclosed ahead of the budget by Simon Birmingham, Minister for Education – reveal that universities are to take a ‘haircut’ through ‘efficiency dividends’, and that students will be preyed upon with increased fees, seemingly to fund the Government’s tax cuts to big business. This at the same time as universities like Sydney are working out ways to retain students – to squeeze more money out of them by restructuring their curriculum so students are compelled to stay at university longer, and to pay fees for an extra year, or feel coerced into higher degrees because their ‘generalist’ degree won’t cut it in the increasingly competitive scramble for jobs.

We in the sector – or should I say ‘industry’? – recognise with growing horror that universities are implementing more radical change than many could have imagined. These changes were, of course, foreshadowed by the ‘Melbourne Model,’ or what Gary Newman has described as taking ‘a wrecking ball’ approach to education, and ‘putting breadth before depth’ in a business model that’s predicated on increasing the ‘student lifecycle’.

These changes are also evident through the recent round of ‘brand refreshes’ sweeping through the sector. Western Sydney University took it to a new level with Deng Adut – making him ‘the face’ of Western Sydney not unlike the way Johnny Depp’s daughter has become the face’ of Chanel or George Clooney ‘the face’ of Nespresso. Brand identity has become all-consuming in the sector, and marketing and communications portfolios are taking tight control of ‘messaging’ for their institutions.

This is perhaps not surprising given the financial pressures under which universities find themselves.

In the current environment, education is no longer a social good. As Sydney’s Vice Chancellor Michael Spence recently put it in a communication to all staff (one assumes with no sense of irony) it’s a ‘knowledge economy’ – an export industry adding Counter-Report

‘an estimated $140 billion to the Australian economy in 2014’ according to Universities Australia. Higher education is no longer a sector. It’s an industry with business models –highly profitable and competitive ones – and universities compete on ‘product’ through ‘brand differentiation’.

The Melbourne Model demonstrates this, and the University of Sydney’s senior management seem to have one KPI: beat Melbourne in the league tables.

It’s no surprise that as a consequence they’re taking a wrecking ball approach to Sydney’s curriculum.

‘Supercharged’ degrees and the cost to students But feel for the students in this economic model.

If you need a generalist undergraduate degree before you can undertake a specialist postgraduate degree, the university retains you (and your fees) for an extended period of time. Sydney University is currently constructing degrees that encourage/ compel students into longer degrees – ‘The Bachelor of Advanced Studies’ which will ‘supercharge your degree’ according to the University’s recently released undergraduate prospectus. The ‘industry’ ‘value adds’ in ways that prolong the student’s ‘lifecycle’. A sophisticated and expensive variation on ‘would you like fries with that?’: a tertiary version of the ‘upsell’.

However what Margaret Simons argues is more disturbing is that there has been ‘a shift in course content from ‘liberal’ to ‘professional’, and in university governance from ‘collegial’ to ‘managerial’. It’s this managerialist approach to university governance that is deeply disturbing to both academic and general/professional staff, and that is perhaps the most radical change in university governance that has occurred since foundations of sandstone were laid for the colonies’ first universities.

Across Australia students – surely a key reason we have universities – are increasingly squeezed, measured and exploited: squeezed by work/study commitments, the cost of living in a large city, family pressure, and finding time to commit to study in an increasingly ‘disrupted’ world; measured by being 5

constantly monitored to provide data for statistics on everything from course evaluation to employability; and exploited with the lure of lower ATAR thresholds, bonus points and ‘supercharged degrees’. What they’re not told is they will have large enrolment cohorts, bigger classes, and diminishing face-to-face contact with academic staff and peers.

The divide between university ‘management’ and the academic and administrative body of the university is an ever-expanding gulf – a chasm into which collegiality, intellectual freedom and mutual respect are being cast, and where the salary discrepancy between a Vice Chancellor and a lecturer is in the ballpark of 10:1. Vice Chancellors no longer see themselves as part of the academic community of the University, but as CEOs, and expect to be renumerated as CEOs. They are no longer part of the collegiate body from which they have ‘risen’, but partnered on their governing bodies with everincreasing corporate bed-fellows: with corporate advisors, directors and former directors of banks and multinational organisations like Macquarie Group, Coca Cola Amatil and Leighton Holdings. One wonders the last time the current crop of VCs saw the inside of a tutorial room or gave a lecture to students, rather than schmoozing potential donors, wealthy benefactors and influential alumni. Welcome to the corporate university.

Most university staff work there because they don’t want to work for the likes of Coca Cola Amatil, and prefer the intellectual gravitas of working for a university rather a neo-liberal institution. But now we find ourselves employed by neo-liberal institutions.

And the workforce feels the impact, with rising levels of casualisation (the ‘the precariat’ upon which these institutions increasingly rely) and insecurity in positions once thought secure. This is emphasised by the University of Sydney’s Strategic Plan 20162020. Its title? On the front cover, if you can read the specially designed trendy font that came with the most recent ‘brand refresh’, are the words ‘IF YOU CHANGE NOTHING, NOTHING WILL CHANGE’. All Caps. It seems to be shouting this at staff to reinforce their employment vulnerability. To add insult to injury, the University’s calendar is branded with the tagline too – so every day you look at the calendar you have the message reinforced: you are expendable in an institution where ‘if you change nothing, nothing will change’. This reveals the true colours of the corporate university. As one colleague said, ‘It’s 6

not a very well-veiled threat, is it?’.

And whilst this chapter is drawing on one specific strategic plan, we can rest assured that other universities around the country are employing spindoctors and consultants to produce equally repellent publications. After all, they’re all busy stealing each other’s tactics, mimicking each other’s spin, imitating each other’s marketing, branding and slogans – they will also be watching each other’s strategic plans.

The spin in this document is dizzying, its mere existence as a product of a university deeply bewildering. It certainly does not reflect what the ‘vision’ of a university should be. As Honi Soit’s Alexi Polden writes, ‘The University’s new strategic plan settles it. So far as the powers that be are concerned, the University is breaking free of its pesky cocoon of academia and is taking flight as a fully formed corporate insect’. It opens (after a brief foreword) with the same trendy font claiming ‘The University is on every measure in a stronger position, both academically and financially, than it was in 2011’ (SP, p.3). A compelling claim, and if accurate an important one for the University to make! But there are no quotation marks around this statement, and no footnote. It’s a free-floating assertion with no justification – Who is saying this? Where have they said it? Where is the evidence? What is the context?

What do they mean by ‘on every measure’? How has the University’s position been made stronger ‘on every measure’? A first-year student is well drilled in the need for attribution and supporting evidence, but here there is nothing.

From the very beginning, then, the well-trained marker’s eye is on the lookout for sloppy scholarship and meaningless assertion, and is not let down.

Moreover, why does the claim pick the year 2011?

This seems particularly odd, given that in 2012/13 the University tried – mostly unsuccessfully – to rid itself of some 300 or more academic staff on spurious grounds. Does this mean that the effective industrial campaign that prevented the majority of those sackings might have contributed to putting the University in a better position than it was in 2011?

Perhaps so. But as I say, there is no footnote, so I’m afraid I can’t tell you if University management saw this as a contributing factor.

So the well-trained eye goes on through the document and spots the neo-liberal agenda and its language in full flight. Expressions include: Counter-Report

‘rankings’, ‘excellence’, ‘impact’, ‘aspirational goals’, ‘benchmarks’, ‘start-up’, ‘incubator programs’, ‘entrepreneurship’, ‘commercialisation’, ‘intellectual property’, ‘flagship’, ‘future potential’, ‘purposedesigned’, ‘footprint’, ‘learning experiences’, ‘authentic’, ‘leadership’, ‘individual interests’, ‘aspirations’ and ‘emerging capabilities’, to highlight just a few.

On Page 36 we find the following as justification for ‘The Bachelor of Advanced Studies’: While we will refresh and retain our three-year undergraduate courses, such as the bachelor’s degrees for arts, science and commerce, we believe that for students seeking a career outside a profession that requires specialist training, or in research, these should normally be combined with a new degree, the Bachelor of Advanced Studies (BAdvStudies). Students will be able to complete the combination of an existing threeyear degree and the BAdvStudies within four years. It will give them the opportunity to study two disciplinary areas in depth, as well as the requirement to undertake multi disciplinary and real-world problem-solving activities, often, but not always, embedded in industry and community settings. They will also be able to take courses from an ‘Open Learning Environment’ that will cover more generic skills and disciplines (see Initiative 3, page 36). We believe that this combination will better prepare students for the work-world of the future by providing the skills that contemporary employers require, and can also provide excellent research training.

Twice the expression ‘we believe’ is used in this one paragraph. I might believe in the flying spaghetti monster, but that doesn’t provide evidence for its existence. Melbourne Model light, or the Clayton’s Melbourne Model, as many see it, seems to be predicated on Management’s belief in its own assertion. One would hope here for a footnote to evidence, to an appendix detailing the rationale and the research behind this claim – good old evidenced based analysis – but sadly, no. In an academic institution that prides itself on research excellence, ‘belief’ that ‘this combination will better prepare students for the work-world of the future’ is enough, and we – the university’s underlings – should trust in management’s belief in itself. We should overturn generations of carefully crafted curriculum and pedagogical practice, and completely restructure our degrees – at lightning speed to suit the University’s Open Day commitments – on what appears to many Counter-Report

to be management’s whim.

This is just a hint at the corporatised language used in IF YOU CHANGE NOTHING, NOTHING WILL CHANGE, 2016-2020 Strategic Plan, and the poorlyargued justifications for the decision-making of university managements, but you can be sure that universities across Australia and beyond are producing documents just like it. These documents symbolise everything that is intellectually repugnant to those who value education and evidence-based research, and demonstrate that the corporate hijacking of universities is not merely a threat, but a reality. As we have already said, this is something that’s happening not just across the sector in Australia, but across the globe. After all, in a global economy where finding the ‘right’ university is only a few clicks away, institutions are in competition with one another on a global scale. Managements see themselves ‘competing’ in a ‘global industry’ worth billions of dollars.

The 2014 budget argued for full deregulation of the sector. Christopher Pyne’s claimed that ‘Australian Universities’ (read all but one VC) were begging for deregulation. But the country was horrified.

Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey were carrying out the wish-list of the Institute for Public Affairs [here are 25 more]. Abbott and Hockey lost their jobs.

Christopher Pyne – ‘the fixer’ – almost lost his at the last election. People in the sector care about what’s happening to the institutions, but what Abbott, Hockey and Pine didn’t realise is that so do the Australian public. Howards Battlers and Tony’s Tradies have become aspirational for their children, and want them to go to university.

What we in the NTEU need to do is to harness the growing appetite to reclaim the integrity of our universities, and to push back against the tide of corporatisation. The University of Aberdeen recently launched a website reclaimingouruniversity. wordpress.com that lays out a manifesto, and the National Alliance for Public Universities (NAPU) has developed an Australian charter One of the key points in the University of Aberdeen’s manifesto is: To restore the governance of the university, and control over its affairs, to the community of staff, students and alumni to which it rightfully belongs.

Let’s hope the tide will turn here. It will only do so with the support of the NTEU. 7

An NTEU perspective on the University of Sydney’s new undergraduate education In June 2015, as part of the preparations for the 2016-20 university strategic plan, the Vice Chancellor released the first of six discussion papers, Developing a Distinctive Undergraduate Education, in which proposals for a new undergraduate curriculum, particularly in the ‘liberal arts and sciences’, were unveiled. The rationale for sweeping changes, including the addition of a fourth undergraduate year, in parallel with the honours year in the three year degrees, was always rather vague and anecdotal: current degrees were too complicated, and there were too many of them. Students are confused, they need a ‘clear and navigable’ degree structure, as well as an ‘enriched four year experience’. The solutions were in three parts: more ‘contemporary’ attributes for the Sydney graduate; a ‘common curriculum framework’ with ‘outstanding enrichment opportunities’; and a ‘coherent architecture’ for undergraduate degrees.

A round of ‘consultations’, surveys and focus groups ensued. The surveys had a poor response rate, the focus groups were patchy and the forums organised for chairs of department, as well as other academic and professional staff, met with profound and vocally expressed reservations from many quarters.

Despite the countervailing evidence and proclaimed institutional cultural aspirations of ‘inclusion, diversity, openness and engagement’, the Next Steps document, released in February 2016 by the DVC (Education), announced ‘strong support’ from students and staff for the curriculum transformation, with not even a whisper of the critical feedback that occurred around issues such as student disadvantage, resourcing limitations, weakly articulated notions of ‘cross-disciplinary learning’ and ‘authentic’ or ‘real-world’ educational experiences, or the risk of undermining the intellectual integrity of disciplinary and interdisciplinary majors.

An overhaul unsupported by evidence 8

The evidential base for the degree overhaul was

slight. The university’s 2015 Strategic Plan survey had a 5% response rate from students and 19% from staff. While the degree overhaul aspired to address the barriers to achieving educational goals, only one of the four top student concerns in the survey was embraced - limited subjects and content (15% of responses). The next set of student concerns appeared to be ignored by the proposals: poor teaching was reported as the second concern (12%), and was the only other concern reported in the paper. 1 The next two most common concerns of ‘the student experience’ were ‘financial hardship, limited support’ (10%) and ‘limited resources’ (10%).

Curiously, these are ignored in the proposal and seem to be insoluble in its terms, if not exacerbated by the four year degree structure it introduced.

However, the resistance from the Students’ Representative Council and other student bodies to the financial burdens of a four year degree structure was robust, and quietly resulted in the creation of a hybrid structure, retaining the three-year liberal arts and sciences degrees for students who ‘cannot afford to keep studying/wish to enter workforce’.

Those more privileged students who can afford the four-year HECS debt, or have parents who can pay, will enjoy the elusive benefits of ‘improved learning outcomes’, and ‘graduate opportunities’, as well as more ‘breadth of skills and experience’. 2 The laborious iteration of these nebulous outcomes has persisted in the publicity for the February 2018 launch of the new curriculum, with the Vice Chancellor touting the changes in the following terms: ‘In addition to the depth of knowledge that students gain in their studies, they need a broader set of intellectual skills that will help with any career and life in general.’ He searched for a phrase in the vernacular in an attempt to get the message across: ‘What we’re doing here is radically different – it’s a bit edgy.’ A ‘Futurist’ was brought in to sheet the message home. He spoke about a future where 1 See the university intranet executive summary of the survey (https://intranet. sydney.edu.au/news/all/2015/05/21/2016-20-strategic-plan-survey-executivesummary.html and the p/point presentation by the consultants, Colmar Brunton https://intranet.sydney.edu.au/content/dam/intranet/documents/news-initiatives/ strategy/Strategic-plan-consultation-research.pdf ) 2 See Section 6, The Bachelor/Bachelor of Philosophy degree, para. 1.

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Sydney graduates of the new curriculum will be ‘generalists who are like Renaissance women and men’.3

Students as cash-cows Publicity hype aside, the most appealing aspect of the new curriculum changes for neoliberal management hearts must surely be the imposition of a four-year degree structure where formerly three years was the norm. Income from student fees generated in Schools constitutes 85% of unrestricted revenue to the university.4 The prospect of the extra fee revenue from some thousands of students enrolled in three-year pass degrees in faculties like Science and Arts and Social Sciences is lip-smacking from a financial perspective, if these students can buy into the rhetoric of the life-enhancing fourth year. If the thrill of this ‘broader set of intellectual skills’ isn’t sufficient, there is the prospect of a second set of letters after their names, the Bachelor of Advanced Studies, promised to enhance their appeal in the employment market. The much vaunted ‘vertically integrated degrees’ which would allow students to move into a shortened Master program from the four year degree, have been on again, off again, and have yet to eventuate, possibly because the Federal government has not agreed to come to the party with funded places.

The new undergraduate curriculum is truly a cabinet of curiosities, with a plethora of newly named unit options to extract extra HECS fees and overseas revenue from students: online learning environments (OLEs), interdisciplinary units of study (even in majors that are already interdisciplinary), project based units, ‘work-ready’ and internship units, capstones and many more. The simplified degree structure meanwhile has resulted in the abolition of many esteemed Sydney University qualifications, leaving current students with the gloomy prospect of being at the end of a long line of distinguished graduates in soon to be defunct degrees. But the visionary new world of educational excellence, part of numerous management strategies to ‘beat Melbourne University’ in global rankings, is all about future students; current students are the has-beens of the curriculum transformation. The 3 https://intranet.sydney.edu.au/news/all/2017/02/24/launch-of-transformedcurriculum.html 4 http://sydney.edu.au/dam/corporate/documents/about-us/values-and-visions/ University-of-Sydney-2015-Annual-Report.pdf

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gold seam for ‘transformed curriculum’ marketers is international fee paying students , a rapidly rising proportion of the university’s income stream. Most other categories of student income are stagnant.

In 2016, full fee paying international students comprised 61% of the $1 billion earned from student income, an increase of 27% on the previous year.

5 These students are the premier target for new curriculum initiatives, relegating Commonwealth supported domestic students to another has-been category.

Lack of modelling The new curriculum would seem to be an expensive prospect for the university to initiate, but in the Next Steps document, financial considerations get short shrift. ‘Expected impacts of proposed changes on faculties, schools and departments’ is covered in two short paragraphs, Section 10e.

There is no modelling of demand. ‘Significant work in curriculum and educational design’ is flagged. No funding is indicated for all the new teaching that will be required. There is only one line devoted to resourcing and impacts on academic units: one sentence in the proposal (Section 10e, para 2), reads: Funding for delivery of additional units of study would flow through the usual budgetary mechanisms, as at present. This is a scenario that promises to be as fiscally reckless as it is educationally irresponsible. It can only lead to greater casualisation of academic work, with all the attendant risks to quality education experiences of students and exploitation of academic staff.

An immoderate burden on staff At the time of writing (first semester 2017), curriculum transformation is now up to Phase Three. Staff in schools have spent more than a year in largely unfunded planning and curriculum development activities, wrestling with the demands of developing new units of study and curriculum frameworks within the ‘new curriculum architecture’ while still ensuring that currently enrolled students can complete existing degrees over the next five to ten years as they move through the pipeline. There is no routine funding available within Schools for these efforts. Academics who can scrape together 5 University of Sydney Annual Report 2016, p. 51. http://sydney.edu.au/about-us/ vision-and-values/annual-report.html

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the time, usually at weekends and late at night, and feel motivated to submit an expression of interest for the new curriculum entities like OLEs and interdisciplinary units, must get through the first hurdle, often an extensive EOI process, with tightly controlled dollops of centralised funding allocated for a laborious process of curriculum development.

Meanwhile the senior management responsible for the whole ‘curriculum transformation project’ give tedious powerpoint presentations to various captive assemblies around the university. The process confirms the natural scepticism that bureaucratic functionaries are not likely to be at the origin of any inspirational innovation.

The 2015 Strategic Plan Discussion Paper Six expresses the strongest disdain for the proliferation of committees around the institution, abhorring the administrative labyrinths into which this has led the university. But institutional amnesia has rapidly set in, as the curriculum transformation has brought with it a plague of curriculum committees in every faculty, overseen by ‘Project Control Boards’, the whole Orwellian scenario subject to the scrutiny of centralised committees, dominated by management.

The views and judgments of academics in this process have been sidelined. While there are some opportunities for credible innovation and change, the processes are labour -intensive for staff in schools, and driven by top-down decisions in a bureaucrat juggernaut that can only work against the quality of the new curriculum. While management is banking on ‘the thrill of the new’ in a consumerist society, students may be the poorer, intellectually and financially, as the new curriculum progresses.

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The importance of secure work – the Faculty of Science restructure In August 2016, the Faculty of Science announced one of the largest structural changes seen at the University in the last decade – the Services Innovation Program for Science (SIPS). The changes would see the restructuring of Professional Staff and the introduction of the Faculty Operating Model, as outlined in the University Strategic Plan.

For those who aren’t up to date, part of the Strategic Plan is to shrink the University from 16 Faculties and Schools, down to 5 Faculties and 3 Schools. Further, as part of the Strategic Plan, the University has elected to have Professional Staff report in a line up through the new Faculty General Managers, rather than through the Heads of School as is the current arrangement (the Faculty Operating Model).

The Faculty of Science was to be the first cab of the rank, some 12 – 24 months before any other Faculty, or a test Guinea Pig depending how you look at it.

One thing that is important to remember, the NTEU and our members do not oppose change within the University. The higher education sector is by necessity a sector that is at the cutting edge of research and innovation. Change is inevitable and often results in better ways for the University to function and can lead to better jobs for staff.

The NTEU believes that for change to be done well it needs to: • Be made for well articulated reason that staff can understand and support; • Involve staff in the process from the beginning, which includes talking to staff about their roles and duties prior to commencing formal change; • Genuinely value staff knowledge and listen to their feedback; and • Consider the skills and extensive experience staff bring to the University.

The processes set by the Science Faculty were, if left alone, a terrible example of including staff in an organisational change process.

The Faculty recognised that there were over 230 positions directly affected by the changes. This is a large cohort of staff who have, over time, Counter-Report

consistently delivered for the University.

To develop the change proposal management elected to consult with select groups of staff, leaving many other groups unable to make a contribution or provide details of their roles. From this limited consultation Management developed a Draft Change Proposal (DCP).

The DCP was circulated to staff and the NTEU. The document created large amounts of concern among our members. What seemed evident to all was the drive by management to lower Professional Staff Classification Levels. The numbers of Level 5 roles increased significantly while the numbers of Level 6 and 7’s dropped as dramatically.

Staff and the NTEU worked hard to respond to the document. Through the process over 250 responses were raised, the majority of them outlining the problems the new structure created. Staff pointed out that identical jobs were being graded differently, advanced tasks either weren’t included or weren’t recognised, key functions were disappearing and support for teaching and research was being jeopardised.

Considering the amount of work that staff had put into the responses there was an expectation that management would take the feedback on and we would see significant changes in the revised change proposal (RCP). Unfortunately we were disappointed and the RCP only made minor changes around the edges and mostly ignored the concerns of staff and the NTEU. Further, the RCP came with a mapping process to show what staff would be transferred to which positions in the proposed structure. Of the 230 staff directly affected by the change proposal, fewer than 120 of them would be mapped into the new structure. That left over 120 without a job and facing potential redundancy.

In a change that was creating more jobs, having less than half the staff mapped to the new structure was appalling.

The NTEU stepped into a major campaign. Over the coming months we had approximately 400 people sign a petition calling on the Dean to withdraw the RCP and commence genuine consultation with 11

staff. We were holding weekly meetings to keep the matter alive and pressure management. We engaged both academic and professional staff to fight for these jobs.

Due to the strength of the NTEU campaign we won major concessions from Management who agreed to extend the consultation process, provide staff a further chance to provide feedback and a commitment to genuinely consider the feedback.

Management also agreed to hold meetings with groups of staff who were affected. A disappointing fact came to light following the meeting held with the Technical Staff in SOLES. A managemnt representative stated words to the effect that this meeting was very helpful, we now have an understanding of what you do and how you do it. The University was almost 4 months into a major change process, yet prior to being forced to this meeting by the NTEU, management did not really understand what these staff did and how they did it. Not exactly a shining example of involving the staff in the process!

Through this process the NTEU also demonstrated to Management the money that they were wasting through this process. In one area management intended to make one staff member redundant by lowering the HEO Level from 7 to 6. After paying the redundancy and employing a new and less experienced staff member into the role it would take between 12 and 16 years to actually save any money.

They were going to get a less experienced but more expensive position. The NTEU and our members demonstrated many examples such as this.

Due to our campaigning, the Revised (RCP) finally took into account much of what our members had been suggesting. The NTEU won significant concessions for our members, including: • A number of positions were reclassified back to their original levels and management relented on the mapping and recruiting processes; • A grand parenting arrangement that would see staff who elected to take jobs one grade lower maintaining their salary for two years, with an agreement that if they did not find a job at level in that time they would have access to all the rights of a redeployee for the final 6 months; • An improved mapping and filling process; 12

• With the change in positions, the grand parenting and the improved mapping process, the number of staff facing the possibility of redundancy was reduced to less than 30, with many of those still able to gain jobs; • After the final implementation of the changes very few staff were forced into redundancy.

In many ways, the outcome of SIPS has been problematic. There has been massive disruption and upset for staff, the new structures have flaws which are already becoming apparent. And of course, we have lost some great people. Even one person being forced into redundancy is one too many. Others have made the choice to leave the university out of a sense of frustration and disappointment with the changes that have been made.

However, the NTEU campaign during the SIPS change process was successful in several ways.

Members acted together – both professional and academic staff – to support one another, hold management to account, and gain some very important changes that have made a material difference in protecting people’s jobs and making the outcomes much better than they would have been had management been allowed to get away with its initial plans.

The ideas pushed by the NTEU – that change should be directed by staff experience and expertise, and that the dignity and rights of existing staff should be made a priority in the change process – should have been part of the process from the start. It should not be so difficult for staff to be treated fairly. This result should not have relied on the strength of our membership and the success of our campaign. University management should want to seek these results automatically. Unfortunately, in the vast majority of the cases, it is only the NTEU and our members fighting that produce such positive outcomes.

We have demonstrated that by following the right processes and considering the talents of the staff it has, the University can successfully redeploy all staff in change processes. The University has demonstrated that without our pressure they don’t treat their staff as the most important asset of the University. This is the major reason why the NTEU is pushing for a “no forced redundancy” clause in our next Enterprise Agreement.

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The ‘reimagination’ of the Sydney College of the Arts During late 2014 or early 2015, the Vice Chancellors of both Sydney and UNSW, senior members of the Baird government, along with members of the National Art School’s (NAS) Board of Directors conducted secret negotiations on collapsing Sydney’s three current art schools – NAS, Sydney, and UNSW – into one institution to be housed at UNSW Art & Design in Paddington.

Thanks to a leak from Baird’s cabinet office, Sydney’s Vice Chancellor, Michael Spence, was forced to write to staff and students explaining that a single ‘centre of excellence’ was under consideration. The real agenda, however, was very different: the University would close Sydney College of the Arts, make all the staff redundant and hand the four hundred odd undergraduates to UNSW. In other words, University of Sydney management has effectively chosen to close a major Sydney cultural institution, even though the university is not in deficit and is, indeed, flush with donations.

Once the inter-institutional negotiations for the planned ‘Centre of Excellence’ were revealed, Sue Cato, an external ‘consultant’ engaged by management, who had previously represented Tasmania’s Gunns Paper Mill, made the case for what she called a ‘re-imaged’ art school. When negotiations collapsed, the university’s senior management was forced to develop a Plan B. This entailed statements by Dr Spence, in public and in letters to benefactors, that Sydney College of the Arts was not financially viable as an art school, particularly on its current Kirkbride site. He regularly denigrated the Kirkbride buildings as old, crumbling and Victorian, rather than recognising them as one of the most important complexes of public buildings in Australia by the colonial architect James Barnet, also the architect of the Anderson Stuart Building at the University.

SCA: a history of attacks on innovative pedagogy Sydney College of the Arts has been under attack, from its very outset, just as it is in 2017.

SCA was established on the 25 July 1975 in the political crucible of the new Fraser Government. As Counter-Report

a Labor initiative, it came under immediate attack along with the Australia Council for the Arts. In 1977, a committee of enquiry was set up to review the College and its mission, however it soon became evident that ‘the main aim was to disband the institution’.6 These attacks on the College continued for another ten years, while Jim Allen was head of the School of Art. What saved the College was Allen, staff, students and supporters who organised a series of protests. Perhaps the most politically effective campaign was …a march by staff and students on the Art Gallery of New South Wales carrying a black coffin labelled Sydney College of the Arts which delayed the opening of the Biennale of Sydney by Malcolm Fraser.7 The College aimed to provide tertiary education to produce practising professional artists, craftspeople and designers and was the first College of its kind in NSW and, with the Victorian College of the Arts, one of only two in Australia. The aims and objectives as outlined in the 1984 Annual Report were: • To provide an environment where students will gain experience in the arts that will help them to lead rich, creative and productive lives, • To meet the individual needs of all students who hope to become practitioners of the arts, • To stress the importance of the arts in the community and to engender an understanding of wider community issues, and • To help students to attain a capacity for imaginative, creative thinking, to achieve an ability to define goals and recognise problems and to develop the confidence to trust their intuition.

In January 1988, SCA, as a formal entity, together with its Design School, was amalgamated with the University of Technology, Sydney and the following day a wholly new college under the old name, SCA, came into existence as semi-autonomous member of the NSW Institute of the Arts. This remained the case for the next two years, until SCA became a University College, in effect a faculty, of the University of Sydney. Richard Dunn was its founding director/ 6 Gwynneth Porter (ed.), Jim Allen: The Skin of Years, Clouds & Michael Lett, 2014, 211.

7 Ibid.

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dean, and remained in that position until 2001.

Over the first few months of the new institution’s existence a new educational program was created for art in response to needs evidenced by contemporary art as it was practised at that time. Like that of other innovative schools that commenced during the 1970s, this intensive work followed no existing model, but rather was informed by arts practice and influenced by the radical changes in art and consequently in approaches to art education after 1968.

The School of Visual Art as a Higher Education school commenced at a time when art schools in Australia, with one exception – the National Gallery School, National Gallery of Victoria (now VCA) – were all within the Technical Education system. It also commenced during a time of great reform in art education internationally, of radical change enforced by the actualities of contemporary art practice.

This resulted in new approaches to developing artists being adopted at a number of institutions internationally, such as the California Institute of the Arts (Cal Arts) after 1972, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design during the 1970s and the École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris-Cergy in 1975.

In 1990, following similar trends in Britain and Canada – which were later, wisely, rejected by our Canadian cousins for the most part – the tertiary education landscape in Australia was dramatically altered by Federal Labor education minister John Dawkins. These changes forced all publicly funded colleges into amalgamations with public research universities. These amalgamations were poorly managed both by the Australian Government, which provided no financial or logistical support, and by the universities themselves.

The managerialisation of art schools nationally Twenty-six years on from these amalgamations, art and music schools are the real casualties. A collapsing of art schools into smaller and smaller units within larger departments, so that the art school culture or ecosystem is effectively diminished or diluted and then finally lost, has been apparent across Australia.

The few art schools with the status of a faculty that are left in Australia regularly have deans 14

appointed against the expressed majority wishes of the academic staff or faculty, with the appointees mirroring the conservative values of the senior university bureaucracy. They seem never to be artists, but to be drawn from disciplines such as art history, cultural theory, even business. Often these appointments are paraded as artists – in their spare time. They seem to have no engagement with or interest in contemporary art but simply use it as another move up the institutional ladder. Of course, these types of appointments are not just occurring in Australian universities; they are seen in university administrations in Britain, New Zealand and the US as well.

The obvious question arises: why appoint people who are not artists to run art schools? Why appoint deans of art schools who do not possess an intimate conceptual, cultural and pedagogic knowledge of contemporary art, who do not understand the fluid and experimental character of studio art production and research? In essence, such appointments are made because they serve the overriding bureaucratic and managerial rationality of today’s megauniversity systems.

The emancipatory and experimental role of arts education Artists who teach, and their students, are not only engaged in the (new) art-historical, mixedmedia generic and pedagogic intricacies of their evolving art forms – little understood by their nonart academic peers – in their social and psychic lives; they are also concerned with intellectual emancipation and experimentation. This runs counter to the free-market ideology that has taken over our universities, art schools, museums, and other cultural institutions. Art academics often see themselves as ‘fore-riders’ of aesthetic and cultural critique, and prize reflexive knowledge and openended, research-oriented pedagogy that is located within the students’ own existential horizons. This ‘one-to-one’ mutually enhancing teacher/student relationship in the studios of the art school questions the utilitarian and vocational instrumentalism of the modern university and its imbrication in this century’s New World order.

The intersections of art, culture, technology and dissent are vividly embodied in studio art production and teaching, signifying its overall discursive irritant Counter-Report

presence in the larger context of the classicalmodern university and its ideology of scientism and vocational education. Art education, ideally speaking, should be critically defined and practised beyond the (art) market. It is constantly rethought, restructured, reinvented. Art schools are concerned with the transgressive, with the single – and singular – artist dissecting contemporary reality. Art is a cultural conversation that is acutely aware of the predominant mythologies of our everyday life, which means art is politicising, and is political.

Global education of varied critical scholarly standard is spawning the spectre of the (art) educator as a kind of corporate conquistador flitting from one tertiary site to another, as if on an elevator to celebrity stardom. Little or no respect is given to the local cultural and pedagogic ecology and knowledge of a given country; in other words, in Australia and New Zealand, foreign senior appointments (especially from Britain) to art schools are made as if A.A. Philip’s ‘cultural cringe’ did not exist!8

The Kirkbride premises: nub of the present dispute Sydney College of the Arts was originally housed in a number of industrial buildings of poor quality spread over Balmain and Glebe. The offer by the state government of a permanent home for the College was based on the consolidation of the administration officers and the studio disciplines of Painting, Sculpture, Photography, Printmaking, Glass, Ceramics, Jewellery and (later New Media), and Art Theory and the library onto one site.

The Kirkbride Buildings were made available for the use of SCA in 1991, under a 99-year lease from the NSW government. As part of this lease the state would be responsible for the maintenance of the buildings during the lifetime of the lease. The University would contribute $180,000 per annum, indexed, towards the maintenance (as outlined in a letter from Premier Greiner to Chancellor Kramer dated 23 October 1991, now in the public domain).

The Commonwealth and state governments contributed $19.4 million towards the refurbishment 8 The term ‘cultural cringe’ was coined after World War II by the Australian critic and social commentator A.A. Phillips in a 1950 essay to describe Australians’ selfperceived intellectual inferiority complex towards their own culture in the context of British culture. See A.A. Phillips, The Australian Tradition: Studies in Colonial Culture, Melbourne, Cheshire, 1958.

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of the Kirkbride Buildings. The University did not contribute to the refurbishment cost and has made no substantial capital injection of funds over the past 20 years. Section 3.7 of management’s Draft Change Proposal states: There are significant costs associated with the maintenance of a heritage site with specialist facilities. For the Rozelle campus, total costs of maintenance of building and grounds run at approximately $2m annually.

Based on known industry comparisons, the cost to upgrade the Rozelle site, over the medium term, to compliant standards across all codes (including building fabric upgrade) would be approximately $36m.

Despite repeated requests by the NTEU, student groups and other interested parties, the University has refused to provide details of the actual costs of running and maintaining the Kirkbride campus.

In response to requests by the NTEU for detailed costings, the University has claimed ‘commercial in confidence’ grounds as the basis for its refusal to provide the relevant figures. The only conclusion one can draw from this obstructive behaviour is that the actual running costs of the Kirkbride campus are significantly lower than the University Economic Model (UEM) specifies.

2016-17: the campaign to save SCA Over the past two years the staff and students have been exposed to an extraordinary display of mismanagement, deception and manipulation, and a complete lack of transparency. Following much public action and industrial pressure Sydney University relented on large parts of its attacks.

The SCA is now to remain a single entity; it is to be housed entirely within a single building and is to maintain its external identity as SCA. It is to keep the majority of its Academic and Technical staff, and all Professional Staff will remain employed in the University.

Meanwhile, enrolments in the Bachelor of Visual Arts were suspended in 2017, and staff have been asked to ‘re-imagine’ the degree for its relaunch. Those very same staff have also been told by management that they must re-apply for their own jobs – despite the fact that with retirements and resignations, there were fewer staff applying for positions than positions 15

available. The lack of care and respect for staff is staggering. The NTEU believes that all staff should be mapped directly across to ensure that there are no forced redundancies. As the process has not yet finished we cannot comment on the final outcome, however the NTEU is watching closely and will assist any members who wish to challenge unreasonable outcomes.

From the outset, SCA was founded on the idea that the education of the artist is embedded in critical thinking, the questioning of social and cultural values, and a curiosity about our shared world, all undertaken within an intensive learning environment.

Over its 40-year history, SCA has been central to the development of Australian visual and material culture. Many of the graduates have been key players in the development of a confident Australian voice.

The courage to start thinking for ourselves about ourselves, and about what we might value as art, culture, innovation and knowledge, has been hard fought and has been at the core of SCA’s approach to teaching and research (art making), in which artists are valued as much as, for example, scientists.

The art school represents a distinct and unique model of education in the context of the University.

It prioritises the training of professional artists through an intense and personal focus on the development of individual expression and critical thought. The studio model functions as a laboratory, where experimentation is given free rein informed by a deep engagement with historical and contemporary art.

What is a manifestly clear is that the present senior management of the University does not believe in the values of a civil society where art, music, and culture more generally play a central role. Art is more than just decor, more than a well-designed object.

It is central to our society’s cultural and political discourse, an essential part of how we can know ourselves and better understand the society we are living in and creating.

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Counter-Report

Casuals: Just the First Casualties This article has been written by casuals from the Casuals’ Network. The casuals that contributed by sharing their experiences and knowledge come from across the university.

We are academic and professional staff, some working in research, others teaching, working in administration and in IT. Some of us have been working at the university for years.

You will have seen us in your workplaces (if we are lucky enough to be provided with a physical space to work) or corresponded with us through work emails. Management likes to pretend we do not exist and treats us like second-class employees (we aren’t even invited to the staff Christmas Party!). But we are here to tell you that we do exist and we are getting organised.

We would like to begin by noting that casualisation is not just an issue for casuals. While this article will highlight some of the abuses that casuals experience, it is important to recognise that casualisation impacts on everyone: casuals themselves, students, and ongoing staff. From increased workloads and infantilising administrative monitoring to inadequate facilities and support and an overall short-sightedness in terms of vision and planning, what happens to casuals is often an indicator of where conditions are heading for all staff across the university. A fight against casualisation is critical to the broader fight to improve conditions for all.

Overview of Casualisation There is nothing ‘casual’ about casual work in Australian universities; casuals have become core to the university’s functioning. While few statistics exist on rates of casualisation for professional staff, statistics show casual academic staff numbers increased by approximately 221% from 1989 to 2013.9 The majority of teaching at Australian universities is now performed by casual staff.10 Today, if you are employed at an Australian 9 http://www.lhmartininstitute.edu.au/documents/publications/2016-contingentacademic-employment-in-australian-universities-updatedapr16.pdf 10 http://www.nteu.org.au/article/Casualisation%3A-here-to-stay%3F-Themodern-university-and-its-divided-workforce-11182

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university, there is a good chance you are a casual.

Even more so if you are female. More than half of teaching and research academics in Australian universities are employed on a casual basis and the majority are women.11 We are often employed one semester at a time, although we are likely in reality to work at the university for more than one year, and one survey has indicated just under half of casuals will be employed for more than three years.12 At the University of Sydney, rates of casual employment continue to increase. From 2013 to 2016 (the years of our recently-expired Enterprise Agreement), casual employment increased from around 16% of total hours worked to 20% of total hours worked. Staff on casual contracts and conditions now perform over 23% of all academic work.

The universities love hiring casuals because we are cheaper. One study has suggested that the cost to employ a casual is roughly 30% of the cost of an ongoing (teaching and research) academic staff member.13 We are a cost-cutting tool – we do not get any paid leave, we receive far less superannuation than ongoing staff and there is no redundancy payout. We are afforded none of these basic rights.

It is also much easier for the university to hire and fire us. Although we are hired for our skills and expertise, the vast majority of casuals do not go through a competitive merit appointment process. This means administration is quicker for the university, but for casuals it means that gaining permanent employment further down the track is much more difficult. And in terms of sacking us, they only need to give us one hour’s notice.

Employment of casuals also gives university management greater control. The precarious employment puts pressure on us not to speak up about our conditions. We are more likely to accept unpaid work in an effort to hold onto our jobs. And when your employment is supposedly temporary there is less incentive to fight for better conditions.

11 http://theaimn.com/the-casualisation-of-academia-impacts-on-australianuniversities/ 12 http://www.lhmartininstitute.edu.au/documents/publications/2016contingent-academic-employment-in-australian-universities-updatedapr16.pdf 13 http://www.nteu.org.au/article/Casualisation%3A-here-to-stay%3F-Themodern-university-and-its-divided-workforce-11182

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An increasing reliance on casuals leads to more precarious employment for on-going staff as well.

Conditions for Casuals At the University of Sydney, the Casuals’ Network recently conducted a survey to find the biggest issues facing casuals. 85 casual employees at the university responded.

Overwhelmingly, unpaid work was an issue for tutors. Survey respondents reported that it takes far longer to prepare for tutorials than the one to two hours for which they are paid. In addition, tutors from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences reported that they are expected to mark 4,500 words an hour—a rate that makes it impossible to read students’ essays thoroughly and provide adequate feedback. Conditions are even worse for casuals in the Centre for English Teaching - they are not paid for marking at all. Meanwhile Summer School tutors are expected to prepare courses months in advance, but are at the mercy of student intake – courses can be cancelled if enrolments are low and tutors receive no payment for any preparation work they have done.

The survey feedback also indicated that lack of resources is a problem across the university. Casuals are often expected to work on their own computers in the library or from home. This is a big expense and inconvenience as staff members battle it out with students for a desk in the library and use up their own Internet bandwidth at home.

Processing time for contracts is another concern.

Casuals can be left waiting months for their pay to come through because of delays to contracts.

Meanwhile they do not have access to the library and other services until administration has completed the process.

Of course one of the major issues for all casuals is lack of job security. Many of us have been strung along for years on 6-month or semester-long contracts. However, the recent experience of casuals working at the University’s Student Centre really highlights the barbarity of the casual contract. In September 2016, 60 casual staff at the Student Centre were sacked with two weeks’ notice (which management claimed was generous). Previous to this, managers had assured them they would have work until December. To add insult to injury, after 18

being told they were sacked, some of the casuals were then required to train their own replacements.

Changing our Conditions The terrible conditions for casuals cannot be allowed to continue. Casual and ongoing staff must work together to stem the tide of casualisation and force management to ensure all employees have access to basic rights.

In the last Enterprise Agreement (EA), signed in 2013, casuals saw some improvements. The NTEU won 80 new Scholarly Teaching Fellow positions and 40 Early Career Development Fellowships. The aim of these fellowships is to reduce casualisation at the university, and to provide a path out of casual work for early career academics.

After much pushing, some 90 STFs have now been created across the university. These positions are on-going appointments which convert into 40-40-20 level B roles after three years, providing important job security. There are concerns around burdensome workloads for those working in STF positions, which requires further research with new appointees from 2017 and onwards. Nevertheless, preliminary discussions with appointees suggests that STFs are providing an important bridge from casual to ongoing employment.

Bargaining 2017: Don’t make us sick The active role that NTEU casuals played in the last Enterprise Bargaining round in 2013 resulted in important wins. But the current EB round offers an opportunity for even more gains. Through the Casuals’ Network we have come up with a log of claims that we want included in the next agreement.

These include changes to clauses to improve conversion to ongoing employment, payment for unpaid work and proper provision of resources.

In 2017, the NTEU will argue that casual staff should have basic paid leave rights, including for sick / carers’ and parental leave. Casuals receive a 25% loading on top of their basic wage rate to compensate for leave entitlements. However, this arguably only compensates for leave which is cashed out on the termination of employment, such as annual leave. There is no cash compensation for sick and parental leave. In addition, non-provision of sick leave for casuals presents a workplace health and Counter-Report

safety risk to other staff, as often casual colleagues come to work with their illness.

It is shameful that casual staff are forced to choose between their health, and that of their colleagues, and making ends meet. An institution as wealthy as Sydney University can afford to do better by its staff.

The NTEU will also be pushing to end discrimination in superannuation for casual staff. While we made some improvements in the last round of Enterprise Bargaining, casual super currently sits at 10.5%, compared to 17% for on-going staff.

Fighting Back Winning better conditions for casuals means more than just tightening clauses in the EBA. It requires all staff to show solidarity and be willing to take action in defence of better conditions even outside of the EBA period. At the same time that the 60 casuals in the student centre were being sacked, the staff and students at the Sydney College of the Arts were fighting back against the closure of the art school.

A similar kind of fight back about the casuals’ jobs on main campus could potentially have led to a very different outcome for many of the casuals who have now lost their jobs. The latest University slogan claims: “The future is in your hands. It’s yours for the taking”. A future of casual employment is a bleak prospect. But collectively through our union, casual and ongoing staff can change things.

If you are a casual or want to fight with us, you can join us by emailing usyd-casuals@ googlegroups.com or search for us on Facebook: USyd Casuals Network.

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Fixed-term academic employment Apart from permanent and casual staff, another significant category of academic employees at The University of Sydney are those on fixed-term, often externally funded contracts. Unlike casual staff members, these fixed-term employees are paid continuously over several years. They are allocated an office of their own, and listed on the University’s official webpages and other public displays. Fixed-term positions are usually predominantly research-oriented, and often relatively prestigious. Given these very visible positive attributes, researchoriented fixed-term positions may seem enviable: because the difficulties they imply are essentially out of sight, we are very prone to forget that such beautiful carriages turn into pumpkins within a few years.

Some well-intended comments fixed-term employees may prefer not to hear: ‘I am so jealous of your DECRA position, I can’t do any research because of my permanent teaching job’

The myth of the global adventurer Fixed-term academic jobs come with many issues at several different levels. The most crucial level is the personal one – and because this problem lies essentially outside of the workspace, it is also the most invisible for the University and its staff. The key difficulty is that given the dynamics of the academic job market, remaining employed on temporary positions involves successive relocations, often with inter-continental movements every couple of years.

Financially speaking, relocations induce practical complications and financial costs that are not covered by The University of Sydney. The University offers virtually no practical support either and plainly ignores the practical and emotional hardships endured by those who come across the world to join the institution only for a few years.

Unfortunately, successive displacements have much more dire consequences than the practical 20

and financial ones. Relocating once or twice can be ‘exciting’ for younger PhD students, but many researchers on fixed-term contracts are over thirty five. At this stage in life, geographical stability is usually necessary to establish or maintain a reasonably healthy lifestyle – including lasting bonds with loved ones (relatives, friends and others).

Whether one is single or has dependents, successive relocations can trigger major life crises, often resulting in relationships breaking up, families being dismantled, and individuals falling into depression.14 Decades ago, many developed countries acknowledged that sleep is a basic human need, and daily working hours became regulated accordingly.

While regulating fixed-term employment in academia is probably a much more delicate matter, acknowledging geographic stability as a basic human need would certainly be a significant step forward.

Some well-intended comments fixed-term employees may prefer not to hear: ‘you must feel so excited about this new Sydney adventure’ ‘Sydney is a great place for single people, you should get in touch with so-and-so, they are having a lot of fun’

(Some of the) issues in the workplace Back in the workplace, fixed-term positions imply difficulties that are seldom discussed, although they derive from a very familiar observation: workers without employment security are vulnerable.

Insecurity imposes higher performance levels in order to remain competitive, and significant levels of stress. Fixed-term employees feel – and effectively are – permanently assessed. If there is a vacancy in the team that hosts their fixed-term appointment, everything they do can have direct consequences on both their employability and their CV or references if they seek external job opportunities.

This has many practical consequences. For instance, it is much harder for fixed-term than for permanent 14 Detailed discussions are readily available on line, see for instance: http:// ecologybits.com/index.php/2016/03/23/i-am-unwilling-to-relocate-again-and-itwill-probably-cost-me-my-academic-career/

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staff to control their contributions to collective tasks, because they are not in a position to say ‘no’. They are also at a disadvantage in potentially conflictual relationships with their colleagues, because in job applications one usually has to demonstrate a ‘positive and constructive attitude in collegial interactions’. Also due to their vulnerability, fixedterm employees are likely to be paid less than others with the same qualifications. Some fixed-term staff members at The University of Sydney are employed at a lower level than in previous fixed-term positions.

Some well-intended comments fixed-term employees may prefer not to hear: ‘just tell them that you can’t do it’ ‘oh my god, you are employed at level [x] instead of [x+1], you should have protested’ These difficulties also apply to casual staff members, and probably to a higher degree. However, fixedterm staff members are at a disadvantage to the extent that their difficulties are seldom perceived and acknowledged. Because their conditions of employment look good on the surface, they are most commonly treated on a par with permanent staff. Among other examples of this, when it became impossible to apply for promotion in two consecutive years, no one thought of making provisions for fixed-term employees – although it seems obvious that this rule makes little sense for someone on a 3-year contract. This (like several of the other problems listed in this section) can easily be changed: it is a matter of awareness. Fixed-term employees should systematically be treated as a category distinct from permanent staff.

Vulnerable employees, vulnerable job seekers

Given the timeframe of selection processes in academia, and given that most fixed-term researchers have to apply for permanent opportunities whenever these come to be offered, there is hardly any point in time when a fixed-term employee is not waiting to hear from a pending job application, if not working on one. Usually, this is a sensitive issue that can hardly be discussed with colleagues, although it imposes significant additional workloads and stress.

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The pressure is even higher given that academic institutions are rarely respectful of the candidates’ time, energy and constraints. The tasks imposed on candidates are often out of proportion with the advantages of the position being offered – for instance preparing a written application, an interview and an on-site lecture for a 2-year fixedterm position. The successive steps of a selection process are never announced in advance, thus putting candidates’ movements and activities into jeopardy for several weeks. Even more troubling is the lack of transparency on the nature of the positions themselves. It is not uncommon for positions to be advertised as fixed-term, albeit with a line mentioning open possibilities of future permanent employment. Such vague mentions allow institutions to lure better candidates into positions with lower advantages. Overall, candidates are generally asked to blindly dedicate time and energy to apply for position that they might not even want.

All these things could easily be regulated.

The University of Sydney should create and implement a policy for ethical selection processes, and promote such ethical principles in the rest of the academic world.

Some well-intended comments fixed-term employees may prefer not to hear: ‘so, how long exactly are you here for?’ ‘you should apply for this job, trying doesn’t cost anything’ A fixed-term staff member tells the NTEU that ‘on the last year of my previous fixed-term research contract, my cumulated workload related to job applications represented about three-months, or a quarter of my year. Apart for my own effort, this does not seem like a very profitable use of tax-payers’ money.’

Systemic responsibility Fixed-term positions are certainly not a marginal minority at The University of Sydney. Fixed-term researchers are often high-profile, productive, and internationally connected, so that they represent a Case Study valuable portion of the University’s workforce. The trend is for fixed-term positions to grow:

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just like teaching functions, research functions undergo casualisation.

This is true at the University level, where the NTEU has made job-security one of the primary objectives of the new enterprise agreement. In addition, casualization should also be addressed at a broader, structural level. Most of the Australian Research Council’s funding schemes result in the creation of fixed-term positions. This is particularly dangerous in the case of massive temporary financial inputs such as Centers of Excellence or Laureate Fellowships.

These bring cohorts of brilliant young researchers to Australian institutions, with little or no concern for permanent opportunities in the medium term. Such short-sighted policies should be understood as such, including by researchers who benefit from these schemes and make hiring decisions within their frame.

What we can do: • raise awareness about the difficulties faced by fixed-term employees • consistently treat fixed-term employees as a category distinct from permanent employees • Improve the University’s financial and practical support for temporary relocation • enforce moral responsibilities of the University towards externally funded fixed-term employees • dismiss delusional preferences for external and international candidates in job selection processes • create and implement an official University policy to regulate job selection processes • raise awareness about the perversity of research funding policies that multiply fixed-term positions but make no plans for permanent employment

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Counter-Report

Report from the front: predatory managers and workplace fairness Each year the NTEU represents dozens of union members caught up in disputes with their superiors. As a result, we are uniquely well placed to offer a global analysis of relations between staff and management at the university. This article sketches the main trends we have observed since the previous Counter Report, and presents a number of anonymised case studies to illustrate them.

Punitive management practices are shockingly widespread Altogether, the evidence we present paints an ugly picture of mismanagement and bullying in some sections of the university, leading to workplace street and high staff turnover. Based on our member caseload and the issues that they bring, our view is that too many managers are sub-standard in their handling of the ‘industrial’ issues. It is very rare for a member to come to us without a complaint that proves to be justified. We have been forced into the conclusion that many deans, heads of school and senior professional staff managers are often characterised by a systematic incapacity to manage properly.

If this conclusion appears exaggerated, it is worth recalling the sheer scope of the NTEU’s experience of university-wide staff-management relations. This is unparalleled on campus: the NTEU is exposed to, and therefore in a position to assess, a wider range of instances of management-staff interaction than anyone except senior management and the university’s Human Resources department. The crisis in management is just one of the reasons we believe that a significant devolution of decision-making power from managers to staff is called for (see also the chapter on ‘Staff participation in decisionmaking).

Case Study A manager of professional staff had not experienced problems in their role until they advised a member of a senior administrative unit in the university against a course of action to Counter-Report

which senior management was wedded. From that moment our colleague was gradually stripped of the duties in their position description, clearly as a prelude to redundancy. This provoked serious psychological trauma, which necessitated medical treatment.

Too many managers feel no obligation to abide by the terms of the Enterprise Agreement – until, that is, the NTEU takes on a staff member’s case. For as long as they are unconstrained by the union, some managers will violate our workplace rights. In all the cases detailed below, staff members’ names have been changed, but the facts mentioned are verified and have formed the basis of our – typically successful – cases against management. In all cases, too, management’s version of events has been heard and considered.

Bullying The largest category of cases taken on by the NTEU concerns bullying. In a significant proportion of the bullying cases we handle, it is clear that the manager has taken a strong dislike to the staff member, and instrumentalises university policy to persecute or force them out of the institution. Policy becomes a cloak for the settling of scores, the elimination of unwanted opposition, and the authoritarian recasting of the workplace in line with a manager’s whim. The costs to the staff member, and to the proper running of the institution, are heavy.

Many members the NTEU represents experience health consequences as a result of their dispute with management, often requiring sick leave, medication or counselling. This is especially the case if, as is common, they believe that management is lying or distorting the truth. Whether or not medical intervention is needed, shock and grief are highly common reactions. Staff members feel that they have been thrown to the wolves. The NTEU can respond to bullying much more effectively when staff bring a collective complaint than an individual one. Not infrequently, however, staff are reluctant to join collective complaints on the grounds that doing so will expose them to reprisals from management.

The NTEU’s experience is that this fear is unfounded, and that strength in numbers applies in our response 23

to bullying. Individual allegations of bullying can be more easily dismissed as a mere ‘personality clash’.

Case Study An academic colleague unpopular with the Head of School returned to work after an illness at the start of the year. The HoS instructed coordinators that no supervisions were to be assigned to them, even though they had had numerous successful supervisions in previous years. When asked why this was the case, and reminded that the academic was back at work, the HoS smirked and said “not for long”. The NTEU represented the academic and demonstrated that management were engaging in ‘constructive dismissal’, that is, failing to give a staff member work in order to motivate redundancy.

Case Study A Head of School singled out a particular academic staff member for not being present on campus often enough, even though the staff member had always had superior performance management reviews and had been officially commended for the quality of their teaching and other work. The HoS insisted that our colleague come in to work every day, leave their office door open and their light on, and sign into and out of work every day, requirements that constituted discrimination and harassment.

Management & Bullying ‘The people who end up in senior management positions are usually not well suited to them, because they are often narcissistic, aggrandising and entitled.

They don’t respect people or accept their points of view, so they have within them the capacity to bully. Staff get really scared of them, which makes them reluctant to join in collective bullying cases – nevertheless by far the most effective kind of response, though we do have good outcomes with individual cases.’ – senior NTEU case-manager.

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Forced insecurity The second-largest category of case concerns management’s determination to keep casual and fixed-term staff on a succession of short-term contracts,. Many professional staff units have an over-reliance on casual contracts for work of an ongoing nature. For instance, over the last 12 months the Student Centre has terminated over 60 casual employees at short notice, despite having promised them on-going work – only to later re-engage a new cohort of casual staff (who were subsequently also terminated at short notice!). There is also a significant problem at the university with academics on casual contracts for as long as ten or fifteen years. Researchonly staff who maintain themselves on grants for the duration of their tenure at the university are another group who receive no support from management once their external grant funding has dried up, no matter how long they have spent at the university.

Despite their proven capacity to attract research funding, the university systematically refuses conversion applications from this category of staff members.

Case Study An academic on a succession of short-term contracts was not renewed on the grounds that their courses were not popular enough. NTEU examination of enrolment figures revealed that, in fact, the staff member’s courses had at least as many enrolments as comparable other courses, and often more. The university refused even to place our colleague on an ongoing casual contract.

This kind of case is not uncommon.

Unpaid work Change of work characteristics without consultation or recompense is another major source of cases.

Finance staff, for instance, are regularly given higher duties without the extra pay to which they are entitled.

Case Study A professional staff member had been on a period of higher duties, and had been being paid the correct higher duties allowance to reflect this.

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When the higher duties period came to an end, management told our colleague they were being made redundant, since the work from their substantive position had been distributed to other staff members while our colleague had been on higher duties. The NTEU succeeded in keeping our colleague in their job.

Termination following serious illness Attempted termination after serious illness is a concerning management practice at the university.

The NTEU has represented a number of members in this situation over the past eighteen months, and in every case has succeeded in saving our member’s job. We do not have data on how many nonmembersStudy were facedcont. with dismissal, nor what the Case outcomes of those cases were.

Whose side is HR on?

“It’s really interesting how people think Human Resources are there for them. We often need to advise members that HR’s primary interest is supporting management and their advice to staff is calibrated through this lens.” – senior NTEU case-manager.

Case Study A casual staff member who had worked on successive contracts over a period of seven years had been obliged to take unpaid sickleave for most of the year to fight a serious medical condition. While they were still on leave, the position was advertised, even though our colleague’s contract was still running. The NTEU advised our colleague to immediately apply for conversion to ongoing employment, which obliged management to withdraw the position advertisement. The conversion application was successful.

In most cases, the NTEU is able to achieve a much better outcome for its members than the one being offered by management. In these uncertain times and with ever-encroaching micromanagement, the NTEU is often the only protection that staff-members have from unfair treatment.

Case Study An academic with 10 years’ service at the university was diagnosed with a serious illness necessitating multiple hospitalizations and surgery over a period of many months. On their first day back at work, they were summoned to a meeting with the Head of School, at which a member of Human Resources was present.

Without any pleasantries, the Head of School handed our colleague a separation agreement, indicating their intention to retire our member on the grounds of medical incapacity despite expert medical specialist advice that the member was now fit for work. After NTEU intervention the university withdrew this demand and the staff member still works here.

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Academic overwork & time-tracking We all know it, that miserable heavy dragging feeling of being overworked. But just how overworked are you? And which tasks are the biggest culprits? Whether it’s meetings or marking or something else entirely, it is extremely valuable to have actual data to back up what we already know subjectively. This is where time-tracking comes in. Most of us have an electronic device within arm’s reach as we work, whether it’s a computer, tablet, or just a smart-phone. There are now a number of easy-to-use programs that run on any or all of these devices and will allow you to collect and store data on how you spend your time. While there’s always a worry that timetracking will become just one more task overloading an already full plate, it doesn’t have to be that way. First of all, some of these programs are so well designed that it takes only seconds to use them. Second, for me at least, there is an aspect of reward involved: when I look at a solid stretch of work as recorded by the program, it reminds me to feel good about what I’ve been doing rather than bad because “it’s never enough.”

I’m an academic in a 40-40-20 position, and I started tracking and categorizing the time that I spend on all work-related tasks in order to protect my “40” of research time from the constant threat of encroachment by teaching and service. There are many options (just search for “timetracking”), but the program I use is Toggl (toggl.com). Here are some things I have learned about my own situation (obviously your results may vary). Outside of the teaching period, I am not as overworked as I feel. That’s because some really unpleasant tasks are very exhausting even though they don’t take much time. (They’re less exhausting if I can use time-tracking as a tool to prevent myself from procrastinating them however.) On the other hand, preliminary indications suggest that during the teaching period, I spend far more than the meagre time allotted by management on tasks like class preparation and marking. Once I have collected a full semester’s data, I’ll be in a much better position so say just how big a difference there is between management’s decrees and the time actually needed to do a competent job. Will that magically change anyone’s mind?

No, but it will be more persuasive than if all I have to go on is my subjective feeling of overwork.

Many of us have a lot of resentment around the whole issue of workloads. Collecting good data via the use of time-tracking can help us make that resentment productive by identifying which tasks are the worst offenders in contributing to our being overworked.

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Overwork and work-life balance Having a life as well as a job at the university is a frequent challenge for University of Sydney staff, both academic and professional.

The psychological and physical toll of work is officially recognized by management, and is the object of various health and wellbeing initiatives. However, typical management practices, especially concerning flexitime provisions for professional staff, directly contribute to psychologically harmful work environments.

Even though the current Enterprise Agreement contains measures designed to improve staff members’ ability to reconcile their jobs with their outside lives, some managers/directors regularly refuse to allow any staff to use the flexitime provisions of the Enterprise Agreement (Schedule 4, sections 11-16). This is occurring in areas where there are no requirements which would prevent staff from taking advantage of flexible working hours arrangements.

university has numerous advantages for both staff and the institution. The most important advantage is the benefit to staff health and wellbeing. A subsidiary advantage accrues to the institution: by accommodating staff members’ preferences, it avoids losing valuable staff to the university. The only financial cost to the University of implementing the claim might be the cost of hiring and training new staff to cover part-time, part-year, job-sharing or career breaks. However, these costs will result in additional trained resources – and it is highly likely that, without flexible arrangements, these costs will have to be born anyway as staff decide to leave.

In contrast, there are substantial costs to the University of not improving flexitime arrangements.

These include the loss of experienced staff forced to resign due to insufficient workplace flexibility; reduced productivity and less accurate work from staff who are experiencing high stress and/or low moral; increased sick leave from staff suffering high stress levels, and damage to the university’s reputation as an employer of choice.

Other units are allowing flexitime only when it is useful to the unit. For example, when there are deadlines due, staff are required to stay back to meet the deadline and then are allowed to take those hours off as time in lieu, but they are not permitted to regularly accrue time and take flexi days. This constitutes abuse of the negotiated arrangement since it allows required overtime not to be paid.

Section 155-159 of the Enterprise Agreement allow staff members to change from full-time work to part-time work (including after returning to work following parental leave) and back again; to job share; to change start and finish times; to go on to periods of shortened work hours of work, flexible working hours and leave without pay. However, these possibilities are currently restricted to selected groups. If one is not a parent or carer, does not have a disability, is under 55, is not experiencing domestic violence or supporting someone who is, these work arrangements are unavailable. In the interests of a healthier workplace, the NTEU believes that flexible work arrangements should be generalised to all staff.

Improving flexible work arrangements at the

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Staff participation in decision-making Management’s deliberate exclusion of university staff from decision-making is among the most serious problems the university faces. This creates negative consequences in any number of areas: organisational transparency, morale and collegiality, to say nothing of the efficient running of the institution. Bullying – an ongoing serious problem at the university (see the article ‘Bullying – a standard management practice at the University’ in the 2015 report) – is intimately connected to the authoritarian workplace culture that the sidelining of staff fosters. The NTEU 2017 Enterprise Bargaining campaign includes several simple proposals for placing staff at the centre of decision-making in the university, as outlined below.

The problem The absence of staff input into decisions is confirmed both by management’s own periodic staff surveys, and by the more recent survey undertaken by the NTEU in preparation for the 2017 Enterprise Bargaining campaign. Only 41 per cent of staff in management’s 2016 staff engagement survey said they believed that ‘the Senior Executive Group (The VC, DVCs, Deans & Directors) listen to other staff’, and only 37 per cent said that they are ‘consulted before decisions that affect [them] are made’. 15 This result is 6% less than the Go8 average. In other words, an overwhelming majority of staff members have reached the conclusion that their managers are simply not interested in consulting them – and, if consultation does happen, they believe they are ignored. This is a heavily ironic result for a management which claims to seek and value staff input, and which clearly spends large amounts of money on consultation instruments, such as the ‘consultations’ conducted over the current strategic plan, and the Voice project surveys themselves.16 15 See Voice Project, University of Sydney, “Have Your Say” april-may 2016 highlevel results, downloadable from https://intranet.sydney.edu.au/employment/staffsurvey.html.

16 See, for example, the University’s Annual Report for 2015, p. 43, which claims that ‘In 2015 we consulted broadly and encouraged comment on our future through development of our 2016‑20 Strategic Plan.’

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The replacement of genuine consultation by sham substitutes has serious consequences on the university’s ability to function coherently. Only 25 per cent of respondents in the 2016 Voice survey agreed that ‘there is good communication across all sections of the University of Sydney’ (6 per cent less than the Go8 average). Just over a quarter – 26 per cent – thought that ‘change is handled well in the University of Sydney’. This result is a full 13 per cent under the Go8 average.

The NTEU survey, completed by both members and non-members of the union, paints a similar picture.

80 per cent of respondents said they did not believe staff are adequately taken into account in change proposals. 68 per cent said they did not believe that enough justification had been given for the organisational changes currently being implemented at the university, and the same proportion said that they had not even been adequately informed about them.

This lack of staff input into decisions is responsible for significant institutional trauma. The ongoing crisis at the Sydney College of the Arts (see chapter 11) would have been avoided had the Vice-Chancellor, Provost and other decision-makers actually listened to what staff, students, and the community had to say about the needs of visual arts education at the university. Instead, a corporate-inspired downsizing drive led to a misconceived, sloppily planned and chaotically executed change proposal, which continues to cause major uncertainty and disruption to staff and students, to say nothing of serious damage to the university’s reputation, and the withdrawal of major philanthropic support.17 On a more local level, new regulations and processes are continually being sprung on staff without warning or consultation. The shambolic curriculum restructure is only the most flagrant example (see chapter 9). Many academic staff are frustrated by the recent sudden decision that unsuccessful promotion applicants will now have to wait two years to reapply. In at least one of the university’s general staff portfolios, an entirely new performance management system was introduced without any 17 http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/sydney-universityangers-top-end-of-town-with-plan-to-close-art-school-at-callan-park-20160803gqjr01.html

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consultation of staff or unions, and the frequency of performance assessments was doubled to halfyearly – all by managerial fiat, without the slightest consultation of staff.

Exclusion of staff from decisions is a policy Staff exclusion from decision-making is not just an unfortunate side-effect of other factors, each of them benign in itself. It is a conscious policy manifest in every area of the university. In December of 2016, the new University of Sydney (Governance of Faculties and University Schools) Rule drastically cuts staff representation on faculty Boards (see text box).

Other recent changes with a similar effect include: • streamlining of faculty committee memberships • diminution of academic control over pedagogic decisions (for instance, over lecture recordings: see the 2015 Counter-Report) • the change to administrative lines of responsibility, which see School managers now reporting directly to the Faculty manager, thereby sidelining the heads of school to whom they previously reported, and with whom they could work collaboratively.

Cutting representation on Faculty boards In December of 2016, just before the university’s annual shutdown, management introduced the University of Sydney (Governance of Faculties and University Schools) Rule, which completely alters the nature of decision-making at Faculty level, for the worse. Prior to the rule, any and all members of full-time academic staff were members of the Faculty Board, and able to attend, speak and vote at meetings when they wished. As of January 1 2017, however, Faculty Boards will no longer be open to all staff, but will be constituted by 30 elected members, or if there are not enough nominations, by Deans’ appointees. This effectively excludes the vast majority of Faculty members from exerting any democratic say over Faculty decisions, as they currently have the right to do.

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The most spectacular recent example of management’s exclusion of staff from decision making has been in the reduction of the size of the University Senate, the institution’s most powerful decision-making body. Under a 2015 vote, the number of senate fellows has been reduced from 22 to 15, with all positions elected by and from alumni being abolished, and student representation being halved [?]. According to an Honi Soit article,18 this change was explicitly made to recast the university’s governance along hierarchical, corporate lines, involving, as also reported by The Australian, ‘less emphasis on representation of constituencies’. 19

Staff treated as objects What senior management gains by shutting staff out of decision-making is clear. At the most senior level, it allows them to ignore the university’s complexities, and reconceive the institution along their currently preferred lines, often, as in the case of the Senate, in response to explicitly corporate, rather than academic principles, and unencumbered by the obstacle of any actual experience of institutional reality. At more intermediate levels, restricted access to decision-making ensures less interference in the development and execution of management directives, by structurally insulating mid-level managers from the contestation that decisions regularly provoke. The effect, as illustrated by the ongoing debacles of the SCA and Science restructures, is to marginalise the staff affected by proposed change who are denied even the smallest control over the evolution of their own roles. They are never treated as subjects, but only as objects: never as valuable holders of institutional knowledge, but as permanent potential targets of redundancy.

In this context, the ‘consultation’ staged by management during institutional change takes on a cynical dimension: far from restoring staff’s sense of agency, the fact that opinions are invited only to be ignored emphasises how little our voice counts, and becomes a symbol of management’s arbitrary power.

What the NTEU is proposing It is very clear that the way university management 18 Confidential senate report recommends ‘corporatisation’ of University governance’, Honi Soit, May 30 2016.

19 ‘Sydney University senate ‘out of date’ on governance practices’, The Australian, June 1 2016

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currently handles decision-making is divisive and alienating. It is also highly inefficient: important decisions in an organisation as large and complex as the university cannot be properly made by only a small handful of people. Instead, the principles for decision-making in the university should observe the principles of subsidiarity and collegiality, with decisions being made by the people best placed to understand their implications. Senior administrators, who are typically entirely out of touch with the way the university really works, are the worst-placed people to take important decisions about the university’s future. The opposition to the faculty restructures currently underway, and the various backdowns management has already been forced to concede, demonstrate just how unsuitable management’s plans usually are in their original state. With this in mind, the NTEU is proposing a number of changes to the Enterprise Agreement.

Collegiality and academic appointments The fact that academic appointments are now made with minimal consultation of the appointee’s future colleagues – a practice in stark contrast with norms elsewhere, as in North America, including the US Ivy League, where such decisions are usually the object of a vote – installs an anti-collegial principle at the very origin of academics’ membership of the university.

Academic employment at the university is not conceived of as admission into a department – a self-governing, collegial community working together on a collectively understood intellectual and educational project. If it were, this community would be centrally involved in decisions about who is most suitable to join it. Instead, appointments are made as though the department did not exist, and applicants are assessed instrumentally, on the grounds of their perceived fit with highly general criteria such as research track-record or ability to attract funds. These considerations are not unimportant – but, for that very reason, they should be subject to the collective deliberation of candidates’ future colleagues. Management engages staff in just the way it dismisses them: autonomously, with a high degree of discretion, and in the absence of careful consideration of the systemic consequences for colleagues.

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In academic workload, the NTEU is calling for the establishment of democratically-elected committees for each workload unit to create a binding workload policy, then submitted to a vote by the affected staff, including casuals (clause 11.1). This will return decisions about the most basic aspect of academic’ work to their own hands, and reintroduce democratic and collegial processes to the workplace.

In the area of change management, we will insist that genuine consultation take place before a change proposal is issued, and that the draft change proposal include all relevant information, including financial information, as well as pre- and postchange organisational charts. This will increase the opportunities for staff feedback, mandate genuine consultation in which management has to explain their reasons for proposed changes, and introduce a level of transparency and accountability in change management currently often missing. These changes will not prevent management from making cavalier decisions, but they will make it harder for them to do so.

By contrast, our current no forced redundancy claim obliges the university to redeploy all staff who want to continue in employment, thereby defusing one of the major threats posed by institutional change plans, and introducing a real brake on the unconstrained power of management to changemanage staff out of the university. If management are unable to force staff out who do not want to leave, then they have a greater incentive to engage in meaningful dialogue with them about workplace changes.

Electing Deans and Heads of School/ work units The principal measure in the log of claims aimed at promoting staff participation in decision making is clause 7.1., which states that ‘On the expiry of current contracts, the University will ensure that Heads of School and/or Work Units and Deans will be filled by people elected by local staff’. This measure will restore the democratic character of leadership in the university, in line with standard practice throughout Europe and North and South America (see text box).

At Sydney, elected Deans were still in office in the 1990s (in Arts, for instance, the first non-elected Dean was only appointed in 1992): the abolition of elections and the professionalization of the Dean’s Counter-Report

role was one of the major steps in the managerial reform of the university.20 Electing school and faculty leaders reflects a representative understanding of these roles: rather than management’s agents at lower levels of the institution, Deans and Heads of School become staff’s representatives to management. Elected Heads of School and Deans will be accountable for the decisions they make. In Canada, again, the performance of the Dean, Program Director or Head of School is reviewed mid-term by a representative committee which reflects on what has been done and where they would like things to go for the balance of the office-holder’s term.

Sometimes office-holders are removed at this point.

Under an elected system, candidates, whether internal or external, will have to compete for election on the basis of an articulated vision for the faculty. This is no more than a return to an older, collegial conception of institutional authority, in which power is not exercised hierarchically, in an authoritarian, top-down manner, but is distributed collectively throughout staff. At a moment when Western democracies are seriously threatened by authoritarian and anti-democratic political movements, it is essential that universities lead by example by pressing the claim of democratic workplace governance.

Democratic appointment processes are the norm in North America In the U.S., chairs are typically elected by the department for a set term (often with limits on numbers of terms) and the role circulates within the department. Canadian universities make senior appointments through a committee composed of an elected representative from each level of the professoriate, a representative from support staff and elected representatives from each level of students (undergrad, graduate).

This committee reviews the applicants and makes a recommendation to the Dean. The representatives are meant to canvass their members, agree on a candidate and feed the choice up to the committee.

The people who do the work who are in the best position to decide who should be in charge of them.

This principle is in no way confined to academics, but reflects a rational, egalitarian conception of the workplace. When implemented, our clause will improve decision-making, distribute power more evenly through the institution, and induce valuable ancillary effects in the way that staff and managers understand their roles.

A possible objection to the proposal for elected occupants of senior roles claims that staff are not in the best position to make good decisions, and that senior managers’ holistic conception of the institution’s position and the various constraints on it uniquely fits them to decide who should assume positions of responsibility. The NTEU rejects this reasoning. First, there is no evidence that the current decision-making practices of senior-management are effective: indeed, the problems, incoherencies and contestation that regularly afflict management decisions suggest quite the opposite. There is every reason to believe that a less concentrated, more distributed mode of decision-making would not only be democratic (and therefore worthier of the university’s ambition to be a leader on social questions); it would also lead to better decisions on questions of leadership.

Second, the necessity to elect candidates for senior roles would necessitate a wider understanding, through the university, of the different considerations that need to be taken into account.

The consequence – greater transparency about the state of the institution – could only be beneficial.

Only 29% of respondents to the 2016 staff survey said they agreed that ‘knowledge and information are shared throughout the University of Sydney’.

Lack of transparency starts at the highest levels of decision-making. As far as the Senate is concerned, a large proportion of proceedings is confidential and excluded from minutes. At the time of writing (March 2017), minutes were not even available for the October and December 2016 meetings.

Thirdly, being elected – and re-electable – will encourage a more collaborative management style, since managers will be conscious that their position ultimately derives from the assent of their staff.

20 http://sydney.edu.au/arts/about/faculty_history.shtml

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“Australian

universities are atypically centralized

“I’m shocked that Australian universities don’t elect Deans and Heads of School. I come from an internationally respected university system where this is the norm. It works now, and it’s always worked. We should institute this at Sydney immediately” – senior recent professorial appointment “The colleagues in France I work with find it unbelievable that we don’t elect our ViceChancellor ourselves. At French universities the VC is an academic elected by their peers for a fixed term. At the end of their term, they go back to their previous role. My colleagues over there find our system uncollegial and, frankly, inappropriate for a serious university” – academic Genuine participation in decision making is a necessary condition of universities’ critical social function. Academics cannot research and teach objectively , and administrators cannot administrate and advise properly, if they are not free of the arbitrary constraints of unwarranted institutional authority. The graduate attribute of ‘ethical, social and professional understanding’ is illustrated by the university as the ability to ‘work with, manage, and lead others in ways that value their diversity and equality and that facilitate their contribution to the organisation and the wider community’.21 It is time the university applied this principle to its own dealings with its staff.

21 http://sydney.edu.au/education-portfolio/ei/GraduateAttributes/unipolicy.pdf

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Executive remuneration exacerbates the divide between staff As detailed in the university’s 2016 report, the Vice-Chancellor was paid $1,101,283 in 2015, including a performance bonus of over $200,000.

In a departure from previous practice, salaries for DVCs are not listed individually; the average remuneration was $577,155. 2015 figures give some indication. As detailed in the university’s 2015 report, the Provost, Prof. Stephen Garton, received $679,760 in that year, including a bonus of $90,543. The DVC Education, Prof. Pip Pattinson, responsible for the chaotic curriculum transformation, was paid $508 660, including a bonus of $37,899. As the university management pursues restructure-related redundancies across the university, these figures can be expected only to increase. Sydney’s executives are the highest paid in the country. An analysis by the NTEU reveals that Australian VCs receive on average $250,000 more than the heads of the UK’s research intensive Russell Group of universities.

The increase in Australian VCs’ pay far outstripped pay increases to the rest of the staff. Meanwhile, casual staff are systematically exploited and underpaid. See Paul Kniest’s article ‘Australian universities top world rankings... for VC pay’.22

22 Advocate 24 :1. http://www.nteu.org.au/article/Australian-universities-topworld-rankings...-for-VC-pay-%28Advocate-24-01%29-19415

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Sexual assault on campus: institutionalizing the ‘second rape’ University campuses have long been sites of sex crimes and misogynist culture. Like many other tertiary institutions, the University of Sydney has a long and abysmal history in this regard. Thankfully a new awareness of, and new research into the roles that institutions play in fostering cultures of sexism, hazing, and predatory sexual behaviour is at hand. Hopefully such a new awareness will provoke a radical change in attitudes. This chapter examines the particular conditions at the University of Sydney that increase the potential for sex crimes. It also reports on the University’s indifferent and often harmful processes in dealing with sex crimes on campus, and suggests some basic improvements that could make a world of difference to the culture of the university.

How do Institutions Deal With Sexual Abuse?

In the face of potential scandal, the first instinct for those who manage institutions is to protect the institution at all costs. This is done even if this means further victimisation of those who are suffering. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has, from 2013, methodically charted how numerous religious and educational institutions have acted to do nothing but save themselves, avoid scandal, and ignore the pleas of victims.

Management hierarchies have a default response to claims on sexual wrongdoing which is to obfuscate crimes and remain silent. This ‘default’ response and the obfuscation is being challenged by a series of new investigations.

The 2017 Guardian report on sexual abuse in UK universities could only be completed because of Freedom of Information requests sent to 120 universities. The conclusions of the report were dire, highlighting 169 allegations launched in the 20112016 period, with many more unreported.23 In June 2017 the Australia Human Rights commissioner, 23 David Batty, Sally Weale, and Caroline Bannock, “Sexual Harassment ‘Rife in Universities,’” The Guardian Weekly, March 10, 2017.

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Jillian Triggs, will publish her report into sexual abuse on campus.24 Triggs circumvented the problem of institutional silence by appealing directly to the public for submissions and by working with the NTEU and the National Union of Students. It will summarise 1845 submissions relating to abuse on campuses across the nation. It is presently in preparation. Just published, however, is another Australian-based report Connecting The Dots, researched and written by the advocacy group End Rape on Campus. Their research highlights over 500 cases of sexual assault on campuses across Australia over the last five years. From these complaints only six expulsions took place nationwide. The incidents examined included serious cases of sexual assault and college hazing practices that took place at the University of Sydney. The report makes it clear that, like many other institutions, this university has no humane and easily accessible plan for victims. As Nina Funnell, one of the authors of Connecting the Dots, writes In the seven years I spent at the University of Sydney I received at least 16 accounts of rape, attempted rape, indecent sexual assault, and harassment…. As shocking and heinous as the violence was, many of the victims described the university administration’s response as being equally appalling, some even referring to it as a “second rape.”25 In this way, the lack of a transparent system of reporting sexual abuse at any university benefits the institution (and encourages and even rewards perpetrators) at the traumatic expense of victims.

If any institution is to genuinely overcome these default institutional responses of silence and obfuscation then clear processes for victims and serious consequences for perpetrators must be evident at all stages of the operation of the institution. This must be especially so at the induction of new students and staff. Thankfully, a ‘Staff Against Rape’ website has been created by the Women’s collective at Sydney (see, http://www. staffagainstrape.org/about).

24 See https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/apr/04/humanrights-commission-defends-survey-on-university-sexual-assaults 25 Nina Funnell, “Callous Unis Perpetuate A New Assault on Victims,” Sydney Morning Herald, February 27, 2017, 17.

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Endorsed by the NTEU, it contains resources for alerting students to processes available to them for reporting sexual assault and encourages academic staff to include information about those resources in unit materials and in lectures. While many NTEU members provided this information to their students, sadly this is not an official University response to what is, on any measure, a grave issue.

Isn’t Sexual Assault a Police Matter?

Accusations of sexual assault are serious. At first glance it seems that universities are woefully underequipped to investigate allegations of sexual assault, and on this issue universities can quibble about their responsibilities towards students and victims. What is clear is that universities must listen more carefully to how victims explain what has taken place, and provide them with a range of options. This is clearly not happening at present, and as the above quoted figures show, universities including Sydney are very reluctant to expel perpetrators under any conditions (the 2015 Kirby Dick documentary The Hunting Ground illustrates that this problem is even worse in the United States).

The personal testimony of clearly traumatised victims is a powerful kind of evidence in itself. Universities must be far more prepared to accommodate the accounts of those who claim to have been sexually assaulted. Moreover, universities need to have dedicated trained officers who listen carefully to what victims want. At Sydney this need is being addressed by officers and volunteers in the Student Representative Council, and by its women’s officers, but this is not enough. Listening to, and devising appropriate official responses to victims testimony by the institution itself is desperately needed.

Some victims may want the police involved, but this can be a very unsatisfactory path. Conviction rates in New South Wales for rapists have been as low as 10% and sexual assault cases can take years to come to court.26 Others may want a university inquiry which, whilst not a police investigation, can still determine much and which should lead to expulsions of perpetrators when necessary. But this option is rare as universities seek to avoid scandal and potential 26 “The Law and Sexual Offences Against Adults in Australia: Reporting and Conviction Rates” (Australian Centre for the Study of Sexual Assault, June 2004), https://aifs.gov.au/publications/law-and-sexual-offences-against-adults-australia/ reporting-and-conviction-rates.

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law suits by perpetrators who may argue they were wrongly expelled. Sometimes victims simply want the chance to continue their education without being forced into classes and learning spaces where their formed attacker also has free access.27 In these later incidences the university does not have to prove the law has been broken, or condemn a rapist to gaol, but simply demonstrate that a central campus ideal has been breached – the ideal that all students on campus have the right to access education without fear, intimidation, or sexual threat and with the continued respect of staff and fellow students. A pledge taken by all students and staff to uphold these scholarly ideals would be the first step towards changing the predatory sexual atmosphere that exists on campus. One of the great problems of enforcing this basic standard of respect amongst scholars and potential scholars is the claimed autonomy of Sydney’s residential colleges.

Institutions Within Institutions The periphery of the Camperdown campus at the University of Sydney has several autonomous residential colleges and it is rare that a year goes by without some new sexual scandal erupting in one of these sub-institutions. For example, in 2016 it was revealed that Wesley College students published an annual guide to “bitches and hoes” ranking the women who had slept with the most men and detailing charts of who had slept with whom.

To further increase the horror of the revelation, the College then refused to cooperate with the university when a campus inquiry was established.28 The university responded by asking former federal sex discrimination commissioner Elizabeth Broderick to conduct a campus-wide cultural review. Her work was, in turn, limited by the refusal of St Paul’s College (Anglican) to participate in any way.29 This refusal comes despite students at Paul’s setting up a prorape Facebook page in 2009.30 There is a long history of this kind of behaviour and of sexual assaults taking place in and around a number of the colleges.

27 Francesca Trianni and Eliana Dockterman, “My Rapist Is Still On Campus”: Sex Assault in the Ivy League., accessed March 1, 2017, http://time.com/98433/video-ivyleague-rape/.

28 Eryk Bagshaw and Aparna Balakumar, “Wesley College Won’t Hand Over Names of Students to Sydney University,” Sydney Morning Herald, May 14, 2017.

29 Kelsey Munro, “St Paul’s College Boycotting Elizabeth Borderick Review into College Culture,” Sydney Morning Herald, November 18, 2016.

30 Ruth Pollard, “Students Set Up ‘Pro-Rape’ Page on Facebook,” Sydney Morning Herald, November 9, 2009.

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What Is To Be Done?

The university administration continues to apply piecemeal solutions to the problem. The Broderick report is a small step. Thankfully the university has established a 1800SydHelp line for victims, but these developments are still not enough, or broadcast widely enough to change the predatory culture on campus. This led in 2016 to challenging protests at open days where bloody mattresses were dragged through the campus by activists seeking to shame management and provoke change. Additionally, 12 previous Women’s Officers of the SRC penned an open letter to the university which, in part, explained the unsatisfactory attitude of management:

responsibilities for the safety of students has been a lack of information on how widespread sexual abuse is on campus. Thankfully this is changing.

Management must follow the lead of the NTEU by doing all that it can to change campus attitudes and processes for victims to stop this ‘second rape’.

The same stories of rape and harassment are repeated over and over. Periodically, a particularly high profile case may break into mainstream media, but as the media cycle moves on, and damage control measures are implemented, the issue is once again put to the bottom of the agenda.31 They accused the university’s management of deliberately stalling on this issue. It is the duty of NTEU members as well as of all concerned staff and students to continue to agitate for change. The Connecting the Dots report, the testimony of SRC Officers, and, one suspects, the coming Trigg report will continue to show how prevalent the problem of sexual assault on campus is.

Because there is the lack of a coordinated response to rape on campus, and the residential and religiousbased colleges connected to the university continue to foster environments that celebrate gross sexism and reward sexual predators, problems will continue to mount at Sydney. It is clear that to combat the inherent institutional urge for silence and selfprotection, strong and unwavering leadership must make clear that there is zero tolerance for sexual abuse at Sydney or at any campus. Such strong leadership has been missing at Sydney. Additionally, a clearly observable system of justice for victims, and serious consequences for perpetrators must be brought into existence on every campus in Australia.

Again, such systems are presently invisible at Sydney, save for what student-support officers, and when pressed, the police, are able to provide. Until recently what has enabled universities to obfuscate their 31 Daisy Dumas, “Women’s Officers Say the University of Sydney Is Deliberately Stalling Action on Sexual Assault.,” Sydney Morning Herald, August 23, 2016.

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Workspaces and gender “Interiors are like large instruments, collecting sound, amplifying it, transmitting it elsewhere.

This has to do with the shape peculiar to each room and with the surfaces of the materials they contain, and the way these materials have been applied…. But unfortunately many people are not aware of the sound a room makes.”32 If we agree with the noted Swiss architect Peter Zumthor that space is like an instrument, then we must always remain aware of the political and gendered dimensions of how that space is played.

A lecture theatre can be a fairly brutal space in political terms. Implicitly it discourages comment from the bleachers and focuses all attention on the “sage on the stage.” Most lecture rooms are thus antagonistic to emerging educational models - and even graduate attributes - that encourage student collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Additionally, if we attach some import to Zumthor’s complaint that many people do not know about the sounds of particular spaces (including people like male architects), then it follows that the design of such halls, theatres, and rooms, the materials that they are made of, and the acoustics they embody, also contain the biases of their designers. The ability of the female voice to carry in male-designed spaces is not always optimal. Several female colleagues do indeed need to “shout from their throats” in order to be heard in such spaces. For some of these women this affects their health and lecturing becomes an occupational health and safety issue. Better design of teaching spaces, and sometimes even the addition of acoustic aids, and different materials in older lecturing spaces would make the sound of the room substantially more welcoming to all the ranges of the human voice, not simply the lower register of the male voice.

room. Microphones certainly change the atmosphere of a room, but not always for the better.

The final solution then is to make the microphone an inescapable device while lecturing.

The focus at Sydney now is on the mandatory recording of all lectures. This is an accessibility issue.

The student who cannot come onto campus can still get access to lectures by listing to the recorded lecture after it has taken place. Fair enough – perhaps. But at Sydney microphones do not record a lecture (with sensitive microphones spaced around the room to pick up all voices in that room) rather, they record only the lecturer (back to the “sage on the stage” assumption). A lecturer must lock him or herself directly in front of a fixed microphone and not move for the one or two hours the lecture takes.

The alternative is to wear a portable microphone – and all lecture rooms now have these. The portable microphone consists of a small lapel microphone that clips onto one’s suit coat, or one’s tie, and a transmitter that clips into one’s pocket, or onto one’s belt, or perhaps one’s waistcoat pocket. Indeed this little device is designed to be accommodated on numerous articles of male clothing. If you are wearing a dress, however, a skirt without pockets, or a blouse - finding somewhere to clip these instruments of sound is a much more difficult process. Some female colleagues attach these devices to lanyards looped around their necks and lecture in an uncomfortable cow-bell arrangement.

Like the unconsidered acoustics of many of our lecture theatres, the clip-on microphone is another reminder to female academics that the apparatuses of lecturing are not designed with them in mind. The implicit suggestion is that their place is elsewhere.

An argument against better acoustic design is simply to add more microphones. Not everyone appreciates their booming surround-sound effect and often it is bizarre in big lecture theatres to have to listen to your own voice thundering from the back of the 32 Peter Zumthor, Atmospheres: Architectural Environments - Surrounding Objects (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2006), 29.

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Racism at the University There seem to be parallel conversations taking place among university employees and students about racism. A common response can be summed up the following way: racism is not a problem – Australia is a multicultural society and there are more important social ills we must address.

Another response, developing out of a different series of discussions: racism is everywhere, we can never get rid of it so as individuals we just need to be as accepting and tolerant as possible. And then there is a more disturbing and revealing response heard from many racialised people: this is one of the most racist societies I’ve ever had to endure… I’ve experienced racism in other countries and my friends and family share their encounters from other places, but here in Australian society it’s different, the problem is deeper.

This article discusses racism at the University of Sydney, based on years of conversations with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and other racialised staff members regarding their experiences of racism on campus. These conversations reveal a great deal about the different ways discussions on race and racism break down, are resisted, or are misunderstood.

Racism as a system In order to understand the lived experience of racism and its far-reaching cultural, educational and socio-political impacts it is necessary to outline first the systemic and ideological dimensions of racism.

Racism is a system of oppression that interlocks racial discrimination with other forms of marginalisation.

The foundations of racism are not characterised by individual acts of bigotry or ignorance. Rather, interpersonal acts of racism are the consequences of processes of racialisation and a system that marks people according to race. In other words, racism functions because associations have already been made between the way a person has been racialised and the particular attributes, capacities and abilities that characterise them. These associations impact Counter-Report

wellbeing, self-identification, life prospects and modes of interaction. In a racist system, minoritised ethnic groups are selectively positioned within a hierarchy of socially constructed racial categories, involving stigmatisation according to stereotypes of race, and expectations held, or not held, about racialized people. Racism must always be interpreted as a form of socio-political ordering and control, or the selective arrangement and management of groups within a racial hierarchy.

We are grateful to the many colleagues who have trusted us and shared with us their experiences of racism. The encounters involved university staff, faculty, students, guests and union representatives.

We have heard about cases of overt racism; cases of implicit bias; and some situations where discrimination occurred due to a colleague’s naivety or minimal engagement and knowledge of people different to themselves. These instances include various forms of public ridicule and humiliation due to physical features, accent, cultural background, or expressing particular ideas and intuitions (simply ask many migrants and international students about their continuing struggles for acceptance); systemic forms of exclusion, erasure and intellectual undermining (consider the social and cultural identities that transition through Honours, HDR and Academic Staff cohorts in traditionally whitedominated disciplines); rendering low credibility assessments, or low expectations (compare grant recipients to casually employed researchers); or a lack of interest and concern for questions and topics central to people enduring racism and committed to combatting it (why is my curriculum white?).

What was clear in every narrative was the prevalence and dominance of whiteness – an ideology of power – and the way it conditioned communication, the status and advantages of the interlocutors, and the outcome. These factors were coupled with the organisational connections and support networks that operate to encourage and normalise particular kinds of discriminatory behaviour and, consequently, inhibit and exclude those affected. In general, the conclusions reached with respect to the University of Sydney confirm the 2011 conclusions of the NTEU’s national Indigenous Unit report, I’m Not a Racist – But... Report on Cultural Respect, Racial 37

Discrimination, Lateral Violence and related policy at Australia’s Universities.

What is clear from the experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander colleagues and other racialised co-workers is that underlying social and cultural assumptions pervade both casual and professional relationships and dealings at the university. These dynamics should not be minimised or seen as peripheral since many colleagues attest that the impact of a few brief encounters always reemerged and influenced critical junctures in career development. Understanding racism as a system, in contrast to racism as individual prejudices, helps us to analyse the underrepresentation of minoritised ethnic groups among senior faculty or in influential decision-making positions (the contemporary history of VCs and Deans confirms our arguments and raises many critical questions).

The impacts of racism Prioritising socially and culturally dominant notions and approaches, interpreting them as neutral and normal, and creating scholarly communities characterised by the privileged culture, ultimately determine networks of power, status and the racial dynamics in our society of knowledge producers – within the university and beyond. Systemic and institutional racism impacts career trajectories and promotions; research agendas and collaborations; the selection of committee members and the power relations between them; and nominations for awards and leadership roles. The way that teaching and learning initiatives are currently designed and organised – and the hierarchies that govern them – advance pedagogies that privilege both students and educators from the dominant culture.

In addition, organisational support networks, career development pathways and evaluation criteria often work to the disadvantage of racialised people. If the union is serious about racial justice it needs to champion systematic and evidence-based initiatives concerned with retention of racialised academics and programs designed to transition casual and temporary employees from minoritised racial groups into permanent positions. Currently, these educators, researchers and leaders are underrepresented at the University of Sydney but details pertaining to the degree of inequality are unclear. A shared vision for empowering Aboriginal and Torres Strait 38

Islander people and other racialised groups is central and increasing their presence among staff needs to be a priority for the NTEU; this would involve, for instance, pressure on senior management to increase commitment followed by a robust empirical study of the performance of racialised students and staff, and the patterns of disadvantage faced in learning spaces, research environments and collegial encounters. This must be coupled with a series of consultations with appropriate individuals and groups, and multifaceted and collaborative planning.

Race-based discrimination also plays out in organisations through the investment or divestment made when a student expresses academic ambitions; when conveying career and research opportunities; in the politics and level of consideration involved in referrals and recommendations; in the obstacles against survival within and advancing beyond precarious work; and through the kinds of prospects for early career scholars and promotion mentoring.

When racism is understood as a systemic problem, one begins to realise that racist incidences are never isolated or simple errors – in fact, they can occur even when a perpetrator is absent. And because racism is a system of domination, racism compounds with other forms of discrimination to both limit the career prospects of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and other racialised groups and undervalue, or undermine, their contributions to intellectual culture and knowledge cultivation. Ignoring its structural nature distorts the identification of racism as an historical and political institution that is replicated and perpetuated in all aspects of society.

The University and settler-colonialism At the moment, there does not seem to be a discussion about racism on campus generally, including in the union, let alone strategic measures for addressing it. Within our context, an honest discussion about racism at the University of Sydney must also recognise that the university – as an institution and an ideology – has been intertwined with the ongoing settler-colonial project. Systemic racism in any organisation is interdependent with the exhibition and performance of the dominant culture and norms (consider the coloniality/ modernity thesis presented by decolonial scholars). The origins of the University and the Counter-Report

various phases of its expansion are rooted in the celebration of colonial conquest and European glory. Its achievements have been dependent on the dispossession of Aboriginal land and destruction of livelihood, the accumulation of wealth from opportunities created by dispossession and exploitation of Aboriginal labour, the trade of sacred Aboriginal remains and artefacts, and the erasure of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge and contributions. A strategy that is sincere and committed to challenging and transforming the reality of racial inequality at the University of Sydney — including within the union itself — must prioritise the work situation, representation and future prospects of Australia’s First Nations Peoples.

The university and refugees It is essential to universities’ role as incubators of critical thought that they constitute a forum in which incompatible ideas are freely debated.

But this essential civic function should not silence university leaders on the most pressing ethical and political questions of our time.

Perhaps nowhere is this more the case than for refugees, among the most controversial and important political questions in contemporary Australia, on which university leaders should be expected to defend principles of humanity, respect for international obligations and fair treatment. Unfortunately, this is not the case at the University of Sydney. Far from amplifying and validating refugees’ calls for justice, the university management has repeatedly chosen to ignore or frustrate efforts to advance refugee rights: • in 2012/13, the university withdrew its modest funding from the refugee language programme at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies.

• At the staff forum in first semester of 2016, the VC explicitly refused to defend refugees publicly, on the grounds that that the university is just a forum for debate, not a participant in it.

On that logic, Dr Spence should never break his silence to defend science against climate deniers or pharmaceutical companies, he should never protest against political extremism, and he should Counter-Report

not participate in political debates over university funding.

• In 2016, despite a significant outcry among both university staff and the general public, the university conferred its highest honour on John Howard, the politician responsible for much of the anti-refugee political energy in Australia today. A petition from over 180 members of the university was ignored by management.33 • The university Chancellor, Ms Belinda Hutchinson, has recently assumed leadership of the Australian division of Thales, the 10th largest weapons systems company in the world.34 Through its sales, that company directly fuels the conflicts in the Middle East that drive refugee flows, and it services Royal Australian navy, whose boats repel asylum seekers from this country.

The need for a critical counter-racism project In addition, a critical and comprehensive counterracism project must engage with issues pertaining to refugees and forced migration. Much remains to be done. Currently, our superannuation fund invests in Australia’s detention industry. While there are many research initiatives and teaching plans that involve themes and topics pertaining to displacement and exile, deep engagement with staff, faculty and students with experiences or backgrounds in forced migration, and a robust support network that maintains dignity and appreciates their exclusive knowledge and experiences, have not been established. The university, indeed, often blocks the path to justice for refugees (see text box). Meanwhile, conversations and actions pertaining to race and racism need to move beyond initiatives based on tolerance and problematic multicultural models that mirror state-dictated frameworks and initiatives. Also, a union-led counter-racism project must be careful of liberal equality measures such as university-wide democratic strategies that risks ultimately advantaging the status quo, i.e. white, 33 See https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/sep/30/150-protestagainst-sydney-university-honouring-john-howard and http://www.smh.com. au/comment/why-racist-john-howard-doesnt-deserve-an-honorary-doctorate20160929-grr3i0.html.

34 See https://www.thalesgroup.com/sites/default/files/asset/document/thales_ australia _appoints_belinda_hutchinson_am_as_new_board_chair.pdf

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economically privileged, straight men

Conclusion We all occupy different positionalities at work and enter the university context with multiple and intersecting social and cultural experiences. After work, some return to spaces that reinforce and perpetuate racism. Those environments can be particularly hostile, exclusory and disempowering.

A university-wide vision for racial justice and an equitable work environment are achievable goals.

They involve the establishment of a systematic plan based on respect toward racialised people and their lived experiences. They require collaboration with them in taking action to enact institutional change.

Racial justice involves fostering ongoing discussion about the discrimination faced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and other racialised employees and students, and implementing measures that lead to equitable university spaces and career trajectories.

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The university and China 2016 was an important year for Sydney University’s relationship with China. Most notably, it saw the establishment of the university’s first ever off-shore institution— the Centre in China in Suzhou. The launch of the centre represents a concrete commitment to the “China Strategy”, a blueprint for engagement with China that was drawn up in 2015.

Scholars and students of Sydney University clearly have much gain from our growing ties with China, but these ties brings with them a series of questions that union members across the university may find themselves confronting.

Universities and their dealings with China are never far from the news these days. At the time of writing, it is our neighbour UTS that is grabbing the headlines.

Political scientist (and NTEU member) Feng Chongyi has just made it back to Australia, having been held for interrogation on his way through Guangdong airport. No doubt the fallout from this incident will be read against the ongoing debate surrounding UTS’s Australia-China Relations Institute, a thinktank set up with the largesse of Huang Xiangmo, a generous political donor in Australia, and a man close to party leaders in Beijing. Huang stepped down as the Institute’s chairman when controversy blew up surrounding his gifts to ALP front-bencher Sam Dastyari.

Sydney University has provided its own fair share of such headlines. Among these we might cite: a clumsy move to ban the Dalai Lama’s visit in 2013; a high-profile story about “Chinese spies” on campus in 2014; the storm surrounding the mass failure of Chinese students in the Business school in 2015; and in 2016, the decision to let lapse an Honorary Professorship held by a Chinese doctor who was associated with China’s program of organ-harvesting from prisoners.

Behind the headline-grabbing incidents, there is a unique conjuncture that is shaping the future of higher education in Australia, as elsewhere in the English-speaking world. For the first time in history, a global economic powerhouse is sending large numbers of its young citizens abroad for education.

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the study of China, whether through state bodies such as the Chinese Ministry of Education, or private Chinese philanthropy. All this occurs at a time of declining public funding in Australian higher education, making universities desperate to secure alternative streams of funding, and provoking intense competition for full-fee paying students.

Each year more than half a million Chinese students set off for study abroad. Australia is usually second to the US on the annual list, but needless to say, Chinese students are a significantly higher proportion of the student body here than they are in the US. Around 1/5 of Sydney University’s total revenue derives from international student fees, and the bulk of that is from the People’s Republic of China.

Chinese students are themselves well aware of having become a marketable commodity, and report a high level of dissatisfaction with the experience at the University of Sydney. The NTEU should stand in solidarity with foreign students whose experience of Sydney fails to live up to the promise of our incountry marketing schemes. At the same time, staff are entitled to ask: How dependent has our institution become on maintaining this market share of Chinese students, and what is our contingency plan, if any, should those numbers fall? Of equal concern is the issue of whether this has led to a compromise in academic integrity.

Around the world, the question of university independence has been raised most clearly by the Confucius Institutes (CI), directed by the Chinese Ministry of Education. Unlike similar international institutions for the promotion of national languages and cultures (such as the Goethe Institute, or Alliance Française), the Confucius Institutes embed themselves within universities. According to the standard template, the CI offers to outsource, or at least significantly support, Chinese language teaching by providing a corps of instructors from China, trained and vetted by the Ministry of Education. Since their inception, the model has roused controversy for both pedagogical and political reasons. CI instructors are trained, for example, to avoid “sensitive” topics in the classroom such as Tibet. At the University of Chicago in 2014, staff petitioned successfully for the university’s CI to be shut down. Elsewhere, though, the investment has proved too attractive for administrators to pass up.

The wave of criticism has led Hanban to moderate its 41

approach to some extent: some institutions whose Chinese-language program is funded by Hanban, for example, have retained control of hiring. Yet the Chinese Ministry of Education is clearly no charity, and in the long term the role of these on-campus footholds will be determined by the interests of the Chinese Communist Party.

Although home to a CI, Sydney University has wisely been among those universities that have kept it at arm’s length from the Chinese studies curriculum.

Currently the CI is not a visible presence on campus, and its educational offerings are limited to extracurricular Chinese language and culture courses. Still, it is very much tied in to the same networks behind more interventionist CIs in Australia.

The purpose in pointing out looming pitfalls in our dealings with China is not to stoke paranoia towards that country. Nothing here would be cause for concern, had the university’s leadership shown itself resolute in upholding the principles of intellectual freedom and administrative transparency. That, unfortunately, is not the case. Without informed oversight by its staff, there will always be a risk that dreams of striking it rich in China will lead the university astray. A corollary to this will be an increasing deference to formulations of Chinese culture and history that have been devised by the party-state in Beijing. At a time like this, we must insist that the role of the university is to provide critical scholarship on China and the Australia-China relationship, not simply to act as a cheerleaders for that relationship.

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NTEU 44 Sydney University Branch

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