National Council during COVID

Michael Evans, Organiser (Media & Engagement)

Over 100 rank and file delegates and officers from every Branch around the country met at the end of October for the NTEU National Council. But this was a Council with a difference – for the first time ever, due to COVID-19 restrictions, the entire Council meeting was held online, over two days.

This year’s Council, the Union’s main decision-making body that sets our policies and priorities for the coming year, was held against the backdrop of the COVID-19 crisis, which continues to have profound impacts on the tertiary education sector. It has seen universities lose over 12,000 jobs and grapple with a revenue shortfall of $3 billion this year, and up to $16 billion in 2021.

At the same time the Morrison Government has successfully passed (albeit, by only one vote in the Senate) the Job-Ready Graduates legislation, which will change for the worse the university funding framework. The main issues considered by National Council, and not covered elsewhere in this edition of the Advocate, are outlined here.

2020/21 Priorities

Council acknowledged that COVID-19 has affected much of the Union’s work this year, and that many things envisaged at last year’s Council weren’t able to be done. Council agreed on a set of priorities updated from 2019/20:

1. Engaging in campaigning, public advocacy and action to ensure that the sector is supported by a stable and fair funding system.

2. Working at all levels to prevent job losses.

3. Continue to re-orient the work of NTEU to ensure that we build a culture that supports and prioritises organising in order to build our power and member engagement.

4.Build capacity and foster activism by investing in delegate, staff, and officer development through resourcing, education, training and support.

5. Develop strategies and materials for campaigning on:

• Protection of jobs.

• Wage theft.

• Insecure work and enforcement of casual entitlements.

• Healthy workplaces and the elimination of psychosocial hazards.

6. Prepare the Union at all levels for bargaining.

7. Continue to engage in public advocacy to secure and advance academic and intellectual freedom, freedom of speech and institutional autonomy.

In implementing these priorities the Union will work in consultation with the relevant interest groups and advisory bodies such as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Policy Committee, the Women’s Action Committee, Queer Unionists in Tertiary Education and the National Tertiary Casuals Committee.

COVID-19 impact on higher education sector

The Council noted the catastrophic effects that COVID-19 has had on the tertiary education sector, including huge job losses and revenue shortfalls. This was compounded by the Federal Government blocking access to JobKeeper and the subsequent passing of the Job-Ready Graduates legislation.

Alison Barnes during National Council.

Matt McGowan during National Council.

Council reaffirmed the NTEU’s higher education policy positions and our commitment to organising alongside student organisations, trade unions, professional bodies and other allies to ensure the quality of public tertiary education by:

• Campaigning against government policy agendas of public funding cuts, the undermining of research and teaching, deregulation and privatisation.

• Opposing any attempts to further shift the cost of education onto students and advocating for the elimination of tuition fees for government supported students.

• Continuing to research and advocate for fair and sustainable funding and regulatory alternatives.

• Continuing to campaign and advocate against government policy and actions that undermine institutional autonomy and threaten academic freedom and genuine free speech on our university campuses.

• Supporting education international’s global campaign against the privatisation and commercialisation in and of education.

Organising against casualisation

Insecure work has become the norm in higher education, and the COVID crisis and the effects on jobs and revenue is likely to make it worse.

NTEU analysis of the best available national data indicates that 65% of university workers are in insecure forms of employment. Of this, 43% are employed on a casual basis and 22% are employed on fixed term contracts. Only 35% of Australian university workers are in a secure job.

While casualised workers make up the largest group of Australian university workers by employment type, they are under-represented among NTEU members. Analysis of membership data from 2018 indicates that casualised workers make up only 12.8% of NTEU membership by headcount.

National Councillors attending the Zoom meeting.

Our Union must do more to recruit and organise casualised workers if it is to reflect the make-up of the university workforce and remain an effective advocate for the university community. To this end Council agreed to:

• Develop a casual membership strategy, the aim of which is to achieve parity of casual membership with workforce structure in the sector, with adequate resources to be spent on achieving this aim.

• Allocate resources to Branch-level casuals organising by making the organising of precarious workers a high priority in the work plans of all NTEU organising staff.

• Support NTEU members to form networks of precarious workers through which decisions about casuals organising and campaigns are made at Branch, Division, and National levels;

• Develop Branch-level casuals delegate structures and integrating these structures with precarious worker networks and existing workplace delegate structures.

• Support precarious worker networks via organising resources and the free exchange of information between these networks and NTEU officials and staff, including the sharing of relevant membership lists with delegates, subject to NTEU protocols.

2021 Enterprise Bargaining

The next round of enterprise bargaining is due to start in 2021 for many universities. Because of the time constraints imposed by holding National Council online, Council members agreed to defer discussions about bargaining to a special National Council to be held online on 10-11 December 2020. ◆