Advocate, Nov 2021

Advocate VOL. 28 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2021 ◆ ISSN 1329-7295

Wage theft: Australian universities’ dirty little secret

Senate Select Committee Report on Job Security

Bluestocking Week 2021: Take Action for Equity

Teaching in the ‘new normal’

The costs of City Deals

NTEU scholarships awarded

SECURE JOBS & SAFE WORKLOADS

ACADEMIC FREEDOM

Senate Committee report

2 cheers for academic freedom

NTEU focus on casual workers

Stop making excuses for casualisation

Protecting our right to express a political opinion

Vagaries of casual employment

Sector has a short memory

Scholars At Risk Australia

National Week of Action for secure jobs & safe workloads

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In this edition 2

24 Ridd Case: High Court's two cheers for academic freedom The High Court has confirmed that there is such a thing as academic freedom, and that it is entitled to protection under Enterprise Agreements.

For the common good Dr Alison Barnes, National President

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Benefits of regulating universities Matthew McGowan, General Secretary

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26 Perspectives on academic freedom in Australia Former NTEU National President, Jeannie Rea, spoke at the launch of the Australian section of Scholars at Risk Network.

Reflections on leaving lockdown and the road ahead Gabe Gooding, National Assistant Secretary

NEWS

CASUALISATION

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Monash admits to $8.6m in wage theft

28 Stop making excuses for casual conversion

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Senate Committee Report exposes 'deeply concerning' insecure work crisis in our sector

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ACT workload tracking survey gathers evidence of unsafe practices

The Fair Work Act now provides a definition of a casual employee and a more clearly set out pathway towards permanent employment. Yet loopholes mean that, in reality, very little has changed for casuals.

Casualisation of university work has become so normalised that many have forgotten it is the result of government funding policies and university managements’ decisions. It did not just start to happen and then get out of control.

10 Unionists lend support after tornado hits UNE

DELEGATE PROFILES

11 SchoolStrike4Climate

34 Jack Hynes, Victoria University

35 Holly Visaggio, La Trobe University

12 Impact of COVID-19 on universities WERTE! 14 A reintroduction to 'Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Business is Union Business' in the NTEU SECURE JOBS & SAFE WORKLOADS 15 National Week of Action for secure jobs & safe workloads Thousands of NTEU members around Australia took part in a National Week of Action from 13-17 September, in support of secure jobs and safe workloads.

16 NTEU focus on casual workers RMIT Branch Secretary & a casual academic Karen Douglas' speech to the NTEU National Week of Action event, Secure Jobs Now!

18 The vagaries of casual employment Casual professional staff member & UniSA NTEU Bargaining Team member Mick Piotto's speech to Secure Jobs Now!

WAGE THEFT 20 Wage theft: Our universities’ dirty little secret It has taken a pandemic to expose the dirty secret at the heart of Australia’s universities: they are almost completely reliant on the work of precariously employed staff.

ACADEMIC FREEDOM 22 Our right to express a political opinion is worth protecting On 31 August this year, the Full Bench of the Federal Court returned a critical judgement for intellectual and academic freedom in universities.

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32 Short memory, they’ve got a short memory

Take Action for Equity: Bluestocking Week 2021

Gladstone before Glasgow

Cover: National Week of Action selfie from University of South Australia members.

L–R: Amy Parkin, Leah Smolarek, Dr Mikaela Owen, Dr Ali Afsharian, ARC Laureate Prof Maureen Dollard, Dr Amy Zadow, May Young Loh, Dr Rachael Potter.

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UNIVERSITIES 36 Why universities may come to regret the costs of City Deals and private sector ‘solutions’ Universities have turned to City Deals to allay the loss of income due to cuts and the pandemic, but for most it’s a poisoned chalice.

38 Pandemic experiences of teaching academics are critically important as universities move towards their ‘new normal’

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As Australia begins a slow reopening of businesses and borders, the higher education sector is also readying itself to emerge from the most intense upheaval of the century.

INTERNATIONAL 41 NZ tertiary institutions given 10 years to end disparity in minority pass rate

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MY UNION 42 NTEU statement on COVID-safe workplaces

Vale Steve Mackey

43 National Council 2021

Democracy, Social Justice and the Role of Trade Unions

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44 Life Members 2021 46 Kylie Wrigley wins Carolyn Allport scholarship 47 Joan Hardy scholarship awarded to Geraldine Fela 48 New NTEU staff ADVOCATE VOL. 28 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2021

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◆ EDITORIAL

ADVOCATE

ISSN 1329-7295

All text & images ©NTEU 2021 unless otherwise stated

Publisher Matthew McGowan Editor Alison Barnes Production Manager Paul Clifton Editorial Assistance Anastasia Kotaidis,

Helena Spyrou Published by National Tertiary Education Union ABN 38 579 396 344

PO Box 1323, South Melbourne VIC 3205 Australia Feedback & advertising advocate@nteu.org.au

READ ONLINE AT NTEU.ORG.AU/ADVOCATE

Dr Alison Barnes, National President k abarnes@nteu.org.au

D @alisonbarnes25

For the common good The impacts of insecure work ripple through our society, undermining economic security, health and safety, and dignity at work. These ripples are felt, not only by those who are employed precariously, but also by all those not cushioned by wealth, privilege and power.

In spite of the prevalence of insecure work across the tertiary sector, the Australian community by and large does not associate insecurity with tertiary education in the way it does with hospitality or retail work. This perception, however, is starting to shift.

The report we released with the Centre for Future work, revealing the loss of 40,000 tertiary education jobs, reached 4.5 million people. The ongoing revelations of the wage theft endemic to our campuses increasingly draws public attention to employment conditions in universities and, by association, the learning conditions of students.

NTEU NATIONAL EXECUTIVE National President Alison Barnes General Secretary Matthew McGowan National Assistant Secretary Gabe Gooding Vice-President (Academic) Andrew Bonnell Vice-President (General Staff) Ruth Jelley A&TSI Policy Committee Chair

Sharlene Leroy-Dyer National Executive: Nikola Balnave, Heather Benbow, Kate Berniz, Andrew Bonnell, Damien Cahill, Michael Callaghan, Vince Caughley, Lachlan Clohesy, Sam Green, Andrea Lamont-Mills, Pat McConville, Michael McNally, Andrew Miller, Cathy Moore, Terri Mylett, Rajeev Sharma, Melissa Slee, Vince Caughley Advocate is available online free as a PDF and an e-book at nteu.org.au/advocate NTEU members may opt for ‘soft delivery’ of Advocate (email notification rather than printed version) at nteu.org.au/soft_delivery The plastic bags used for postage of Advocate to home addresses are 100% biodegradable.

In accordance with NTEU policy to reduce our impact on the natural environment, Advocate is printed using vegetable based inks with alcohol free printing initiatives on FSC certified paper under ISO 14001 Environmental Certification.

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The investigations of the Senate Select Committee on Job Security spotlighted casualisation in the tertiary sector and found that job insecurity works against the sustainability of universities. Rank and file NTEU members contributed in many ways to ensure their voices were heard by Senators Sheldon & Walsh (ALP), Canavan & Small (LNP) and Faruqi (Greens). Predictably, the Government members dissented from the Committee’s findings, sanctioning the employers’ spin and ignoring the mountain of evidence before them.

Despite this, our member were heard.

Member experiences were detailed in our Inquiry submission; members also directly raised concerns at our insecure jobs forum with Senator Sheldon and Adam Bandt MP (a former NTEU delegate).

Casually employed NTEU members also gave important evidence to the Inquiry by detailing their experiences. Recommendations of the interim report include: • A new National Higher Education Funding Strategy for the period 2021-2025.

• Temporary additional funding to universities to restore jobs and rectify the damage inflicted upon the sector as a result of the pandemic and funding cuts, until the new Higher Education Strategy has been developed.

ADVOCATE VOL. 28 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2021

• Design a system of casual and fixedterm conversion that would be appropriate for the higher education sector.

• Require all universities to provide a more detailed report of their staffing composition.

• In light of the widespread wage theft in the sector, legislate for improved rights of entry for all registered trade unions.

The findings of the inquiry were so damning that Campus Morning Mail wondered, 'Have university managements no friends in politics? Perhaps not.' Indeed, university managements are liable for much: over many years they have driven, with the tacit support of governments and employer associations, insecurity across tertiary education.

They have failed to support their workforce and, by extension, a strong university sector. In enshrining casual employment for academic and professional staff they undermine job security for all, creating unmanageable and unsafe workloads. They have overseen widespread wage theft and eroded good governance, while paying themselves obscene salaries.

Although managements talk ad nauseam about the importance of quality research and teaching, they simultaneously undermine the very conditions that protect critical inquiry and academic freedom.

Whether through bargaining or talking about our collective experience, we’re working to raise public awareness (especially with current and future students and their families), of the impact of governments and university managements on learning conditions and accessibility.

We all have a role to play in achieving our vision for higher education, starting with growing our union to build the power we need to protect and foster the interests of our staff, students, and the common good. ◆ Alison Barnes, National President

FROM THE GENERAL SECRETARY ◆

Matthew McGowan, General Secretary k mmcgowan@nteu.org.au

D @NTEUNational

Benefits of regulating universities Neoliberalist chickens have come home to roost in the wage theft and academic/intellectual freedom debates on campus. The decisions made in the 80s and 90s to shift the internal culture of our universities to make them more corporate and less collegial in their outlook and practice laid the foundations for many of the problems facing the sector today.

In recent months, we have seen Union efforts return around $30 million of underpaid moneys to casual staff at a number of universities, with more on the way. This crisis is attracting the attention of TEQSA, the Fair Work Ombudsman, and the Commonwealth Senates Select Committee on Job Security, and it has seen thousands of staff finally receive money they earned.

How can this be possible across so many institutions? It is not just the act of a rogue manager looking to boost the bottom line and blind to the realities on the ground. It is the act of multiple managers across multiple institutions indicating a systemic failure of internal governance across the sector.

In the 90s, a number of things started to happen. Actively encouraged by Government, universities embraced a more corporate culture. This coincided with the expansion of the international student market as government saw the opportunity to expand the sector at minimal cost.

At many institutions, departmental heads were seen as the interface between staff and senior managements, playing a role in representing up as well as down. In many cases, they were in elected roles. The corporatisation push saw these positions as exclusively appointed roles who were required to implement decisions from the senior ranks. This diminished their role in representing staff and enhanced their role of pushing decisions down.

There was an influx of senior managers in professional staff roles as well with external corporate experience but little university experience. As well, some HRs became more aggressive in their roles and less interested in finding solutions to problems.

With this also came cost centre financial management where local managers were solely responsible for meeting their budgets and there was not much attention paid to how they did that. HR at many

universities could not even construct an accurate list of people employed at any given time because all casual employment started and finished at the local level with no accountability up the line other than through the budgetary imperative.

More aggressive HR made bargaining more difficult and contentious and once again, there was not much desire for problem solving at many institutions.

The end result is that at many universities, central administration did not want to know what was going on at the local level. Their bargaining strategy was to reduce regulation and make it easier for line managers to manage their budgets.

As a result, the wage theft crisis has been created by thousands of small decisions at a local level designed to meet budgetary pressures.

This is the same culture that has watered down the roles of Academic Boards and Senates, and reduced staff and student voices on University Councils and Senates. This strategy was designed to make decision making easier in its formation and its implementation, but not more robust or accountable.

This dynamic has even impacted on one of the defining features of universities: academic/intellectual freedom.

The role of a university in civil society is more than just as an educational institution. It is a source of independent research, enquiry and debate about almost every aspect of our society. This role is founded on the right to engage in research and public debate without the threat of disciplinary action because you may have embarrassed a funding body, or the reputation of the university.

Our society depends on this role being indisputable in every case whether it be in epidemiology, climate science, law, sociology or epistemology. Governments, media, courts and society in general need to know that the views and opinions expressed by experts in a particular

ADVOCATE VOL. 28 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2021

field are genuine and not moderated by pressure to conform, or a threat to their employment.

This includes the need to ensure that intellectual enquiry is not stymied or limited by managerial interventions designed to protect the brand of the institution. Such a fundamental responsibility should be above debate, yet we have seen attempts by universities in each bargaining round to water down or diminish these rights.

There have been a number of significant court cases recently that have establish the need for these rights. It has taken the High Court to make clear the importance of these principles in its judgement on the dismissal of Peter Ridd from James Cook University (see report, p. 24). And concurrently in the Federal Court, the case of Tim Anderson at University of Sydney (see report, p. 22).

Given the principles at stake are fundamental to the role of a university in our society, it is staggering that we continue to have to defend people from university managements who seek to protect their brand at the expense of their role in the society.

How are wage theft and intellectual freedom linked? By the internal cultures of our universities that have prioritised short term institutional needs over the greater responsibility to defend our institutions and the staff in them. Let’s also not forget that a casualised workforce is one that will not easily rock the boat.

That will think twice before challenging managerial conventions.

Regulation is not a dirty word. ◆ Matthew McGowan, General Secretary

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◆ FROM THE NATIONAL ASSISTANT SECRETARY

Gabe Gooding, National Assistant Secretary k ggooding@nteu.org.au

Reflections on leaving lockdown and the road ahead We each have our own unique Covid stories to tell, some of illness, and some of tragedy and the death of friends or loved ones. Others have tales of separation and isolation, and others of managing to stay sane in over-crowded households with children and parents all working from home.

My personal story is in the middle, moving to Melbourne in 2019 for this job with my daughter in year 11, seeing my partner for a few days in March 2020 and then not again until Christmas. It won’t be until WA relaxes their borders sometime next year when we can meet again. Along the way we have adjusted to life in a relatively new city while losing the capacity to meet and make new friends.

We have managed to support each other as an entirely remote Year 12 is completed,through the transition to university on a virtual basis, and for me, continuing to do the best the leadership can, to steer the Union through these turbulent waters.

We have all adapted in our own ways, and the Union itself is no exception. As Plato famously wrote 'our need will be our real creator', and the necessity to find new ways to communicate with, and support members off campus has indeed driven invention. Just as members have adapted and worked tirelessly, so too have Union staff and officials.

Since this is the last Advocate before we all emerge from lockdowns and border closures, it seems a fitting time to thank all those staff, delegates, and elected officers at all levels who have pulled together over the pandemic period and worked so hard for each other.

As we do emerge, we are facing a very different sector to the one we faced just two short years ago. Mass redundancies and the cutting of programs has led, not just to the personal tragedy of jobs

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lost and careers ended, but it has also reduced the diversity and quality of our educational offerings on a national basis.

And while that, in itself, will do damage into the future, it is also doing damage to our intellectual capacity as a nation and the people who embody it.

It’s probably widely known that I am a strong supporter of protecting the rights of workers to safe and healthy workplaces, and it is clear that our workplaces are anything but. I ask each of you who has been through or observed an organisational change process that involved job losses to ask yourself 'Did I see an explicit explanation of how this would affect the mental health of staff?', 'Did my employer seem to be interested in that at all?' I’m willing to bet that for the vast majority, the answers will be No. For me, the ruthless way in which jobs have been cut is a strong indicator of the complete capitulation of university managements to commercial imperatives at the expense of the heart of our sector. Each time they demonstrate their willingness to forgo expertise, quality, and respect for the role of the institution in society, they undermine the capacity to argue that strong, independent universities are important public resources that deserve funding.

As we move out of lockdowns and are free to move around again, there are some clear imperatives for NTEU. We have long been the lone voice prepared to advocate for the sector. We cannot wait for the universities to see that such advocacy is in their own interests, and we must step up our public campaign and lobbying for a better deal for our universities, their staff and students.

A better society needs well-supported universities, and that starts with staff in secure and well-paid jobs delivering quality education and world leading research. It also starts with equitable access to high quality, well-funded, public tertiary education ensuring that everyone

ADVOCATE VOL. 28 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2021

who seeks a tertiary education can afford to do so.

We must also focus on growing – not just in numbers of members, but in the number of members prepared to be active in support of Union campaigns for better workplaces, better rights and entitlements, and a better future.

The National Executive is considering a strategy for growth that will be vital for the Union’s future. As members you will see change as we modernise our systems and as we seek new and better ways to communicate and update our focus on growing our power and influence, be that through bargaining or through public campaigning.

Change is inevitable and innovation is not something to be feared. We understand our core values and will never depart from them, but we must shake off our reluctance to try new things if we are to increase our strength and power. We must allow our need to be our creator.

What am I left with, after my pandemic journey so far? A pervading sense of hope for the future and determination to help drive change. This period as we transition out of lockdowns is the point where we must seize the moment and ensure that we don’t ‘transition back’, but instead ‘transition forward’.

Unions, and NTEU are more important now than we have ever been, and there is important work to be done. So let’s get together and make it happen in 2022 and beyond. ◆ Gabe Gooding, National Assistant Secretary

NEWS ◆

Gabe Gooding, National Assistant Secretary k ggooding@nteu.org.au

H3 Officer column 850 words Body text ◆ Gabe Gooding, National Assistant Secretary

Monash admits to $8.6m in wage theft After the NTEU Monash Branch lodged a notice of concern about the widespread practice of wage theft, Monash University – Australia's largest university by enrolment – disclosed a figure of $8.6 million in an email to staff members in September.

A one-hour tutorial is meant to cover three hours of teaching work: one hour for the class, and two hours for preparation, marking and student consultation.

But casual tutors paid at the 'other' rate only receive a flat rate for hours in the classroom: they do not get paid to prepare for classes. The NTEU believes many students at Monash are taught by teachers who are not paid to prepare for their classes.

'wage theft'. Monash prefers the term 'unintentional underpayment.'

Senior management at Monash average $500,000 a year in salaries, while Vice-Chancellor Margaret Gardner takes home $1.3 million. It's a fair bet none of these salaries have been 'unintentionally underpaid'.

Monash management and its governing Council are now facing serious scrutiny Monash joins some of Australia's largest from regulators. The Fair Work and most prestigious universities Ombudsman is involved – Monash in the wage theft shame pile. made a voluntary disclosure – and Senior management at Monash The $8.6 million dates back to the Branch is also preparing a 2014 and involves widespread, average $500,000 a year in disclosure to the quality regulasystematic underpayment of salaries, while Vice-Chancellor tor TEQSA. The Branch believes casual teachers. Monash has been Margaret Gardner takes home $1.3 Monash's chair, Rio Tinto director routinely re-classifying tutorials as Simon McKeon, also has questions 'practicals', 'demonstrations', 'labmillion. It's a fair bet none of these to answer. ◆ oratories' and 'studios' in order to salaries have been 'unintentionally avoid paying casual academics at Ben Eltham, Monash Branch underpaid'. the tutorial rate. Instead they are President being paid at the 'Other Required Find out more at Academic Activity' rate, which is nteu.org.au/monash/wagetheft one third of the tutorial rate.

The more the Branch digs, the more wage theft we find. Just yesterday we learned NTEU has obtained emails instructing that the Monash Library system stopped lecturers and unit coordinators not to use paying penalty rates for Library staff in the word 'tutorial' in any class materials.

August. No explanation was offered by Many tutors who continued to submit the University. their pay at the old rate had their payslips rejected.

For Monash's part, their view is that this is all an unfortunate mistake. The There are serious quality implications.

Branch has received two letters from the Tutorial rates are designed to ensure that Provost, Professor Sue Elliott, in which tutors have some paid time to prepare we were instructed not to use the term for their classes and mark assessments.

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◆ NEWS Image: Oguzhan Akdogan/Stephen Radford

H3 Officer column 850 words

Senate Committee Report exposes 'deeply concerning' insecure work crisis in our sector Body text ◆

Gabe Gooding, National Assistant Secretary

NTEU casuals’ testimonies act as inspiration Having led the charge against systemic insecure employment in our sector for many years, NTEU members should feel a sense of vindication reading the Senate Select Committee on Job Security’s Second Interim Report, released on 19 October.

This official Senate Committee Report outlined the impacts of the widespread systemic use of insecure employment by public universities. The report relied heavily on detailed written evidence provided by the NTEU National Office and in-person testimony from National President, Dr Alison Barnes, and several rank-and-file casual NTEU members who spoke first-hand of their experiences of insecure work in public universities.

The NTEU submission also included personal stories written by NTEU members, detailing the deep personal impacts of systemic precarious employment on their lives.

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ADVOCATE VOL. 28 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2021

As Dr Alison Barnes said: 'Only one in three jobs in our universities is permanent or ongoing. That means that the vast majority of our teaching, research and professional support services are undertaken by workers who are not permanently employed.'

Paul Morris, a casual academic and NTEU member, told the Inquiry about the impact that repeated short term contracts have on his life: 'It creates anxiety, which persists as a matter of course in my everyday life and intensifies each Christmas, when

NEWS ◆

I again become unemployed …Leaving me wondering whether I'll be picked up again in three months time.'

The Committee confirmed the NTEU’s long held arguments that the systemic use of casual employment for core teaching is not only inappropriate, but that it has become a business model for universities, with the Committee finding that: '...the increase in casualisation over the last few decades is not a result of the seasonal nature of the university semesters; it is a feature of cost-cutting and the corporatisation of the sector. Insecure workers are cheaper and easier to get rid of, and, over time, exploitative workforce practices such as piece rates have become the contractual norm.'

And that: 'The consequences of insecure working arrangements threaten the sustainability of the higher education sector' The report also found that: • The systemic use of casual employment had deep implications for the lives of staff and the capacity of universities to deliver quality education.

• Universities had used casual staff as a financial buffer during COVID (ceasing their employment more rapidly and at a much higher rate than non-casual staff); and • Underpayment of sessional academics is widespread in the sector and worsened during COVID-19.

The Committee noted that while representatives of university management had only provided arguments for maintaining the status quo, the NTEU had presented various solutions, including more appropriate paths to permanency, transparency in reporting, obligations linked to funding, and ending piece rate payment regimes.

The Committee concluded that, considering these findings and insufficient efforts by government, universities, and their industry bodies to address these issues, policy reform and correction was long overdue.

It recommends that: • The Australian Government urgently develops a new National Higher Education Funding Strategy for the period 2021-2025.

• The Australian Government provides temporary additional funding to universities to restore jobs and rectify

the damage inflicted upon the sector as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and funding cuts, until the new Higher Education Strategy has been developed and implemented.

• The Australian Government Department of Education, Skills and Employment works closely with universities, workers, experts, the NTEU, and relevant sector bodies, to design a system of casual and fixed-term conversion that would be appropriate for the higher education sector.

• The Australian Government requires all universities to provide a more detailed report of their staffing composition to the Department of Education.

• In light of the widespread wage theft in the Australian Government-funded higher education sector, that the Government legislates improved rights of entry for all registered trade unions.

In his speech supporting the report, Labor Senator Tony Sheldon said: 'If the perpetual insecurity wasn’t enough, academics are paid inadequate piece rates, which leave them with pay well below the Award. Our universities are built on insecure work and wage theft, two issues which so often go hand in hand.

'This is an unacceptable way to treat the people who are driving innovation and research in Australia, and who we entrust with educating our next generation.'

Senator Sheldon highlighted that the epidemic of insecure work didn't happen by accident:

the Morrison Government. Minister Cormann said himself in 2019 that it is a deliberate policy of this Government.

'But there is no escaping these truths.

The Australian middle class no longer has the secure job and living wage that once defined it. There will not be an economic recovery from COVID-19 without a wage recovery. And there will not be a wage recovery without secure jobs.

'The Australian Government, as a major employer, and major purchaser and procurer, has the power itself to fix these issues. And if this Government won’t do it, we need a Government that will.'

The Senate Committee’s recommendations are a boost for our long-standing campaign against insecure employment and presents an opportunity for us to keep this critical issue on the public agenda.

This is particularly important given there will be a federal election sometime in the next 6 months, and the Union is working to secure key reforms, not only in terms of secure employment and funding reform, but also targeting overly zealous corporate university managements, who have shown they cannot be trusted to simply do the right thing on their own. ◆ Kieran McCarron, NTEU Policy & Research Officer See coverage of the NTEU's Secure Jobs Safe Workloads National Week of Action on page 15.

See more on Wage Theft on page 20.

'The 8 years of rising job insecurity and record low wage growth, is a choice by

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◆ NEWS

ACT workload tracking survey gathers evidence of unsafe practices NTEU ACT Division has just wrapped up a workload tracking survey at the University of Canberra (UC) and University of Canberra College (UCC).

We know that workloads are an issue across UC and UCC and this campaign was undertaken to collect evidence that staff are working beyond the hours that are outlined in the Enterprise Agreement.

This data will be used to stand up for safe and fair workloads for UC and UCC staff in the next round of enterprise bargaining in 2022.

We know that unsafe workloads are an issue across the entire sector. We also know that is in the best interests of university managements to turn a blind eye to this issue, and to dismiss feedback about unsafe workloads as highly anecdotal or as an issue that only affects those 'who can’t hack it'. However, we know that cases of unsafe workloads and inconsistent approaches to overtime are widespread issues.

If we want to address this issue of workloads, it is essential that university managements are forced to confront the reality of what their staff are actually undertaking to get the job done. This is why data collection, followed up with a highly visible campaign for bargaining, is important. Our members are ready to take a stand on workloads, with the facts to back them up. ◆ Monique Blasiak, ACT Division Organiser

Our members decided to tackle the issue of workloads head on, in preparation for bargaining in 2022.

The goal of the campaign was to engage members and potential members on this issue, increase Delegates’ activism in this process, and to gather evidence about unsafe workloads.

The campaign tracked real hours worked for two separate weeks in Semester 2, 2021. Two separate weeks in different times of the semester were chosen in order to account for the cyclical nature of university work and to get a broader range of data. It utilised the NTEU’s timekeeping website, TimedOut. TimedOut is a tool for us to collect evidence that may demonstrate unfair working conditions, such as unfair workloads or underpayment.

The campaign had nearly 100 people sign up to track their real hours worked and collected thousands of hours worth of data which are currently in the process of being de-identified and analysed. These results will soon be shared with members and the findings will be used to help build our bargaining campaign.

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Below: Megan Lee from UC College was one of many members recording their hours

NEWS ◆ Image: Maryann Long

Three special online events on the theme of equity were run during Bluestocking Week.

Visit nteu.org.au/bluestockingweek to view the recordings.

Women and Superannuation Monday 8 Nov, 2-3pm (AEDT) via Zoom

Theresa Parkinson, Employer Partnership Manager with UniSuper The equity theme is to look at financial security for women in retirement and the ender pay gap in higher education, and what women need to be looking to do to ensure they are financially prepared.

Theresa will provide a brief overview of the financial challenges for women, steps to help gain control of your finances, and strategies to consider to increase your super balance

It takes a pandemic… for the work of an epidemiologist to be recognised and understood Wed 10 Nov, 2-3pm (AEDT) via Zoom

Take Action for Equity Bluestocking Week 2021

The 2021 theme for Bluestocking Week – Take Action for Equity – draws upon the feminist roots of Bluestocking Week, and while we celebrate the achievements of women in education, we are also acknowledging that we need to continue the fight for equity.

Thus, equity with an intersectional lens is not only about gender alone, but it is also about how gender intersects with race, culture, identity, socio-economic background (and social/economic privilege) and able-ness, to name a few.

Professor Mary Louise McLaws, Epidemiologist at UNSW and adviser to NSW Government The equity theme is to look at women in STEM, with Mary Louise talking about what attracted her to the profession of epidemiology, what it is like to be suddenly thrust into the national spotlight during a pandemic, and how she is dealing with media focus/ government pressures while maintaining her professional independence and standing.

NTEU Annual Lecture and Bluestocking Week Keynote Speech

Respect at Work Friday 12 Nov, 2-3pm (AEDT) via Zoom

This is a call to the university community to ‘take action for equity’ to organise around equity, whether that be in building delegate networks, highlighting a particular issue through events and organising activities, or through support for local bargaining claims through an equity lens.◆

Kate Jenkins, Sex Discrimination Commissioner and a member of the Australian Human Rights Commission.

Find out more at nteu.org.au/bluestockingweek

The equity theme is to discuss sexual harassment and gender-based discrimination. Kate will reflect on the findings of the Respect@Work report around sexual harassment in the Australian workplace, and more specifically as experienced by students and staff in universities.

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◆ NEWS Image: Name

Unionists lend support after tornado hits UNE Supercell storms passing through the Northern Tablelands region of NSW on the night of 14 October generated at least one tornado in the regional capital of Armidale, which cut a 4km long path of destruction across town and through the main campus of the University of New England (UNE).

Hundreds of houses and an untold number of vehicles and outbuildings were damaged by the tornado, and widespread hail across the city caused further damage. At least 11 houses were declared condemned.

Half of the city – including the water treatment plant – was left without power until the following afternoon. Incredibly, no injuries from the storm were reported.

The news was not good for the UNE campus. The tornado crossed the northern and eastern quadrants of the campus, where university buildings adjoin a eucalypt forest. After surveying the damage, Vice-Chancellor Brigid Heywood reported entire trees from the forest having been 'picked up like matchsticks' and thrown about, many landing on the neighbouring buildings.

The damage was so extensive that the entire campus remained closed to staff and the public for a full week after the storm. Evidently several buildings may be condemned and extensive repairs will be required on many others, including the Student Union, Education and Arts buildings.

As of this writing, two weeks later, half of campus remains a 'red zone' and staff

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situated in these buildings are working from home, with no immediate resolution in sight. Contractors and maintenance staff are working hard to clean up campus, assess the structural damage and make repairs.

Professional staff and hospitality workers have responded quickly and adeptly to make laptops, printing, food and drink and other services available. Meanwhile, academic staff have ensured that this disruption does not extensively affect learning, teaching or research, despite the challenging circumstances.

This shocking development comes after years of struggle for the UNE and greater New England communities, amidst the ravages of drought, bushfires, the pandemic and a destabilising and poorly-executed restructure of the University that saw around 200 jobs disappear.

At every point, union members stood with their community to lend support. As we approach enterprise bargaining in 2022, it will be important to focus on

ADVOCATE VOL. 28 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2021

the strong connections that have helped our communities get through these challenging times.

We as unionists should nurture these connections and find ways to weave them through our work; this is the only way we can hope to surmount the challenges to come, be they of the 'natural' or the 'managerial' variety. ◆ Craig Johnson, Senior Technical Officer, UNE. Vice President (Professional Staff) UNE Branch Images: Damage after a 200m wide tornado tore through the northern part of UNE's campus on 14 October 2021. (UNE)

NEWS ◆

SchoolStrike4Climate As lockdowns end and we get ready for another extreme summer, school strikers will be doing deep organising, building and mobilising our movement.

We encourage you to join us in becoming active, engaged community members – organise with your union, join other grassroots climate networks, attend rallies. You can strike with us again next year; in bigger and different ways.

The past 2 years have been arduous for activists across the world; the effects of climate change have intensified and made more challenging by the pandemic. This hasn’t stopped us from raising awareness and growing a community of passionate individuals acting with the urgency necessary to battle climate change.

We no longer have time for watered down messages about what the earth’s future might look like; the future is now and there are millions of people whose livelihoods are being affected by this

‘future’ image that is ungraspable to some. The youth are rising; but how far must we rise? How far must we fly away from our childhood innocence, for governments to hear us? ◆ Diana Boo, SchoolStrike4Climate Join the campaign at schoolstrike4climate.com

Gladstone before Glasgow You cannot blame Scott Morrison for being reluctant to attend COP26 in Glasgow; he is, after all, the leader of a country that is the world’s leading exporter of thermal and metallurgical coal.

He is famous, too, for flaunting a lump of coal in Federal Parliament imploring the opposition members not to be scared of it. Morrison had to wait before he got the royal imperative before deciding to go to Glasgow. One gets the impression he’d rather be in the coal town of Gladstone in sunny Queensland meeting the locals and munching a pie than a rain-swept Glasgow.

Not that the Glaswegians will know much about him or indeed much interest in him when he arrives in my old home city.

Glasgow, well one half of it, has already adopted another Australian as their favourite son. It's Ange Postecoglou, the former manager of the Socceroos who is now coach of Celtic Football Club. Chances are that Morrison will probably hardly meet any of the locals as, like the other dignitaries, they are whisked from hotel to venue on specially cleared roads. The conference location will be closed to the public as will be certain other cultural venues where delegates will gather.

There is another reason why Morrison might not like the place. The name Glasgow is Brittonic in origin and means ‘Dear green place’. The actual venue for COP26 is the Scottish Event Campus on the banks of the Clyde. It was once the site of Queen’s Dock but was filled in with rubble from a building site. A hundred years ago it was a throng of activity, a babel of accents and languages as freight, ranging from locomotives to textiles, was loaded on to freighters.

Now the place will ring with another babel of voices, though educated ones. Some 30,000 delegates are expected to visit Glasgow for the 12 day summit. That feisty Swedish environmentalist Greta Thunberg has likened the talkfest to another exercise in ‘blah, blah, blah’. The bemused locals would translate it as ‘blether, blether, blether’, the Scots word for hot air.

Another potential embarrassment for Morrison is that, like a jilted lover on the warpath, he will have to avoid the French President Emmanuel Macron. There should be enough greenery in plant pots to hid behind if Morrison spies him coming his way. He will also have to avoid a bevy of Pacific Island leaders angry at Australia’s reluctance to commit to cutting carbon emissions, not to mention Morrison’s pledge to donate them all those spare doses of Astra Zenica vaccine. He will also have to steer well clear of David Attenborough who will be the People’s Advocate at the talks. Attenborough has already blasted Australia a few years ago for opening up more coal mines. And now he might have heard that the Morrison Government has just authorised four more mines to go ahead.

So far Australia has escaped the teenage wrath of Thunberg but it is only a matter of time before she lets loose on us. It will all be enough for Morrison to turn to some comfort food.

The food for the conference will be all Scottish-sourced and all kosher, environmentally-speaking; so there will be no meat pies, square sausage or potato scones to turn to. The good news for our PM is that there is, in fact, a clan Morrison and what better way to escape the flak and head out to the isle of Lewis and Harris to connect with the ancestors. We may yet see him cavorting in highland dress; something Menzies never did with all his Scottish flourish. ◆ Alex Millmow is a retired academic. He spent his childhood in Glasgow. Cartoon by John Murphy.

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◆ NEWS

Impact of COVID-19 on universities Even with COVID-19, life goes on, but the academic world has changed extensively since early 2020. One thing is that Australia’s hard-working, still employed scholars are writing even more papers than in the past!

For journal editors, having more papers is good news to a point.

In fact, my main duty here to advise that a new issue of the NTEU’s scholarly refereed journal, the Australian Universities’ Review (AUR), recently hit the streets, and is also available online.

AUR has a strong social commentary role, and it attracts strong pieces about the current state of our ‘industry’. But please allow me to digress.

Unfortunately, all is not well in Australian universities, and this is not rocket science (as they say). Having been hit with a pandemic, the JobKeeper scheme seemed like quite a good idea.

However, for universities, being excluded from JobKeeper payments was one of several straws trying to break the proverbial camel’s back.

Universities are poorly dealt with by an anti-intellectual Federal Government, and just when you think the next Education Minister will be better than the last one, they manage to find someone to disappoint even further! Of course, we all know that universities are hotbeds of leftist extremism, but why do Liberal/ National parliamentarians, most of whom have university qualifications, seem so against others acquiring such qualifications?

Much of the policy development of the Coalition Government could be a script from a discarded series of Utopia, but without the credible (and better looking) actors.

Given the pressure before COVID-19, no one should be surprised about the loss of 40,000 jobs in tertiary education in the 12 months to May, and the 17,000 before that.1 University growth in recent years has been based on the expansion of the international student market. If most of that market is taken away, something must give. If you don’t have a job, your perspectives might change; you certainly won’t be writing papers for scholarly journals! The circumstances of academics still with a job have also changed: having to work from home or home school student children might cause some to revisit their scholarly priorities.

Even before our sensibilities were altered by COVID-19, there had been the creeping then rampaging increase in the casualisation and precariousness of academic staffing, not to mention the exploitation and underpayment of staff. In a world of random events, we might expect the payment of the wrong salary to be an over-payment about half of the time, but it is always underpayment. Why? Perhaps universities have become their own worst enemies, as suggested by Crikey.com: [Universities] ‘…paid their executives huge salaries and set themselves up as businesses reliant on fee-paying foreign students, systemic wage theft and an army of casual staff’.2

contemporary universities, and even an opinion piece on being ‘woke’. These papers cover important issues in Australian higher education, but several directly address what is happening right now on campuses around the country, and what is causing such pressure.

The release of this issue of AUR sees our journal move to a new website, designed to make access from any type of device simpler and smoother. The entire AUR archive back to 1958 is included in the new site. Check it out at aur.nteu.org.au.

This issue also coincides with another momentous event. On 25 September 2021, the Melbourne Football Club won its 13th Australian Rules premiership, its first for 57 years. I admit that the link between these events is somewhat tenuous, but all are important events, at least to me. I was a very young chap when I watched Melbourne’s last two grand final victories from the top deck of the Southern Stand in 1960 and 1964. Watching games on television is probably more convenient now I am of advancing years, so it didn’t matter that the game was in Perth.

AUR special issue in 2022 But back to the topic at hand: the next issue of AUR will be a special issue on the impact of COVID-19 and universities. As we speak, guest editors James Roffee and Nic Kimberley are assembling a bevy of relevant papers and commentaries on the impact of coronavirus.

Were I not an optimist, I might suggest that COVID-19 had a major negative impact on universities, just when we thought things couldn’t get any worse! The real test is going to be how we go forward. Scottie (from Marketing), please DON’T beam us up! ◆ Ian Dobson is Editor of AUR 1. Burke, C. (2021, October). An avoidable catastrophe. Campus Review, 31(10), 5.

2. Napier-Raman, K. & Wilkins, G. (2021, 28 October). Huge salaries, but then crying poor. Are universities their own worst enemies? Crikey. Daily. Retrieved from www.crikey.com.au.

visit our new website at

aur.nteu.org.au

Latest edition of AUR & new website If you haven’t yet got around to the latest AUR (vol. 63, no. 2), when you do you will find that it contains six refereed papers, three opinion pieces and several book reviews. There is something for most members.

Topics covered are scholarly publishing, women, sexism, teamwork, dispersed campuses and regional universities, international doctoral students, higher education and regulation, workplace ostracism, early career academics and the role of

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ADVOCATE VOL. 28 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2021

WERTE! ◆

A reintroduction to Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Business is Union Business in the NTEU Nearly 20 years ago, the first mandatory Indigenous claim was tabled at bargaining, calling on universities to adopt employment targets in the sector.

Whilst a lot has changed in this time, and we have seen the number of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander people more than triple in higher education, there is still a long way to go to ensure that both the union movement, and the university sector, are truly inclusive and supportive places.

With that in mind, it is an opportune moment to provide an overview of how Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander business works at the NTEU.

National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Unit The NA&TSI Unit is located in the NTEU National Office in Melbourne and consists of two staff members: Adam Frogley, the Unit Coordinator and Celeste Liddle, the National A&TSI Organiser. The Unit performs a variety of roles, including: • Running the annual NTEU National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Forum.

• Membership recruitment and liaison.

• Assistance and information regarding bargaining.

• On-campus information and local member meetings.

• Sector analysis and broader social justice engagement.

• Member circulars and updates.

• Member surveys and driving Union policy.

As well as this, the Unit acts as a first port of call for members experiencing problems in their workplace, liaising with the NTEU industrial teams across the country to ensure members receive appropriate support. Whilst the Unit doesn’t undertake individual casework, it works in tandem with the Branches and Divisions across the country to ensure members are linked in with Union experts.

The lockdowns effected the usual organising work the Unit engages in. Members are encouraged to get in contact with the Unit and/or organise a local members’ meeting.

More information about the Unit is available at www.nteu.org.au/atsi.

Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander representatives Across the country, fellow Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander members hold elected positions within the NTEU. These are a mix between designated Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander representative positions and Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander members holding mainstream positions. University of Sydney Branch Committee, for example, has three representatives who are Indigenous.

To find out who your local Branch Committee representative is, visit the NTEU website and use the drop-down menus at the top of the page to navigate to your local Branch. Alternatively, if there is no Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander representative on your local Branch, contact your Division A&STI Representative, or one of the three National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Councillors.

Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Policy Committee The Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Policy Committee (A&TSIPC) is the peak Indigenous representative body within the Union. The current Chair is Sharlene Leroy-Dyer (UQ) with Robert Anders (UTAS) as Deputy Chair. The A&TSIPC is made up of 11 positions: 8 Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Division Representatives and 3 National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Councillors.

The role of the A&TSIPC is to ensure Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander business is, and continues to be, union business, and that our voices are heard within the NTEU. It is therefore crucial Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander members engage with local representatives to ensure issues across the sector – for example, redundancies, casualisation, racism and lateral violence – are reported and amplified within the Union’s decision-making bodies.

ADVOCATE VOL. 28 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2021

The current composition of the Policy Committee can be found at www.nteu. org.au/atsi/atsipc.

Note that where a Division does not have a current elected representative, members are encouraged to touch base with the National A&TSI Councillors or consider running in the next elections.

Division Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander contacts Finally, in addition to the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Unit, and the designated elected positions, each Division has a locally-based staff member who is tasked with working together with the members, representatives and the Unit. These Division Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander contacts are not all Indigenous Union staff but they act as a conduit between the members and the representatives/unit and work in tandem to organise events such as Division A&TSI Forums, member meetings and ensure that Indigenous work is part of the ordinary work of the NTEU at a local level.

If you are interested in contacting your local Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander contact, please touch base with your Division (State/Territory) Office.

It has been over 20 years since the NTEU decided to take a positive and post-treaty stance on Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander business. Whilst there is still a long way to go, we look forward to continuing to advance this agenda for years to come. ◆ Celeste Liddle, National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Organiser Adam Frogley, National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Unit Director nteu.org.au/atsi

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◆ SECURE JOBS SAFE WORKLOADS

Benjamin Dougall, Macquarie

Kara Beavis, QUT

Jacob Prehn, Can Seng Ooi, Michael Guerzoni, UTAS

r o f p u g n i d n a t I’m s

S B O J e r u sec

S D A O L K R O sAFE W JOIN NTEU TODAY!

#SaveHigherEd #SecureJobs

Tim Rich, Curtin

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NATIONAL WEEK OF ACTION ∞ 13–17 SEPT 2021

Daryl & Karen, UniSA

ADVOCATE VOL. 28 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2021

Christine Lee, WSU

SECURE JOBS SAFE WORKLOADS ◆

National Week of Action for secure jobs & safe workloads Thousands of NTEU members around Australia took part in a National Week of Action from 13-17 September, in support of secure jobs and safe workloads.

Branch activities

The action was called to highlight the Union’s priorities for this new bargaining round and provide a national focus on the most important issues facing members and other university staff.

• Online rallies and meetings were held at many individual Branches, as well as state-wide meetings in Victoria and South Australia.

The week featured activities to engage with university communities and were designed to send clear messages to Vice-Chancellors to fix these issues during this round of bargaining over pay and conditions.

High levels of casualisation and fixedterm contracts – at the same time as VCs are cutting jobs – is contributing to unsafe workloads in the sector, as is the additional and related pressures created

by COVID for all staff. This is making it harder for members to deliver high quality education and research.

An Avoidable Catastrophe The week began with the launch of An Avoidable Catastrophe – the Pandemic and Job Losses in Higher Education and their Consequences, a research paper recently prepared for the NTEU by the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work (see report in Sentry, Oct 2021).

The paper estimates that 40,000 jobs – one in five in the sector – have been lost in tertiary education in the 12 months to May 2021, with 35,000 lost at universities. And it’s not only casual and fixed-term staff losing their jobs – many ongoing jobs are disappearing too.

The research paper received widespread media coverage around Australia over the course of the week.

COVID restrictions and lockdowns meant that many activities needed to be held online. This included: • Members were asked to take a photo of themselves with our National Week of Action image, with some 300 members posting their selfies.

• An online trivia night in the ACT. For those Branches and Divisions lucky enough to not be in lockdown, some outdoor activities were possible: • Campus stalls were held in the NT and on some Queensland campuses.

• Morning teas with giant jigsaws for members to puzzle over were popular on Tasmanian campuses.

Secure Jobs Now! The week culminated with an online seminar entitled 'Secure Jobs Now!', attended by hundreds of members and other university staff.

The seminar heard from ACTU Secretary Sally McManus, outlining the ACTU’s Secure Jobs – Worth Fighting For campaign which has been developed in response to the increasing use of insecure work throughout the whole economy.

Unfortunately, higher education has a ‘starring’ role in the campaign, being one of the sectors worst affected by insecure employment.

NTEU members Karen Douglas, a casual academic staff member at RMIT, and Mick Piotto, a casual professional staff member at the University of South Australia, both spoke about their experiences as casual staff members, and the effects on their careers and their lives.

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The details of their experiences brought a stark human dimension to the nature of insecure work. You can read their speeches on the following pages of this issue of Advocate.

Overall, our National Week of Action saw: • 4,500 people taking action across 36 universities.

• 4.5 million Australians saw us in the media.

• 300 members took secure jobs selfies.

• 175 new members joined the Union.

As this bargaining round unfolds, we’ll be campaigning at every university in Australia for secure jobs – protected by law in new workplace Agreements.

A continuing campaign The National Week of Action was another step in our campaign for better workplaces and better universities. To win, it’s going to take as many people as possible joining in.

Our Branches are taking a fresh look at strategies to engage with more members and university staff to build the Union’s strength in the lead-up to bargaining, so we can all support our colleagues and better the outcomes for staff at the negotiating table.

We can do this with effective member-led campaigns. Bargaining is an opportunity to achieve our vision for the sector – workplaces not built on crippling workloads, where our jobs are secure, and where the value of our work is recognised.

If you are not already a member, you can join NTEU at www.nteu.org.au/join and get involved in our campaign. ◆ Michael Evans, National Organiser (Member Engagement)

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◆ SECURE JOBS SAFE WORKLOADS

NTEU focus on casual workers Today at this National Week of Action meeting, I want to talk to you about some of the great work NTEU unionists at RMIT University have been doing with a focus on higher education casual workers.

There has been a bit happening at RMIT in recent weeks. RMIT has been on the Fair Work Ombudsman’s speed dial. Dr Ziggy Switkowski has confirmed his intention to step down from the position of RMIT Chancellor by the end of October.

RMIT has failed in their one legal responsibility to pay workers the wages they are due for the work they have performed because they have introduced a ‘Workday’ system without first assessing if it is fit for purpose. The NTEU was not letting the issue of #wagetheft disappear, so it took some negotiating for RMIT to agree to a meeting.

So, in August this year, we had 10 NTEU casual members talk to RMIT senior management about the impact of RMIT's behaviour on their working lives.

The members, present at this meeting, are course coordinators, casual teachers, researchers. They are experts in their fields. They have demonstrated their commitment to developing the critical minds of students and have dedicated

Karen Douglas RMIT University

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hours of work to marking, course development and student engagement.

They are people who have for years turned out successful RMIT graduates.

At this meeting the members spoke passionately about their work and asked why they were not receiving correct wages for work performed.

What is this work performed? Well, this work includes exercising academic judgement for marking academic work and developing and overseeing student assignments and examinations. In short, this work is the bread and butter of academics in tertiary institutions The fight for the right to have this meeting started some time ago. Academic staff started asking questions about why they were not getting paid academic judgement rates for academic work.

Many were rebuffed and were told they had to present the evidence they were doing academic work. When that evidence was produced they were told

SECURE JOBS SAFE WORKLOADS ◆

it had to be considered. This toing and froing went on for weeks on end. Each time, academic staff were asked for more information. They were asked to provide a list of exams they marked that required the application of academic judgement.

They were asked how many assignments they had marked.

All this additional work to provide evidence in order to be correctly paid increased the workload for staff already being underpaid and all in insecure employment.

Some staff were told that if they pursued their underpayment there might not be any more work available for them. Their job security was on the line for asking pesky questions about their legal entitlements. Legal entitlements to wages RMIT agreed to by putting their signature on two Enterprise Agreements.

Whilst this was an issue that initially impacted higher education workers, we used it to bring together casual members from across RMIT. Soon we were running fortnightly meetings to better understand the way both academic and professional staff were being affected across Higher Education and Vocational Education.

We started a regular newsletter. Then we hit the media. The ABC picked up our issue and that news spot last year contributed to exposing poor treatment of workers across the university sector.

In COVID-safe conditions we held a snap protest outside RMIT earlier this year.

We were joined physically by neighbouring Melbourne University comrades and supported virtually by others.

Staff in all employment categories participated – ongoing, fixed-term contract and casual.

We continue to run fortnightly meetings for insecure workers to come together, discuss issues and work out ways we can respond.

These meetings are only as good as the people who attend. They are grassroots, member led meetings and members bring issues we all act upon. And these meetings are successful.

How do we know this? We know because at the end of that meeting we had in August this year, RMIT management advised NTEU members present that they were not intending to continue with the agreed agenda, even though they had opened up the meeting saying they were there to act in good faith.

NTEU representatives retaliated by making it clear that NTEU management’s abandonment of the agreed agenda was not an act in good faith. Eventually, we had success.

How do we know this? We know because at 7.30pm that night we received an email from senior management ‘clarifying’ that when they said they weren’t going to meet with us that is not what they really meant even though they were not offering another time to meet.

We know that direct action is successful when we stick to our principles and values and we are able to face RMIT management to tell them genuine stories of appalling managerial actions and how they negatively affect the work of RMIT staff.

As unionists we will continue to come together in collective acts of solidarity and demand decent work, decent workloads, and decent wages.

We will continue to fight for secure jobs and safe workloads and we will do this by telling our stories, talking to more people, working with our comrades across the university sector and the labour movement. ◆ Karen Douglas is a casual academic and NTEU RMIT Branch Secretary Speech given by Karen Douglas as part of the NTEU National Week of Action event, Secure Jobs Now!

Above: Karen Douglas speaking to the online action, Secure Jobs Now! Right, from top: National Week of Action selfies from Jonathan Dimond, Melbourne; Elizabeth Vleeskens, Sydney; Gerard Borg, ANU; Lisa Ban, CDU

ADVOCATE VOL. 28 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2021

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◆ SECURE JOBS SAFE WORKLOADS

The vagaries of casual employment I have been a unionist all my working life and the last twelve years have been with the NTEU. I remember the days when almost everyone was in full time permanent employment, a privilege now, it seems, and one I enjoyed for decades until being made redundant at the beginning of 2020 (but that is a story for another day).

Since then, I have been employed casually at the University of South Australia (UniSA) in a combination of academic and professional roles. After almost two years of teaching the same courses in the same semester periods in a program that will be ongoing, there appears to be no likelihood of any offers of semi-permanency (fixed term contracts) or ongoing employment. I will again have to go through the twice yearly casual staff registration process, expressions of interest, and then waiting for confirmation of a contract offer, always received the week before semester begins, if you’re lucky.

There is no induction or orientation beyond an email advising where to find HR policies and procedures. There is no payment for the hours spent reading and trying to understand how university systems work.

Mick Piotto University of South Australia

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Support service contacts provided are merely email addresses or phone numbers to generic staff services with no names provided. Am I part of a team and who is in my team? There is a one hour Zoom session to meet the Course coordinator and other Course teachers, instructions are provided and then one is left to themselves for weeks with no further meaningful engagement. Just go and teach. You’ll be fine.

There is no job description attached to contracts, so beyond running a tutorial and marking assignment, what is actually my job?

There is no payment for the hours of administration spent logging on, downloading assignments, uploading assignments, answering student emails, submitting pay claims, making phone calls to gain assis-

SECURE JOBS SAFE WORKLOADS ◆

tance and advice on how systems work, and trying to find answers to questions so that one can do one's job.

There is no concern for quality of education. Students no longer have access to their tutors, and are directed to Learnonline sites with their questions, their attempts to understand and their struggles with concepts and ideas. No individually tailored education going on here. There is no time to provide meaningful feedback on work assessed.

When I complained that it was taking me way longer to assess assignments then the time paid for, I was directed to stop giving so much feedback to students and simply tick the boxes in the assessment matrix.

There is no payment to set up one’s home office – computers, printers, desks, chairs, etc. all have to be paid for ourselves. There are invites to the program staff meetings, unit staff meetings, all of staff town halls, etc. etc. One’s attendance is never paid for, unlike all the other permanent staff present, so in the end one remains isolated and at risk of being labelled 'not a team player'.

It is rare to be approached by anyone and asked how’s the teaching going? How is your workload? I could agree to 50 contracts and no-one would care that I was overloaded or under stress.

There is never any formal feedback on one’s performance. Being offered the opportunity to teach the same course again is the only affirmation that one gets that you may have done a good job. I don’t even know if my employer thinks I’m doing a good job or not. Do they actually know if I am a crap teacher or anything about my pedagogy, engagement with students, or the quality of my teaching?

Do they even care?

Such are the vagaries of casual employment, as I have discovered. And it's been an eye opener for someone used to being employed in ongoing positions.

But I sense there is hope that things might change. Casual employees have had enough of being treated as second class staff, had enough of being used and exploited. Now is our time to speak up and speak out for: • Fair wages which provide payment for the time it actually takes to complete work tasks.

• Conversion of positions from casual to permanent. After all, the same courses are being taught in the same programs semester after semester, so why not

employ people on a permanent basis to teach them.

• Inclusive practices which would see casual staff paid to be a part of staff teams, and provided with paid professional development to maintain their expertise and currency.

These are amongst the demands being made by casual staff at UniSA and I need to acknowledge the hard work of Victoria Fielding, until recently the casual representative on our local Branch. Meetings were organised, issues identified and concerns have been raised with management, all thanks to her passion and energy.

I hope to be able to continue her efforts and convince other casual staff of the importance of solidarity and collective action through the Union. This is the only way that we can achieve the changes and improvements we seek, i.e. to be paid a fair and just wage and be treated as people, not things.

My long history of union activism tells me that this is how it’s always been. We are powerless without unions. It is collective action that leads to real change.

I encourage and invite you to consider joining the NTEU if you are not a member.

I can guarantee you won’t regret it. ◆ Mick Piotto is a casual professional staff member and on the NTEU UniSA Bargaining Team Speech given by Mick Piotto as part of the NTEU National Week of Action event, Secure Jobs Now!

Above: Mick Piotto speaking to the online action, Secure Jobs Now! Right, from top: National Week of Action selfies from Stef Rozitis, Flinders; Tania Long, UTAS; Ben Habib, La Trobe; Jacqueline D'warte, WSU

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◆ WAGE THEFT Image: JF Martin/Unsplash

Wage theft

Our universities’ dirty little secret It has taken a pandemic to expose the dirty secret at the heart of Australia’s universities: they are almost completely reliant on the work of precariously employed staff.

Dr Damien Cahill NTEU NSW Division Secretary

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WAGE THEFT ◆

Encouraged by decades of federal government policy settings, university chiefs have leant into the international student market as the only source of revenue growth. At the same time they have piled into precarious employment as a risk mitigation and cost minimisation strategy.

About 70% of staff employed in Australian universities are on insecure contracts, either fixed-term or casual.

Before the COVID pandemic, university employers were at pains to downplay the extent of casualisation. Staffing numbers were officially reported on a full-time equivalent basis, understating the actual numbers of casual employees.

control’, he suggested, is no longer acceptable.

Underpayments, or wage theft, arise not only because of administrative errors, as uni managements often claim, but because casuals regularly go unpaid for much of the work they perform, such as marking, preparation and student consultation. These are not isolated incidents, but systemic. Yet university chiefs continue to act as if there is no problem.

Indicative of this was the recent mass rejection for conversion to ongoing contracts of thousands of causal staff by university managers. At Western Sydney Uni, for example over 1100 casual staff received personalised emails about their eligibility for conversion. Not one received an offer of secure employment.

ing on the smell of an oily rag is no way to run a university. Neither is forcing them to pay for their own IT equipment, denying them paid sick leave, excluding them from collegial governance processes and not paying them for student consultation time or feedback on assessments.

More and more, casual university staff are treated like gig workers. They are undervalued, and their contribution is disrespected.

The solutions are obvious, and simple.

University chiefs have demonstrated they will not voluntarily convert casuals to secure forms of employment, so Enterprise Agreements will need to change to force them to do so. And the Federal Government needs to back this in with an injection of funds. It is an investment not only in the job security of tens of thousands of university staff, but the in our collective future. ◆

But the COVID crisis laid bare the consequences of casualisation for society as a whole. Without long-term employment rights, households who depended on casual work lost their incomes This matters because it affects overnight. And lacking any entitlements to paid sick leave, causals quality of education provided to faced a terrible choice between the next generation of students. paying the bills and protecting Having our teachers and student themselves and their colleagues by not fronting for work if they support workers subsisting on the contracted COVID. smell of an oily rag is no way to So too in universities. When international student fee income declined as a result of the COVID-related travel restrictions, casuals were the first to lose their jobs. But rather than exit meekly, casuals around the country showed their anger and frustration. Through social media, online actions and in Parliamentary inquiries, casual staff drew public attention to Australian universities’ dirty little secret of rampant insecure employment.

Since then, the Fair Work Ombudsman has announced it is investigating 14 universities for potential underpayment of staff. Already UNSW and the Universities of Sydney and Melbourne have owned up to millions of dollars in historic underpayments.

Fair Work Ombudsman Sandra Parker even addressed the higher education regulator, TEQSA, on the matter. TEQSA chief Professor Peter Coaldrake took aim at university management. The traditional management position of ‘there’s no problem here’ and ‘we’ve got it under

Dr Damien Cahill is NTEU NSW Division Secretary This article was originally published in the Australian Financial Review.

run a university.

Even more galling for some staff was receiving incomplete pro-forma rejection letters with the words ‘HOWEVER REASON’ included to justify the decision.

A better demonstration of the lack of respect for casual university staff would be difficult to find.

As most casuals will tell you, much of the work they perform is actually ongoing in nature. Student enrolments fluctuate very little year-on-year. Whether it is teaching first year tutorials, or working in a student enquiry call-centre, there is a large of core of university work that is very stable, but done by workers on insecure contracts.

This matters because it affects the quality of education provided to the next generation of students. Having our teachers and student support workers subsist-

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◆ ACADEMIC FREEDOM Image: ACT members demonstrating against university cuts, Dec 2020

Our right to express a political opinion is worth protecting On 31 August this year, the Full Bench of the Federal Court returned a critical judgement for intellectual and academic freedom in universities.

The judgement upheld the principle that bargained rights in NTEU Enterprise Agreements give academic and professional staff the right to publicly express opinions, including on the state of job security and funding in the sector, without fear of adverse impact on their employment.

Alicia Pearce University of Technology, Sydney

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These rights had come under threat when, in the course of deciding whether University of Sydney academic Tim Anderson’s high-profile dismissal was justified, the primary judge in the case had made a startling error.

While the University of Sydney Enterprise Agreement contained clearly articulated commitments to intellectual freedom, including the right to 'express unpopular or controversial views', the initial judgement had upheld the University’s contention that the clause was 'merely a statement of commitment, or purely aspirational', rather than creating a legally enforceable workplace right.

As a result, the judgement suggested, there was no automatic protection to Dr Anderson’s employment if it was proven that the conduct leading to his termination was an expression of intellectual freedom.

If allowed to stand, this judgement had implications far beyond the Anderson case, with potentially serious consequences for university workers’ ability to speak out on public policy matters affecting their workplaces and work across the sector. However, as the full bench noted, the original decision had been flawed. The clause did create a workplace right, and it should be read in context of the rest of the Agreement. In fact, all University of Sydney staff – academic and general – are entitled to the protection of their Agreement in the exercise of this right, and to dispute attempts to terminate their employment due to its exercise. As the Full Bench noted: 'No matter what view is taken of Dr Anderson’s conduct, this case concerns his livelihood and profession. He is no more and no less entitled than anyone else to a fair determination of his application in accordance with law.'

What does intellectual freedom mean?

At many institutions, both academic and professional staff have a negotiated workplace right to intellectual freedom.

These negotiated workplace rights formalise and expand the conventions of academic freedom and intellectual freedom that university staff have long assumed. As the French Review noted, these ‘Intellectual Freedom’ clauses have been bargained into union Enterprise Agreements at 36 institutions across Australia and are the main protection that staff rely on as they engage in critical enquiry, political debate and protest, and express sometimes unpopular opinions in public fora.

These rights can be accessed, enterprise by enterprise, so long as staff do not vilify or harass others. And the court has now held that University of Sydney staff members are protected from having their employment terminated if their employer does not agree with their views, provided that the rights in their Enterprise Agreement are properly exercised.

These bargained rights are unique in Australia, which in practice has very few employment protections for freedom of speech and political opinion. While Australia is signatory to international conventions that proscribe workplace discrimination on the basis of political opinion and trade union activity, under Federal law there is no court redress pathway for most people who believe they have suffered this discrimination.

States have better protections in some instances, for some employees. However large segments of the workforce – notably the public sector – are employed with inherent requirement of political neutrality in their role, and a recent High Court case re Banerji upheld that rank and file public servants can be fired for making public comment on political issues, in Banerji’s case, via an unidentified account on twitter. And in practice, without a transparent mechanism for redress, there is no real way of knowing how the private and corporate sector deal with these issues.

Not just academic freedom As unique rights, these rights are worth defending and enhancing. At a time when the Government has maintained an active policy to refuse emergency funding to public universities, the bargained right to intellectual freedom underpins university employees’ ability to protest Government and employer decisions and express opinions on the shape of industry and educational policy, issues that fundamentally affect job security and the quality of higher education Importantly, many of these Enterprise Agreement clauses are not, as many imagine, just an expression of the convention of academic freedom. Some create workplace rights that apply to both academic and professional staff, supporting political engagement of the whole workforce.

While the wording of the Enterprise Agreements varies between universities, the strongest Agreements create a right for Professional staff to express opinions, including unpopular or controversial opinions, without fear for their employment, allowing staff to participate as

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citizens in public debate on public issues.

Like the protections for academic freedom, this is usually subject to the important qualification that staff should not vilify or harass others.

For Professional and General staff this protection is particularly important. Professional staff make up more than half of the full-time equivalent university workforce and are more likely to be women.

Unlike Academic staff, who are increasingly trained by university employers in the use of social media to promote their work and personal brand to enhance reputation and employability, Professional staff are not explicitly encouraged to express public opinions on matters related to their work. Culturally, Professional staff operate in a different workplace environment to their academic staff peers.

In corporate parlance they work in cost centres – gathering and maintaining confidential business and workplace information, engaging in business-confidential processes, and managing backend systems. Professional staff workplace culture often resembles a corporate or bureaucratic cultural environment, and this culture can have a chilling effect on Professional staff engagement with political debate, particularly on social media.

Intellectual freedom is crucial to workforce activism Both professional and academic staff cohorts must be able to participate in public debate and activism on the direction of the sector. In an environment where at least 40,000 sector jobs have been lost in the past eighteen months, and in a time when enterprise bargaining Agreements are currently up for negotiation, raising the voice of all university staff is critical in protecting and enhancing the function of universities as best practice employers, particularly of women, and as stewards of high quality public education.

The unique workplace rights in the Enterprise Agreements create an environment where this is possible and must be defended and protected. ◆ Alicia Pearce is a doctoral researcher at UTS Law and a unionist, and was a Professional staff officer managing workforce gender equity programs at UTS from 2016-2020

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◆ ACADEMIC FREEDOM Image: Giorgia Doglioni/Unsplash

Ridd Case

High Court's two cheers for academic freedom Academic freedom is an indispensable precondition of universities’ most essential function: the discovery of knowledge and its transmission. Anyone engaged in research and teaching in higher education must have freedom to pursue knowledge and to pass it on to students in ways that are not subject to interference by university managements or other bodies or persons who may represent interests other than the furtherance of knowledge.

Higher education staff also have the right to participate in the governance of their institutions, which also entails the exercise of academic and intellectual freedom.

These tenets have long been recognised in international declarations and agreements, and academic freedom enjoys effective legal protection in many jurisdictions. In Australia, the most effective protection of academic freedom has resided in our Enterprise Agreements between the NTEU and individual university managements. In the last couple of years, this protection has come under threat from managements seeking to use

Associate Professor Andrew Bonnell University of Queensland

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codes of conduct and other provisions of Agreements to curtail the protection of academic freedom.

Two recent court decisions, one involving Tim Anderson and the University of Sydney (see report, p.22), and James Cook University’s (JCU) appeal to the Federal Court of Australia in its case against Peter Ridd, apparently put the status of our academic freedom clauses in jeopardy.

Even though Ridd ultimately lost his appeal to the High Court, the High Court has at least confirmed that there is such a thing as academic freedom, and that it is entitled to protection under Enterprise Agreements. There remain some concerns

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about the potential interaction between the defence of academic freedom and the operation of confidentiality clauses in university processes, however.

Peter Ridd’s employment at JCU had been terminated after 27 years in May 2018 for 'serious misconduct', with the University management citing the manner in which he had criticised the work of some of his colleagues on climate science and the state of the Great Barrier Reef. Ridd took the matter to the Federal Circuit Court in 2019 and won, being awarded $1.2 million in damages for lost income and penalties.

JCU management appealed to the Full Bench of the Federal Court. (Vice-Chancellors do not have to fund such actions out of their own pockets. Universities’ willingness to spend significant sums on litigation must be a constant source of joy to the expensive end of the legal profession).

The majority judgement of the Full Bench of the Federal Court was handed down in July 2020. Justices Griffiths and Derrington found in favour of JCU, overturning Ridd’s earlier win. Some of the statements in the majority judgement might potentially have been of concern to university staff with an interest in the protection of academic freedom. The majority judgement found that Ridd’s exercise of his academic freedom was subject to the requirements of the University’s Code of Conduct to behave in a collegial and respectful way, and that Ridd had not complied with the Code of Conduct and relevant directives of the JCU management. The majority also found that Ridd had failed to 'behave in a way that upholds the integrity and good reputation of the University', suggesting that institutional reputational concerns were also relevant as potential limits on academic freedom. (Among other things, JCU held that Ridd had breached a 'No Satire Direction' in the way in which he had represented the University management’s case against him in media commentary. An outside observer might well reflect that a 'no satire direction' from a university’s management is itself beyond satire.)

Apart from the specifics of Ridd’s case, the Griffiths and Derrington judgement contained some worrying broader reflections on academic freedom. The judgement held that the concept of academic freedom lacked a clear contemporary definition: 'there is no common understanding across the university sector as to the content of any principle of academic freedom or of intellectual freedom, nor any unanimity as to where the bounds of any such freedoms should be set'. The JCU Enterprise Agreement clause on Intellec-

tual Freedom did not include the term 'academic freedom', although 'academic freedom' and 'freedom of expression' were both cited (distinctly) in the JCU Code of Conduct.

The judgement stated: There is little to be gained in resorting to historical concepts and definitions of academic freedom. Whatever the concept once meant, it has evolved to take into account contemporary circumstances which present a challenge to it, including the internet, social media and trolling, none of which informed the view of persons such as J S Mill, John Locke, Isaiah Berlin and others who have written on the topic.

One might infer from the judgement that the term 'academic freedom' is not clearly defined or understood; that it is appropriate for university managements to give precedence to their interpretation of behaviours under their Code of Conduct, and to an institution’s reputation; and that 'academic freedom' may be obsolete anyway in the era of the internet and social media. The judgement, followed by another court decision a few months later dismissing Tim Anderson’s defence of intellectual freedom in his case against University of Sydney, seemed to indicate that the maintenance of academic freedom protections through Enterprise Agreements was under serious threat.

On 13 October 2021, the High Court delivered a unanimous judgement by Chief Justice Susan Kiefel and four other judges in the Ridd case. The High Court judgement vindicated the priority given to intellectual freedom by the relevant clause in the JCU Enterprise Agreement, and reaffirmed the centrality of academic and intellectual freedom to the main purposes of higher education. Quoting John Stuart Mill, the High Court stated: The best interpretation of cl 14, having regard to its text, context, and purpose, is that the intellectual freedom is not qualified by a requirement to afford respect and courtesy in the manner of its exercise. That interpretation aligns with the long-standing core meaning of intellectual freedom. Whilst a prohibition upon disrespectful and discourteous conduct in intellectual expression might be a 'convenient plan for having peace in the intellectual world', the 'price paid for this sort of intellectual pacification, is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind' We can be thankful that the High Court did not entertain the suggestion that the advent of social media and the internet

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had superseded such views on academic and intellectual freedom.

Despite the High Court upholding a right to intellectual freedom (which it found was more specific than a more general 'freedom of speech'), Ridd still lost his case, on the basis that his submission had argued that all of his conduct had been protected by the intellectual freedom clause, and the High Court found that this protection did not extend to breaches of confidentiality with which Ridd had been charged. Given that Ridd’s lawyers had argued his case as an 'all-or-nothing' proposition, the High Court upheld his dismissal by JCU and dismissed his appeal.

The Ridd case, and the findings in the appeal in the Anderson matter, have revived the concept of academic or intellectual freedom as far as our courts are concerned. This is good news – the NTEU’s capacity to defend its members whose expressions of opinion on areas that pertain to their scholarly work or to university governance from punitive action by management has been preserved after two previous judgements that threatened to fatally undermine this protection.

University managements could well seek to curtail the expression of academic and intellectual freedom for a number of reasons, including commercial considerations (as has been expressly sought by some managements), or concern for public relations and an institution’s image. These decisions make it harder for managements to do so.

There remains the problem that managements may make use of confidentiality clauses to muffle dissent. Such clauses might have had the original function of protecting staff accused of misconduct from unjustified reputational damage, as well as the privacy of third-party complainants or witnesses, but they should not serve simply to save managements from embarrassment in the event that they raise inappropriate charges against a staff member. There is some work to be done in the current bargaining round to strengthen the clauses around academic and intellectual freedom, to ensure that the terms are clearly defined and understood, to constrain managements from imposing limits on these beyond the well-established exclusions that such freedom does not mean freedom to vilify, intimidate, or harass, and to constrain the operation of confidentiality clauses to their rightful procedural sphere. ◆ Andrew Bonnell is an Associate Professor in History, UQ and NTEU National Vice-President (Academic)

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◆ ACADEMIC FREEDOM Image: Name

Former NTEU National President, Jeannie Rea, spoke at Perspectives on Academic Freedom in Australia, the launch event for the Australian section of the US-founded Scholars at Risk Network in August 2021 at the University of the Sunshine Coast.

Perspectives on academic freedom in Australia I was fortunate to become involved in Scholars at Risk (SAR) when I was NTEU National President. The NTEU has been a consistent member of SAR and has supported Australian universities, where our members work, to sign on.

SAR has been resolute in pursuing academic freedom, not as an abstract nor ideal, but the actual pursuit of it which, even when not intentional, has landed academics, researchers and university professionals in dire trouble with ramifications for their livelihoods, safety and that of their families, for their liberty, and even lives.

the real issue that sometime academics, despite codes of conduct and professional honour do sometimes fail to act with rigour and integrity .

SAR's practical program of seeking sanctuary in a university in another country has saved lives – and allowed some to continue their teaching, research and writing. The sad part is that around the world circumstances continue to deteriorate and few are able to return home – and their academic freedom and rights to free speech and assembly remain compromised with consequences to one’s colleagues, friends and family of speaking out.

Diversity & academic freedom

AUR special edition Australian Universities' Review (AUR) published by the NTEU, issued a special edition earlier this year titled ‘Academy freedom’s precarious future’ guest edited

by Professor Kristin Lyons from UQ. Not surprisingly Australian contributors focused upon debates and characteristics within Australia, but with resonance across the world. Also included was the important contribution from Peter Greste with Fred D’Agonstino exploring why both academic freedom and media freedom are so difficult to protect. Most will remember that Peter Greste, now a professor at UQ, was an acclaimed journalist with the BBC and Al Jazeera, who was accused with 3 colleagues of spreading false news and jailed in Egypt.

It took over 12 months to get him out and deported back to Australia.

D’Agostino and Greste wrangle with analogies between the situation of academics and journalists seeking to act with integrity and honour. They also explore

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They also attributed this to the choices made on topics and approaches – which they argue are limited by the lack of diversity in the academy.

I start with this observation because when we look at the silencing of academic freedom it is often when scholars seek to speak ‘truth to power’.

Truth to Power – that old adage popularised by the Quakers urging people to stand up to and confront those in authority who are doing wrong. They were talking of slavery in the United States – and how prescient that is for today as in the US and other universities of the colonising and settler societies are confronting, not only their legacies of colonisation, but ongoing complicity in colonialism, and structural and systemic white supremacy.

In Australia, this reckoning with Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander peoples who have fought their way into universities to study, to teach and to research, is long overdue. First Nations colleagues report that nearly every day continues to be a struggle with having to confront racism, to bear the load of ongoing attacks upon families and communities, of appalling levels of incarceration and deaths in custody, of inter-generational poverty and ill health – and having to always stand out and fight back. Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander colleagues also have to carry the burden – the load of expectations that they will teach the rest of us and alert us to respond and mobilise. It may be agreed that Black Lives Matter, yet how much is this reflected in universities when Indigenous student and staff retention is not increasing?

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Universities do not seem to be places of academic freedom to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander colleagues – they are still fighting for personal respect and recognition, and respect and recognition of knowledge systems, and for sovereignty. These are academic freedom matters.

Racism, prejudice, discrimination and legacies of previous conquests and colonisations are key reasons why scholars are at risk. Researching and teaching and publishing from amongst and for, those being denied, often not just a voice, but their livelihood, and even their life.

Courage to think SAR recognises this. In 2018 Turkey’s Academics for Peace were awarded the Courage to Think Award 'for their extraordinary efforts in building academic solidarity and in promoting the principles of academic freedom, freedom of inquiry, and the peaceful exchange of ideas’.

Academics for Peace had started as a petition protesting the prosecution of the Kurds and calling for a negotiated peace.

The consequence was the suspension of staff, and even dismissal without pensions. Senior staff who would not cooperate with persecuting the academics were also punished. Students were recruited to spy upon their lecturers. Research grants were stopped. Passports were confiscated.

The situation has worsened. The initial signatories were standing up for the Kurds – knowing full well that a government would also turn upon even mild dissidents.

Rahil Dawood was the recipient of the Courage to Think Award in 2020. Dr Dawood, an Associate Professor in the Human Science Institute and founder of the Minorities Folklore Research Centre in Xinjiang University, was recognised for her work, alongside that of other academics and students of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, who contin-

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ue to struggle for academic freedom and freedom of opinion, expression, belief, association, and movement. Dr Dawood has disappeared.

A number of the Academics for Peace have successfully escaped Turkey with the help of the SAR network. So universities can provide a haven, which universities have in the past and continue to do – but this is violated more and more.

Remember last year, the Hong Kong students who ran from their street protest into their universities, and the police followed and beat and arrested them. We were pretty outraged in mild Australia a few years ago as armed police burst through a legal picket line over Enterprise Agreement negotiations, to chase students seeking to speak to the few classes still being held. We have had other incidences in Australia of police coming in to break up or to protect protesters and assemblies, depending upon the whims of their political masters.

For academic freedom and freedom of speech are used as weapons by those with power to exercise power, but this does not stop aspiring to better – to facilitate conditions that enable students and educators and researchers to take on the hard and controversial – to seek explanations and answers to what is difficult. To speak truth to power.

It should be remembered that it was in Australia where our climate scientists faced death threats a decade ago. Our pioneering feminist and queer researchers and advocates have, over decades, faced lack of interest and support from local universities, while being applauded overseas.

We may not have been jailed for teaching feminism – like an Iranian anthropologist teaching about gender equality. She is also unable to live in her homeland, but is at least safe thanks to a SAR network. Today, our hearts go out to all Afghan women – including university women now probably refused access to university or worse. It is not dangerous to speak out at Australian universities, just unpopular. But it is all the more important to keep speaking up as colleagues are silenced elsewhere.

work matter too: who gets jobs and what sort of jobs.

It has taken many decades for universities to take on those prickly feminists and the contemporary gender critical academics.

It is in my working memory that an Australian university could have no women professors, where women could not get permanent jobs to get promoted, and even today too many women academics are still blocked at that jump into the professoriate. And that professoriate also does not reflect the multiracial and multicultural diversity of university students – let alone of Australia.

Academic careers are hard work. And even harder for young aspiring academics, as few can get onto a decent contract from which they can be promoted. As the NTEU and researchers and commentators have continually evidenced, the majority of the teaching in Australian universities is done by highly qualified and often very experienced professionals employed sessionally – that is by the hour for a short period of time. It is a piece rate system – paid for some activities.

Too many of our researchers are on short term contracts, sometimes for over 20 years. Many never get promoted. But others may get all the way to professor and still without an ongoing job.

Speaking truth to power Why is this an academic freedom issue and how does this relate to speaking truth to power? A critical casually employed academic, even commenting within the subject they are teaching and in which they have a PhD, may well find herself labelled difficult and not employed again. And what of the casually employed lecturer who wants to enter into scholarly debate with a professor.

Unlikely to be asked back.

Conditions of work matter too

Let alone the tutor that questions why they are not being paid for all the work they do. It is shameful that many of our universities, after union intervention, are now reimbursing staff because of wage theft. And what of the contract researcher that needs to question the research methodology or the actual data gathered.

What if it is so serious they need to blow the whistle. Will they still have a career?

But I am a trade unionist – and along with academics and journalists, trade unionists are also persecuted for speaking uncomfortable truth to power. Education unionists – teachers and academics and researchers and support staff – are all targets. Participation in SAR is part of our work for the NTEU. But the conditions of

And then what of the courage to take on the wicked problems – when funding for research is so limited and it is wiser to play safe. When university funding is continually squeezed by government so that universities are told to cut courses – just stick, we are told, with those mainstream courses currently attracting students

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and for which there are clear graduate jobs. This is not going to solve the wicked problems.

Is there not an academic freedom issue, and here I am being blatantly political, in doubling the costs for students undertaking humanities subjects.

Sourcing funds Compounding the problem as NTEU Vice-President Andrew Bonnell pointed out in that same AUR special edition, academic freedom can also be curtailed as universities go out increasingly desperately looking for other funders because of government funding shortfalls.

And what happens when the corporate or government client or partner wants research that reinforces their preferred position – whether that be in drug trials, or gambling policy, or impacts upon biodiversity of development proposals . The removal of staff and student elected representatives on university councils and making the business of these meetings confidential also mitigate against fearless commitments to academic freedom.

Democratic decision making is another demonstration of academic freedom.

Having an academic freedom policy means little, if few believe it is enforceable, and are not sure that their university will back them up. Interestingly, this may come to a head as Australian university staff, students and even managements advocate for our universities to be more environmentally sustainable, more diverse and inclusive, and answerable – as we welcome university council’s endorsing carbon neutral plans for their own operations and – those of their partners.

As universities also seek to make real commitments to local Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islanders people and communities.

But this all still falls short if students and staff can’t stay at university because they cannot pay the fees and need income support, or they cannot continue to limp from one casualised session to a short term contract to no income, and are still expected to be grateful.

I expect better of our universities and we need to find sustainable ways of operating including having decent jobs, and inclusive and accountable education and research. Then we will be performing academic freedom at home, which will become even more important when we open back up to international students – and to those scholars needing a safe and respectful haven. ◆ Associate Professor Jeannie Rea, Victoria University

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◆ CASUALISATION Image: Isaiah Rustad/Unsplash

Stop making excuses for casual conversion Earlier this year, changes to the Fair Work Act were made, which for the first time provided a (nonetheless still vague) definition of a casual employee and a more clearly set out pathway towards conversion to permanent employment. The initiative to make these changes was presumably, at least in part, a result of concerns about the high percentage of casual workers across many sectors, in combination with growing concerns about COVID-19.

Mary Quigley University of Adelaide

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At face value this change in legislation means fairer work conditions for long term casual employees and an opportunity to avoid ongoing casual employment in work situations whose nature clearly is not casual. Casual workers who have been in ongoing, regular employment for 1 year or more are able to make a request to become a permanent employee.

Noteworthy is that there was never anything stopping casual employees from doing this previously. What has really changed now is that the employer is obliged to make contact in writing regarding their intention to either make an eligible casual employee permanent, or to give them their reasons for not converting them.

However, there are a lot of loopholes in this new initiative that mean in reality, very little has changed for casuals, except perhaps that they have been made slightly more aware of their disadvantaged position. If an employer sends a notification that they do not wish to make a casual staff member permanent, which they can do ‘if there are reasonable grounds for them not to’, the employee is not able to apply for conversion for at least six months.

In sum, the changes to the Fair Work Act mean that employers now have to justify perpetuating casual employment, but are given a very broad selection of potential ‘reasons’ for not making employees permanent ‘based on facts that are known or reasonably foreseeable’. The changes made, in essence, if anything take yet more power away from casual employees because they allow employers to openly justify their reasons for keeping employees casual and simultaneously disable casual employees from applying for conversion for six months once they have received a notification.

Of course there are always avenues for appealing decisions made but these kind of actions require a lot of time and resources which many casual employees do not have at their disposal. Further, as long as casuals remain casuals they are at risk of losing their employment and so are also likely to hold back on any undertaking that may threaten their future employment.

Recently at an Australian university, a series of generic emails were sent out to casual staff in response to these changes to the Fair Work Act. The first of the series was a very brief message that stated, ‘We are required to give you a Casual Employment Information Statement.’ A link to a PDF information sheet about the changes

to the Fair Work Act and casual conversion was then provided.

The email carried an undercurrent of resentment, as if to say ‘we are only sending this to you because we have to’ and did not provide any comment or additional information about what this actually meant in terms of ongoing employment at the University.

This correspondence was followed by another email sent to casual staff which served as the obligatory written information of the University’s decision about casual conversion. It is fair to say that it was clear from the beginning, with the very vague guidelines of ‘reasonable grounds’ for not offering casual conversion, that the university would be able to divulge some legally acceptable reasons to not offer their very large pool of casual staff permanent employment.

Surprising, however, was the tactless, robotic tone of the correspondence. Nowhere in the correspondence was there an acknowledgement of the work carried out by casual employees, a thank you, a ‘we appreciate your contribution to our enterprise’. Not a single word along those lines.

Perhaps such statements would not work in favour of the argument currently being put forward in the letter, that all casual employees are completely superfluous to the university and are likely not to be needed in the very near future. Or perhaps it is simply a genuine reflection of the undervaluing of the role of casual staff within the university – who at many universities make up close to or more than 50% of the workforce.

The correspondence informed casual staff that the university had conducted an assessment to determine if it is required to offer conversion permanent employment and that the outcome of that assessment was that the university will not be offering conversion. It then provided a list of its ‘reasonable grounds’ for this decision.

Teaching work is confined to teaching terms. Conversion would require the university to provide work outside teaching periods in the academic calendar that the university does not require or need you to undertake.

consolidate materials between semesters – so too are academic teaching staff, casual or otherwise.

The university might claim that this work is only allocated to full time staff, however, the reality is that this work is carried out by the staff that teach the courses. If year after year a single course is being taught by the same casual academic staff, they are the ones who ultimately put in this work outside of the teaching semester.

Even if they are given assistance from full time staff, because the full time staff are not the ones teaching the course, there is only so much work that they are able to alleviate. As the situation currently stands, casual staff frequently carry the load of the full time staff members but simply do not have their work recognised and are not reimbursed for it.

Causal staff are also faced with a choice to ‘volunteer’ to invest their time outside of teaching terms into improving the courses that they teach, or to continue teaching their courses without being able to make the adaptations and improvements that are necessary to keep courses current and of high quality. The result is either choosing to work for free, or choosing to present oneself in a negative light to future students, teaching a course that is in desperate need of changes and updates which no one is willing or able to take the time to make.

Conversion would require the university to provide duties such as scholarly activities or research that the university does not require or need you to undertake.

The university in question was in fact required to create a defined number of scholarly teaching positions throughout the duration of its current Enterprise Agreement, but as yet it has not met this quota. Its agreement within the Enterprise Agreement to create these positions indicates that there is a need for scholarly activities to be carried out.

Where there is a course being taught, there is a need for course planning. The limited number of current full time academics already struggle to carry out any research during the teaching semester because of the heavy teaching load. The semester breaks are their chance to conduct research.

Teaching work, however, is most certainly not confined to teaching periods. Just like the claim that a school teacher’s work does not continue outside of teaching terms would clearly be false as teachers are also required to plan, update course materials, develop new materials and

However, this means that current full time staff do not have time left over to update courses. Resultantly, courses remain the same, unimproved, unedited, year after year, simply because the casual staff that teach them are not given

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continued overpage...

◆ CASUALISATION

Stop making excuses for the opportunity to update, improve and properly plan for them, despite the fact that they are the ones who teach them year after year.

Casual teaching is carried out for a specified period of time, for a specific task, or for the duration of a specified season.

Conversion would require the university to provide continuing employment in circumstances where the work is limited in nature.

The teaching carried out by any teacher, casual or full time is always conducted for a specific period, e.g. Semester 1, Semester 2, Summer School, Winter School. Part of the motivation for school or university holidays, as well as offering students a convenient break, is allowing teachers to plan for and prepare their course content.

This is the same for schools, teaching takes place in Term 1, Term 2, Term 3 and Term 4, yet school teachers are not regarded as ‘seasonal workers’. The work carried out by casual academic teaching staff continues year in and year out. We see the same casual staff teaching the same courses at the university for years on end. But the university continues to claim that the work is irregular and seasonal.

The work is not limited in nature, in many cases the necessary work is simply not being done, or it is being done as an act of ‘good will’ by casual employees, or by full time staff being forced to work unpaid overtime. Frequently, full time staff express the difficulty in being forced to take holidays but not finding the time to take them. Full time staff are frequently over loaded with work and unable to take the holidays they are legally obligated to take, often resorting to working from home during their ‘holiday’ time because they are ‘not allowed’ to come into work at that time.

The work of course planning as well as their research simply needs to be done however it is not plausible for them to do both within reasonable working hours.

Full time staff are expected to do the work that the high percentage of casual staff members within the department are not allowed or ‘needed’ to carry out, as well as the work for their own course planning and research.

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Planning a course that one does not teach themselves is a great task. One must initially develop a strong understanding of what is in the course itself and what is in need of change. It is often difficult to know what needs to change without having taught the course. Thus the causal staff member is again required to more or less outline the changes that need to be made, of course unofficially and out of the goodness of their heart and their desire to ensure quality learning within the course that they represent.

Often the work of outlining changes is almost as much as that of simply making them. Then the full time staff member must make the changes and send those through to the casual staff member who is actually teaching the course. Again the casual staff member is implied in the process but their work goes unrecognised.

Teaching requires autonomous planning and such processes deny casual staff that autonomy, or attempt to take it away and give it to other staff members whose time is not paid for on an hourly basis. Course development is a natural part of working in any teaching role. To take this away from casual staff and to say that their input into the courses they teach is not needed or required is to deny them their autonomy as fully qualified, knowledgeable, experienced and creative teachers.

As long as a staff member is teaching, regardless of their status as casual, contracted or permanent, the complex work of teaching and planning remains the same.

The impression that comes across from the university’s approach to academic teaching is that it is something insignificant to be tacked onto research that essentially requires no planning, no updates, no adaptations and no academic thinking following the initial setup of a course. This seems to ignore the fact that a central source of revenue for the university is in fact its students who attend these courses.

The university simultaneously claims that its courses are designed to offer the highest levels of learning and knowledge to students, who then should be well prepared to enter the workforce. Yet the university’s approach in appointing a large percentage of casual staff to carry out teaching only activities and not allow-

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ing those staff to develop their courses at all outside of the teaching semester instead reflects a desire to maximise profits and minimise costs, rather than a commitment to developing and maintaining high quality learning.

It seems that the university has noticed that many casual staff are willing to complete this work without payment and without open complaint because of their dedication to and passion for their field of study. The silence of many casual staff is motivated also by a fear of losing work due to a lack of performance, which would be the case if they did not make the necessary changes to their courses outside of the semester. In some cases, courses can scrape by with minimal adaptations.

Many courses run the same tests year after year, giving students assignments with no adaptations, implying additionally a lack of quality control and a high probably of cheating, and course results that do not actually reflect the true quality of learning. Courses need to be kept current. Material needs to change and be flexible. There is currently no space for this work to be done in the university’s workload model.

If the casual staff who carry out this majority of in-semester teaching were allowed to continue their work outside of the semester, we would see drastically improved, updated, versatile courses instead of the same content being presented to students on repeat for years on end.

The casual teaching currently being carried out will cease to be required or will be performed by another staff member.

This ‘grounds’ for not offering conversion is a mysterious one. It is unclear when this teaching will no longer be required, what the reason for that change might be, nor is it clarified who the other staff member carrying out the teaching will be.

Many departments have only a handful of permanent staff, that is one or two permanent staff, versus perhaps five or six casual staff.

One can be fairly certain that the full time staff, who are already stretched in attempting to keep up with their workload, are not in a position to take on the hours of all of the current casual teaching staff.

Even if they were to neglect all of their

CASUALISATION ◆

casual conversion research, which would require an adaptation of their employment contracts, they still would not be able to cover all of the courses taught by casual staff in their department. It is a physically impossible task. There are too many courses. Many courses run parallel. Full time staff are not capable of being in two places at the same time. Stating that the work carried out by casuals will be carried out by another staff member seems like a unfounded claim at best, and at worst a misdirected threat to casual staffs’ future employment.

Additionally, the statement that the work carried out by casual staff members will ‘cease to be required’ is also questionable. In many cases, the courses being taught by casual staff members have literally been running for decades.

Courses which have consistent student numbers will suddenly cease to exist! On the contrary, the existing pattern of work for casual staff would strongly suggest that the courses will continue to run exactly as they have been over an extended period of time. In the next point below, the university appears to justify their reasoning for their prediction that casual workers will no longer be required.

It is anticipated that the student load will drop, thus there is likely to be reductions in the workforce required in your area.

The university is reviewing its operations and there will be a significant reduction in staff numbers. There is uncertainty in relation to the future of your role.

Making a blanket claim regarding course numbers and sending it to casuals across the university is unreasonable. It might indeed be the case for courses with a high percentage of international students, due to the current situation with COVID-19, but it is certainly not the case for all courses at the university. In fact, some areas of the university have seen an increase in student numbers and retention rates since COVID-19.

This correspondence had one simple message to convey: casual staff at the university are disposable and are not valued. They should be thankful to have been given any hours at all. Yet casual university staff are the backbone of the university. They are the ones who keep the university running, albeit at minimal cost.

This correspondence was sent out en masse to casual staff without any personalisation or review of individual roles within the workplace. There were no considerations of ways to adapt employment structures to make a fairer and more functional workplace for all employees.

Full time academics who carry out teaching duties as well as their research are paid around $120,000 per year. They are entitled to paid holidays, sick leave, carers leave, maternity leave, and they receive almost twice as much superannuation as casual employees. Additionally, they are entitled to pay increases over time. Casual staff on the other hand who carry out the same teaching hours as full-time staff (albeit not carrying out research) receive around $40,000 per annum, with none of the additional advantages such as sick or holiday pay.

The discrepancy in pay and in stability provided by being granted a permanent position is not equivalent in any way to the differences in work being carried out by employees on casual versus permanent contracts. There is a huge majority of teaching related work that is simply not being done or is being done by either casual or full time staff as part of what is in effect for both parties unpaid overtime.

Casual staff at the university have not been given a fair chance to reasonably apply for conversion to permanency, despite the ongoing nature of their employment.

The correspondence sent out to casual employees implies that the university would be in a position to function without issue without any of its casual employees in the coming semester. However, this would mean losing a very large percentage of its workforce whilst still offering a majority of the same courses.

Such a scenario is both unlikely and unreasonable. There is an impressive lack of team spirit on the part of the university and a complete disregard for the important contributions to the university made by casual staff. Of course the university does not wish to acknowledge these contributions because in doing so they would have to face the dilemma of actually paying casual staff properly for the work that they do at the university. ◆ Mary Quigley is a PhD candidate at the University of Adelaide

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◆ CASUALISATION Image: NTEU ACT members protesting against casualisation in 2019

Short memory, they’ve got a short memory The second interim report of the Senate Select Committee on Job Security wrote that there has been 'insufficient efforts by government, universities and industry bodies to address the underlying systemic causes for the prevalence of insecure work in the sector.'

Jeannie Rea Victoria University

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CASUALISATION ◆

The Select Committee also opined that the higher education sector would have trouble remaining competitive and maintaining excellence without increasing employment security. Having listened to evidence from casually employed staff and the NTEU, they also acknowledged the adverse impacts upon insecure workers. And they offered up a set of recommendations to address, in particular the super-exploitation of sessionally employed academics as revealed in the wage theft scandals.

However, what seems to be missed in calling upon all parties for due diligence and greater efforts to regularise employment, is that 'the prevalence of insecure work in the sector' is no accident. There have been ‘insufficient efforts… to address the underlying systemic causes' because the government and universities have knowingly and purposefully created the problem.

The casualisation of university work has become so normalised that it seems to have been forgotten that it is the result of government funding policies and university councils and managements’ budget and industrial decisions.

It did not just start to happen and then get out of control.

actual work and quality of work. Put crudely, the NTEU’s approach was try and ‘price out casual work’ by increasing the casual rates until it became cheaper to offer a part or full time position.

The NTEU had also sought to stop contracts where ongoing work was available, which had been a hallmark of academic employment with academics spending a career anxiously moving from one contract to the next.

We still see this in research jobs, where the loophole of external funding allows for contract employment. But this is exploited by university managements who have research staff (academic and professional) continually seeking contract renewal even where there are actually ongoing projects and funding.

wages and conditions should be flanked on all sides by those in more secure jobs.

But they are not as the securely employed keep their heads down while quietly complaining about workloads and surveillance and when can they take their leave. Universities are particularly good at divide and conquer – as academics are responsible for employing sessional staff and to do so in a way that keeps within the budget. So they do.

Our challenge is to force university managements to stand up to government and stop complying with every new demand for more acquiescence. University managements should be refusing to operate on inadequate funding. Instead, in 2014 the Vice-Chancellors (all but one) supported deregulating undergraduate fees as the solution.

But now we have reached the stage where Vice-Chancellors and other senior executives wring their hands in faux despair about the crushing of early career academics' dreams. But in making their way to the top they have usually gone along with cutting academic workforce budgets and backed increasingly harsh Enterprise Agreements.

But now we have reached the stage where Vice-Chancellors and other senior executives wring their hands in faux despair about the crushing of early career academics' dreams. But in making their way to the top they have usually gone along with cutting academic workforce budgets and backed increasingly harsh Enterprise Agreements.

They have contributed to creating a three tier academic workforce – the increasingly diminishing teaching and research academics in ongoing positions, then the ‘teaching focused’ next generation and at the bottom the reserve army of the casually employed doing most of the face to face (or zoom) work with the students.

Now they dare to complain about impacts upon the student experience, quality and the integrity of the disciplines. And all they can offer are more metrics, surveillance and disrespect with a few awards for ‘good’ teaching dangled before academics.

Back in 1990s, most sessionally employed academics were PhD students and graduates seeking academic careers as well as industry professionals bringing in their expertise. It was still an exploitative system and remuneration did not match

So whilst universities argue that they are forced to make the decisions to casualise work because it is cheap – and in doing so admitting that they know that they are ripping off the staff from whom they then expect extraordinary levels of high quality work, and even institutional loyalty.

But it is not just about being cheap and ruthless.

Universities do decide how to allocate their budgets, and even in the COVID crisis many have chosen to look after the ‘company’ in seeking surpluses, while leaving the bulk of students staring into the screen (if they have their camera on) reliant for any contact with ‘their’ university with a sessionally employed academic, who most likely does not even get the emails explaining what is going on to tell students.

But it is even more calculated. In higher education, in TAFE and across the workforce casualisation is used to de-unionise and intimidate the workforce. Every casually employed colleague who is prepared to stand up for their rights to decent

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For the bottom line is that we have, on a world scale, particularly underfunded public universities.

The Howard Government cut university funding with barely a whimper from university bosses, and despite the preparedness of staff and students to support universities managements to fight back.

What did the university managements do? They negotiated for more attractive international student visas so that more international students would come – and subsidise the education of domestic students. While paying big money these students have also found themselves in big and fewer classes with mainly casually employed teachers. And they are also super exploited in their own casual jobs. And in March last year, the Prime Minister told them to 'go home'.

And that is how we got into the mess we are in. The ‘underlying systemic causes’ are actually political decisions, which have been forgotten.

That Labor parliamentarians are now expressing concern about the casualisation of the university workforce is to be welcomed. Yet ALP policy is still only about restoring university funding cuts made by the Morrison Government. We need to organise and demand better.

Short memories do not help. ◆ Jeannie Rea was NTEU National President 2010–2018, and is an Associate Professor at Victoria University

Title thanks to Midnight Oil

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◆ DELEGATE PROFILE

Jack Hynes

Victoria University I am a casual worker at Victoria University (VU) where I teach social dimensions of sport/exercise and undertake a PhD that explores elite sport, identity, and health. I am currently the casuals’ representative on the VU NTEU Branch Committee.

I’ve been a NTEU member since early 2019 when I started working as a casual academic, but I became more active as a member at the onset of the pandemic last year. The pandemic highlighted the neoliberal restructuring of higher education that has resulted in excessive workloads, casualisation, and a lack of funding for universities. I was frustrated by the NTEU leadership’s concessions first approach where having a seat at the table was prioritised above organising workers to defend pay and conditions. I argued at the time that the NTEU leadership should lead a fight against wage cuts, not impose them on members.

Throughout last year I co-convened the VU Casuals’ Network where workers reported back on issues in local areas, learned about our rights at work, and organised to reach out to other workers and build the Union. The VU casuals network cohered a small layer of activists and three of us ran on a joint ticket to successfully contest elections for the VU NTEU Branch Committee this year. The elections were part of rejuvenating the VU NTEU Branch to develop an active, confident, and empowered layer of workers who will collectively stand up for our rights.

VU workers are impacted by excessive workloads and lack of job security. We became aware last year of the top-heavy leadership structures at VU where senior leadership numbered around 100 people. The bloated management salaries contrast with the experiences of most VU staff who are often under resourced to complete the work they are allocated and feel the pressure to undertake excessive unpaid labour.

For example, casual academics report receiving contracts with zero hours for ‘other activity’ which means management views teacher meetings, moderation, and other tasks vital to teaching and learning as either unimportant or should be done for free.

Our struggle for improved working conditions is vital for better student learning conditions and outcomes.

Casual workers at VU suggest that job security is the key industrial relations issue. VU’s casual conversion assessments in September saw only 18 conversion offers made from roughly 1600 casual staff. The numbers are underwhelming but are con-

sistent with the results at other universities where this process was undertaken.

We organised open meetings for VU casuals, undertook phone banking to reach out to wider layers of casuals, and set up a review process with management where VU casuals can be supported by the NTEU. At every opportunity we strive to facilitate the active participation and greater involvement of members to improving our work conditions.

VU’s Enterprise Agreement is up for negotiation in September 2022, so we must build workers’ confidence and capacity towards taking industrial action to win clauses that make meaningful differences in conditions and pay.

Casuals at Melbourne University and elsewhere have shown that when workers are organised, active, and working collectively they can win concessions from management.

We must build a large, member-led, and strike ready union if we want to address the systemic issues of excessive workloads and casualisation. The NTEU must adopt tactics and strategies that reflect a bottom-up approach to organising and facilitate the mass, active, and collective involvement of members to fight for conditions and pay. ◆ Find out how to become a Delegate at nteu.org.au/delegates

NATIONAL TERTIARY EDUCATION UNION

Become an NTEU

Delegate!

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Delegates

D E L E G AT E S . N T E U. O R G . AU

Delegates are a vital part of the NTEU, maintaining visibility, supporting recruitment & building the strength of the Union.

If you’re interested in becoming a Delegate in your work area, contact your Branch today.

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DELEGATE PROFILE ◆

Holly Visaggio La Trobe University

At La Trobe University (LTU), where I work in partnerships administration as a professional staff member, it’s a time of significant change, including major restructuring and cuts to staff.

This isn’t anything new to La Trobe though, so I’m not confident we can entirely credit the current pandemic for the situation either. The constant restructuring and cuts to vital discipline and functional areas, as well as to our regions has been synonymous with the universities management style since I became a part of its community in 2012 as a student, 2014 as a casual employee and in 2018 when I returned in an ongoing role.

In 2020, when many international students never returned to our shores, staff took the hit for the University and voted to pass the Job Protection Framework (JPF). The University drowned out voices standing in opposition to the framework, indeed, it was deemed not to be a time for debate by those with power.

Predictably, despite implementing the JPF, management continued to act in bad faith: delaying major cuts and outsourcing of services by only a year, dismissing claims staff were being overworked, and proceeding with two major restructures during this time – resulting in great losses of staff and institutional-based knowledge.

It’s interesting that, through this time, the goodwill of the university community has never wavered – perhaps this is part of working in a ‘smaller’ institution, where each change impacts those who you know and care for, but perhaps it’s also knowing that the university may easily exercise restructuring powers to make sure those who don’t comply are the next to go, and so (perhaps wrongly) you pick up the slack. Through an industrial lens you might consider the unpaid overtime and working beyond the scope and classification of your role an issue of wage theft, when faced with this situation, it’s hard to understand where to draw the line.

Despite being a Union member over many years and restructures, I’ll admit that I had only called upon the NTEU in times of need – I considered my membership a form of insurance. I’d read the broadcasts from our Industrial Officer and found solidarity within them but I wasn’t particularly motivated to influence the situation or aware that I could. While so many colleagues around me had become disillusioned by their experiences with the Union Branch, largely (I believe) because of the NTEU being unable to prevent management from constant and unnecessary restructuring, and increasing precarity and unregulated workloads, I continued to peddle the ‘power in numbers’ MO. In August 2020, when I finally responded to a call from the Branch President for members to nominate themselves for a place on the Branch Committee, my understanding of how I could influence change around me shifted. I realised it’s not just about power in numbers, but also how those involved steer the ship and motivate change.

within our workplace. I am proud to say that last week I was able to move three (well overdue) motions, which the NTEU LTU membership base voted in support of. These motions included a motion of no confidence in the LTU Vice-Chancellor and the Senior Executive Group, a call for their resignation to be followed by a transparent and merit-based selection process, and a call for increased transparency and availability of information on remuneration of staff on Executive and Senior Management Classification (ESMC) contracts.

This transparency could and (I think) should be applied in all institutional contexts. LTU management cited keeping these salaries as is to ensure they are competitive enough to attract the best staff – this is despite our staff on Professional and Academic salaries being remunerated at one of the lower rates in the industry. While it might seem a little utopian, maybe next time we can call for ESMC salaries to be abolished completely.

It’s time for the industry to contemplate what defines ‘best’ in the context of our public institutions, think about who we want to attract to governance roles, and ensure that we do so in a way that prioritises community interests.

In this time of (ongoing) change its incumbent on us to make the call for the changes we want to see, recognise the experience and wisdom held by our community, and hold those governing our public institutions to account.

For those of you who support and encourage robust debate and considered decision-making, including which considers the university’s strategic direction, as well as the outcomes for employees, consider becoming more involved today – especially as we head toward the renewal of our respective Collective Agreements. ◆ Find out how to become a Delegate at nteu.org.au/delegates

By connecting with like-minded individuals and working together with the same, I’ve been able to make my concerns heard, hold management to account, and to call for productive changes

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◆ INFRASTRUCTURE Image: architectus.com.au

Why universities may come to regret the costs of City Deals and private sector ‘solutions’ Geoff Hanmer University of Adelaide

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INFRASTRUCTURE ◆

Universities have had few sources of capital funds since the Abbott Government sidelined the Education Investment Fund in 2014. The loss of an estimated $16 billion of income by 2023 due to the COVID-19 pandemic has simply added to this problem.

The City Deals process is one option, but for most universities it’s a poisoned chalice. A university will have to make a large financial contribution to the project and bears the risk of any cost overruns.

These deals were conceived in the salad days prior to 2020 and now look decidedly wilted.

How do these City Deals work?

The Perth City Deal, for example, includes a $695 million project for Edith Cowan University (ECU). With the Commonwealth providing $245 million and the WA State Government $150 million, ECU must stump up $300 million and hand over its perfectly serviceable Mount Lawley campus to the State Government.

The upshot is that the University will spend much more than would be needed to upgrade that campus for the dubious benefit of moving it 6 km to the CBD. The Commonwealth Department of Infrastructure describes City Deals as 'a genuine partnership between the three levels of government and the community to work towards a shared vision for productive and liveable cities'. The Perth deal is clearly a boost for the CBD and the Western Australian construction industry.

The benefits to teaching or research at ECU are less easy to identify.

The Darwin City Deal commits Charles Darwin University (CDU) to a new campus in the Darwin CBD. CDU teaches 70% of its student load online, but it will end up with four campuses in Darwin with a combined capacity of well over 10,000 students to teach the 4,000 enrolled for on-campus study. The prospect of more

students from China, which was a key component in planning for the project, has disappeared.

The deal required CDU to take out a $151.5 million loan from the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (NAIF).

While the interest rate is low, the capital component must be paid back.

Again, this project is a boost for the Northern Territory construction industry, but it may well reduce CDU’s capacity to spend on teaching and research. As a result of longstanding financial pressures, CDU has already sacked 77 staff and scrapped courses.

Another option is to spend nothing on infrastructure. The University of Adelaide has announced a complete halt to such spending for the foreseeable future. It still plans to attract 'top talent' with its ageing facilities. Quite how this will work is unexplained.

Developers are in it for the profits Other universities have struck deals with developers. These can range from selling university assets and leasing them back, or signing up to a long-term lease on new purpose-built space using a special purpose vehicle (SPV), doing developments using university land, or other financial wizardry.

Charter Hall, a real estate investment company, has signed up Western Sydney University to several deals with a combined value of around a billion dollars. A new $350 million campus is being built in the CBD of Bankstown.

Charter Hall has openly said its aim is to create a new asset class in university buildings and campuses. This approach effectively privatises campus assets, nearly all of which were paid for with public money and charitable donations.

Western Sydney University is selling a newly built neighbourhood shopping centre and an adjoining residential development site. This was developed with Charter Hall on land controlled by the university, which says: 'The Caddens Corner project is part of the Western Growth strategy, reshaping the University’s campus network, and allowing the University to maximise its investment in the core university activities of teaching, engagement and research.'

This is an interesting proposition, as teaching, engagement and research are all essentially operational, not capital, costs. In other words, the University is selling public assets to fund recurrent

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costs while planning to have 13 campuses to educate not many more students than Macquarie University, which has one.

In Melbourne, Swinburne University has put a seven-storey office building on Flinders Lane back on the market just one year after buying it for $44 million.

In June, RMIT University in Melbourne brought forward plans to offload a 14-storey strata property on Bourke Street for more than $120 million and lease it back for five years.

A good time to borrow and build Certainly, getting a developer to build a facility and lease it back to the university will reduce the need for capital. For similar reasons, a low-income household might choose a rental purchase arrangement to get a flat-screen TV. But like any rental purchase agreement, the shortterm benefits pale in comparison to the long-term costs.

And universities are certainly about the long term. Four universities in Australia are more than 125 years old and they are youngsters compared to Harvard (385), Leiden (436), Oxford (925) or Bologna (933).

Another option for universities is to borrow money from a bank. If the universities can’t afford to do that, then they can’t afford to get developers to borrow money on their behalf and build them buildings while the developers also make a profit. There is no secret sauce and definitely no magic pudding.

Borrowing to fund the replacement or refurbishment of buildings at the end of their economic life is financially prudent providing benefits outweigh costs. University leaders might need to learn how to resist the temptation to make every building an 'icon', but capital investments to support teaching and research are rational and responsible. With interest rates as low as they will ever be and building costs a long way below the peak of the next cycle, now is an ideal time to build. ◆ Geoff Hanmer is an Adjunct Professor of Architecture at the University of Adelaide, an Honorary Professional Fellow at UTS and is the Managing Director of ARINA, an architectural consultancy. He is an architect and a writer on construction history.

This article first published in The Conversation, 9 September 2021

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◆ EDUCATION Image: Relativity (MC Escher)

Pandemic experiences of teaching academics are critically important as universities move towards their ‘new normal’ Elisa Bone, University of Melbourne

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EDUCATION ◆

As our vaccination rates in Australia reach levels sufficient to begin a slow reopening of businesses and borders, the higher education sector too is readying itself to emerge from the most intense upheaval of the century. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a strong disruptive impact on Australian universities, resulting in a range of concerns from the sector, around mass job losses, the decrease in international students, and the drop in student satisfaction owing to the challenges of keeping students engaged online.

Despite these negative impacts, many commentators have remarked that this time of intense disruption has been a catalyst for the transformation of the sector.

As universities prepare to enter a new phase, it is important to understand the rationale behind those predictions and to explore on-the-ground changes that might represent such a transformation.

Universities are complex We know that universities are complex organisations, with multiple faculties, departments and units that operate according to different priorities and processes and are often moving in different directions from different starting points.

We also know that trying to achieve organisation-wide change in universities is difficult given these multiple perspectives, and may be particularly difficult – and possibly met with resistance – when enacted from a top-down or management-directed approach.

However, if we apply some systems thinking to the ways in which we describe change processes, we can start to see how these changes might be enacted.

Insights from this work will help us understand how university teaching and learning has changed and the potential for this change to be sustainable. They will also help further articulate the practices and experiences of teaching academics and highlight how they might be better supported as universities head out of crisis mode and into what some have called a ‘new normal’.

How are academics experiencing the COVID-19 disruption?

Our project examines the ways in which teaching academics approach their teaching and respond to the challenges of COVID-19. A large body of evidence from educational research shows clear relationships between the ways in which teachers experience their working environment and the ways in which they approach their teaching, with the ways in which students approach their learning, and their eventual learning outcomes (see Fig. 1).

This model provides an informative framework for exploring how academics are experiencing the COVID-19 disruption.

Our expectation was that COVID-19 would affect all aspects of academics’ teaching experiences. But we are especially interested in how these effects varied across academics’ experiences, and their potential to be retained over the longer term.

We interviewed a selected cohort of teaching academics already involved in curriculum projects at our University, to further explore their experiences during the initial crisis of 2020 and into early 2021.

These are academics who were already implementing creative changes to their curriculum, who were well-versed in reflective practice, and who were, in many cases, at the forefront of guiding their courses and students through the disruption of the pandemic. continued overpage...

For example, in complex systems, changes to the overall state of that system, what might be described as transformative change, is often preceded by disruption that destabilises the system. As a strong disruptive force that is external to the university system, COVID-19 has the potential to bring about the transformative change to which the system might otherwise be resistant.

In order to better understand the effects of the external disruption of COVID-19 on university teaching and learning, our research seeks to define both the magnitude of the changes that our academics have managed to achieve across our University, but also how these academics have experienced this disruptive phase.

Figure 1: Relational 3P (presage-process-product) teaching-learning model.

Source: Adapted from Trigwell et al., 1999, p. 60): Trigwell K., Prosser M. (2020) Exploring Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. In: Exploring University Teaching and Learning. Palgrave Pivot.

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◆ EDUCATION

Pandemic experiences of teaching academics are critically important as universities move towards their ‘new normal’ continued...

Teaching approaches in a crisis Early findings from our research emphasise three main areas in which the pandemic has impacted on teaching academics’ experiences: in their (1) approaches to teaching; (2) perceptions of support from peers, departments or the university, and (3) perceptions of their own role, their job security, and their identity as academics.

Participants’ teaching approaches were often necessarily focused on overcoming the challenges of the demands of technology and on their own performances as teachers.

Many also expressed concerns for their students’ learning and wellbeing and the challenge of engaging and supporting students in a format that was often unfamiliar.

Challenges, but also opportunities Although participants showed a range of responses to the increased challenges of the pandemic, a consistent impact was a significant increase in their workload as they moved their teaching online. Others reported reduced resources available to their subjects, including a reduction in tutors. Driven by the significant job losses in casual and sessional staff, this resulted in the remaining academic staff having to take on more teaching.

The precarity of academic work also affected participants themselves, with many experiencing delays in contracts or uncertainties as to whether their contracts would be renewed.

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Whilst these experiences were challenging and distressing, many participants reported the emergence of new opportunities in their teaching, including an increased appreciation for their skills.

academic staff to provide engaging and supportive learning experiences for their students – in the face of increasing workloads, job insecurity and personal pressures – have been immense.

For example, those who were already well-versed in designing and teaching online curriculum found they were called upon by colleagues to provide advice and assistance, which for some led to new roles and responsibilities. Others reported the formation of peer learning communities during the pandemic, which provided key sources of support.

Although the pandemic may have provided some opportunities for teaching innovation , these innovations have not been universal and our research findings suggest they cannot be achieved without a supportive academic environment.

These latter findings – of the emergence of supportive learning communities from the pressures of an external disruption – are in line with those predicted from complexity thinking. They also highlight the need for universities to recognise the work that teaching academics are doing on the ground – right now – to improve not only the learning experiences of their students, but the experiences of their peers.

Any definition of a ‘new normal’ for universities’ teaching and learning practices therefore needs to incorporate support for these activities and an understanding of the range of challenges that teaching academics face.

The next phase The disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically changed the academic environment, necessitated the adoption of new and often unfamiliar teaching practices, and profoundly impacted academics’ wellbeing . The efforts of

ADVOCATE VOL. 28 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2021

As universities plan to rebound from the crisis phase of the pandemic and enter a new, rebuilding phase, universities need to understand that the effects on academics may be diverse, reflecting the divergent experiences and perceptions of academics across the complexity of the university. They also need to recognise and embrace the ground-up formation of communities of practice amongst academics. Changes emanating from these communities may well be more informative for longer-term curriculum transformation, and more sustainable than changes initiated from the top down.

Campuses are planning to welcome students back on campus, and plans are afoot to bring international students back to our shores. How the sector rebounds from the upheavals of 2020 and 2021 will depend in part on how those on the ground respond, and how they are supported by their institutions. ◆ Dr Elisa K Bone is a Senior Lecturer in Higher Education at the Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education, the University of Melbourne

INTERNATIONAL ◆

NZ tertiary institutions given 10 years to end disparity in minority pass rate Aotearoa/New Zealand's Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) has given universities, polytechnics and other tertiary institutions 10 years to end persistent disparities between the pass rates of Māori and Pacific students and those of others.

It's the third time in the past decade the Commission has set a deadline for achieving parity.

In 2012 the Commission wanted to eradicate disparities in polytechnics by 2015 and in universities by 2018. But that didn't happen. In 2018-19 the Commission aimed to achieve parity within five years and fined institutions that failed to improve. But it quietly dropped that deadline and last year introduced the 10year target.

TEC Deputy Chief Executive, Learner Success Ōritetanga Directorate, Paora Ammunson, said past attempts at tackling the disparities had failed because they were based on isolated interventions.

'One of the frustrations I guess is that our approach to equity has tended to be really well-intentioned but quite bespoke and disconnected piecemeal interventions and we're at a stage in the TEC now where we realise that's not going to close the gap, that's not going to serve the learners well that we want to succeed,' he said.

Ammunson said the Commission had been trialling a different approach requiring large-scale whole-of-institution changes.

'The solution is going to be about a whole-of-ecosystem approach in those institutions towards tackling the problem of attrition, really taking a holistic approach to that. Using your data intelligence, using your guidance systems, making sure that your leaders are setting the direction, making sure you're doing it in partnership with the community groups and organisations that are important in your context,' he said.

He said the Commission was confident its approach would work.

'We've been testing this model with tertiary partners. It will require us to work with them and it will require us to have sometimes hard conversations about parts of their delivery that aren't achieving what they and the TEC would be expecting.'

Last year universities had a qualification completion rate of 52 per cent and course completion rate of 82 per cent for Māori students. For Pacific students the figures were 48 and 75 per cent, while for non-Māori and non-Pacific students the figures were 66 and 90 per cent.

In polytechnics Māori students had a 48 per cent qualification completion rate and 70 per cent course completion rate. For Pacific students the rates were 46 and 71 per cent, and for non-Māori and nonPacific students the figures were 57 and 84 per cent.

The Tauira Pasifika National President of the Union of Students' Associations, Jaistone Finau, said the time was right to tackle the disparities.

He said tertiary institutions were taking student wellbeing more seriously and were also moving to introduce a new code for pastoral care.

Finau said institutions should treat students as partners and use their insights to improve completion and retention rates.

The organisation's other tumuaki takirua, Renāta White, said if the Commission used financial penalties against institutions that failed to make progress, it should require the institutions to spend the money on improvements.

'I would rather the funds go back into supporting the students. So if there is a fine they are fined needing to employ maybe more support and mental health or more support and peer mentorship rather than the funds going back to government,' he said.

Huhāna Wātene from the Tertiary Education Union said universities and polytechnics could make a big difference for Māori students by hiring more Māori academics and tutors.

She said students also needed more culturally-appropriate support.

Te Mana Akonga tumukai takirua (co-president of the Māori students' association), Nkhaya Paulsen-More, said universities had not been doing enough to help Māori students achieve.

'In institutes whether it be in schools, polytechnics, kohanga, kura, it's the services that are wrapped round them [students] that really assist and allow them to flourish. If you put any students, not just Māori and Pasifika, in that kind of environment they can't do anything but do well,' she said.

'University strategies seem to be aligning with Tiriti-led policies but on the ground we're still getting complaints from students that they don't see much of a change,' she said.

'We know for a fact that Māori students do exceedingly well when they have support services around them or people who value and appreciate their cultural aspirations and the tikanga.'

'Things like "My lecturer doesn't understand me because I'm Māori and they don't respect the fact that I'm not the person to go to automatically if they don't understand anything that's Māori", so being referred to as the cultural trainer in formal settings or utilising their knowledge without reimbursing them for that knowledge.'

Wātene said the Commission should use incentives rather than penalties to encourage change. ◆

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John Gerritsen, Radio New Zealand This article originally published by RNZ, 12 October 2021.

Image: University of Otago

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◆ MY UNION

Statement on COVID-safe workplaces While exceptions will need to be made for those who cannot be vaccinated for health reasons or other legally recognised exemptions, NTEU believes all people who set foot on a campus should be vaccinated.

This includes students, the workforce and others. Our collective health and safety is best achieved by a collective response.

NTEU believes the requirements for vaccination should be determined by public health orders, not individual employers. For universities to reopen safely, we need a national plan.

NTEU calls on the Federal Education Minister to immediately convene a group representing unions, university management, peak student organisations and the State, Territory and Federal governments supported by expert input from medical and public health officials. This group should be tasked with expeditiously drafting a nationally consistent reopening plan for the nation’s universities.

NTEU supports expert health advice about the vital importance of vaccination as the most effective pathway to overcome the pandemic. Being vaccinated is the best way for us to save lives and protect our society and economy.

We encourage all staff in higher education to follow the health advice, speak to a doctor, and get vaccinated as soon as possible, where possible.

Individual employers should: • Encourage staff and students to receive vaccination as there is clear evidence that persuasion is more effective than coercion.

Vaccine hesitant staff should be supported and encouraged to persuade them of the benefits of vaccination.

• Provide a safe workplace. They should enthusiastically embrace public health advice and work proactively in consul-

tation with staff and their unions to minimise the threat of COVID. At a minimum this requires an audit of all workplaces for appropriate ventilation, capacity for social distancing, adherence to mask and sanitation requirements, and review use of open plan offices and hot-desk workstations.

• Encourage and facilitate working from home for those employees with medical conditions that render them unable to be vaccinated and/or more susceptible to COVID, and those employees who have caring responsibilities or co-habit with those who are similarly at risk.

• Take all reasonable measures to ensure that the employment rights of those who are unable to be vaccinated are protected.

Any NTEU member who believes their employment rights are jeopardised by the requirement to be vaccinated should contact the Union for advice.

• Provide paid vaccination, testing, isolation and quarantine leave for all staff, particularly casuals, who may not have paid sick leave.

The NTEU will not support any employer actions that do not involve genuine consultation with the Union.

On present settings we are likely to have ad hoc arrangements determined by local university managers. A situation where some universities introduce a vaccination mandate and others don’t is inequitable, unwise, unsafe, and confusing.

NTEU will also pursue a consensus statement with Universities Australia that explicitly recognises the proven link between public health and economic security. ◆

Vale Steve Mackey NTEU is terribly sad to learn of the sudden passing of former Deakin Branch President and NTEU Life Member, Steve Mackey. Steve died of a heart-attack at his Koroit home in July.

Steve is remembered by his NTEU comrades for his principles and tenacity in standing up for staff. 'He threw his heart and soul into representing staff on every occasion he could. Quite often to the ire of vice-chancellors,' said Dr Michael Callaghan, Deakin NTEU Vice President (Academic).

Those who knew him will remember Steve’s sharp intellect, his sense of humour and his distinctive loud laugh! His contributions on the floor of National Council were always entertaining, ensuring to include a joke or an anecdote. He was a fun raconteur.

Steve was also very active in his local community. Moyne Shire Councillors paid tribute to him during their July meeting.

Steve is survived by his wife, Lorraine Mielnik, who has fond memories of his union activism, 'He had a good sense of fairness for people; that if you put in the effort you should get rewarded. He was very vocal in the Union and he was on academic board. I remember standing at the front of the campus on a picket line, he would gather everyone and say "We are going to do this".’ ◆

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ADVOCATE VOL. 28 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2021

MY UNION ◆

National Council 2021 COVID-19 restrictions have meant that both last year’s and this year’s National Council meetings were moved to being fully online. This year's Council has been separated into two meetings, one held on 1 October and the second to be held on 3-4 December.

NTEU’s governing National Council normally meets in early October every year, with over 120 delegates from every Branch coming to Melbourne for the three day meeting. With COVID restrictions during the last Melbourne lockdown applying at the time when Council would normally occur, it was impossible for staff to provide the in-person administrative support to the National Officers that is necessary to ensure a smooth running of all of Council’s business and operations, even if conducted fully online.

Therefore, National Executive decided that a 2 hour online session of Council would be held on 1 October to consider the business necessary under the NTEU Rules, specifically the presentation of the financial statements and the 2021/22 Budget.

National Councillors also briefly discussed growth strategies as part of the October meeting. This was followed by an online forum around a presentation

by Jim Stanford, Director of the Centre for Future Work, on the research paper An Avoidable Catastrophe – the Pandemic and Job Losses in Higher Education and their Consequences, recently prepared for NTEU. The rest of National Council business, including the debates and discussions on resolutions around NTEU policies, priorities and actions, as well as considering any rule changes, is scheduled for a special online meeting on 3–4 December. ◆ Right: National Council zoom meeting on 1 October.

Democracy, Social Justice and the Role of Trade Unions Democracy, Social Justice and the Role of Trade Unions: We the Working People is a new book edited by Caroline Kelly & JooCheong Tham.

Trade unions worldwide face a powerful paradox at this critical juncture: collective organisations for workers are urgently needed and yet there are serious pressures undercutting the legitimate role of trade unions. The aim of this book is to examine how trade unions can effectively navigate this deeply contradictory challenge. It is underpinned by the conviction that trade unions are – and should be – vital institutions for democracy and social justice.

Written by leading scholars in industrial relations and labour law as well as those in political philosophy and political science, the collection tackles a range of pressing topics for trade unions including: the climate crisis; the COVID-19 pandemic; economic democracy; democracy within trade unions; precarious work; and election campaigns. ◆

Anthem Press is offering a generous 20% discount to NTEU members who purchase the book via their website, using the discount code CKEL20 www.anthempress.com/democracy-social-justice-and-the-role-of-trade-unions Offer valid from 1 November 2021 to 31 January 2022

ADVOCATE VOL. 28 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2021

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◆ MY UNION

The 10 amazing members nominated for NTEU Life Membership in 2021 Every year at National Council, NTEU Branches and Divisions nominate incredible and hard-working members to the honour of NTEU Life Membership.

With this year's National Council once again taking place online (on 3–4 December), we have prepared these graphics containing brief excerpts from each nomination to display throughout online Council.

To read the full certifications for all our 2021 Life Memberships, visit nteu.org.au/life_members. ◆

E MEMBER

E MEMBER

LIF

LIF

Michael Thomson

Terry Mason

USyd & NSW Division

A&TSIPC

Michael Thomson made an enormous contribution to the NTEU from the time he joined in 1998, until he completed his term as NTEU NSW Division Secretary in May this year. His influence upon the trajectory and character of the NTEU is surpassed by few others.

Michael served with distinction for 12 years as President of the University of Sydney Branch. His resolve, toughness and calmness under pressure gave others confidence.

Michael was elected NSW Division Secretary in 2016. He oversaw a period of significant growth in Union membership in the NSW Division, with large spikes in membership around industrial action and protected action ballots, for which Michael strongly advocated.

Terry is a proud Awabakal man from Newcastle NSW. Terry joined the NTEU in 1999 shortly after commencing work, and was very active at two Branches: UWS and Deakin.

Terry also served on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Policy Committee (A&TSIPC) for 17 years (2004 to 2021), was Deputy Chair for 3 years and Chair for 10 years.

His contribution to this Union at a Branch, Division and national level cannot be understated.

Terry’s impact on the NTEU has been profound. He cemented the influence of the A&TSIPC on the fabric of the NTEU ensuring that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander business is core Union business.

Sometimes irascible, stubborn when necessary, and periodically charming, Terry was a shrewd and effective voice for the NTEU mob.

PRESENTED AT NTEU NATIONAL COUNCIL, OCTOBER 2021

PRESENTED AT NTEU NATIONAL COUNCIL, OCTOBER 2021

E MEMBER

E MEMBER

LIF

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LIF

Philippa Wells

Wayne Reynolds

UB/FedUni

Newcastle

During Philippa’s term as Branch President, she oversaw Bargaining in 2013-15, during the complex merger of the University of Ballarat and Monash.

In 2014 she also had to effectively run the Branch, alongside the VP (Academic), after the tragic death of the Branch Industrial Organiser, Athan McCaw, including advocating for staff, meeting with management and dealing with disputes, while also serving as Division President.

Newcastle Branch recognises the distinguished service of Wayne Reynolds, former Newcastle Branch President, to the NTEU. We note Wayne’s outstanding contributions through enterprise bargaining and approaches to developing academic workloads.

Of note is Wayne’s unwavering advocacy for NTEU members and his role in saving academic jobs during the 1996-2006 restructures at UON.

PRESENTED AT NTEU NATIONAL COUNCIL, OCTOBER 2021

PRESENTED AT NTEU NATIONAL COUNCIL, OCTOBER 2021

ADVOCATE VOL. 28 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2021

MY UNION ◆

E MEMBER

E MEMBER

LIF

LIF

Kim Wilson

Jennifer Klingler

USyd

Monash

Kim’s attention to detail and meticulous note taking made her a formidable force. The organisational knowledge gave her strength in the face of management attacks.

She was more knowledgeable than any manager about workplace rights, enterprise agreements and what could be achieved when workers were given trust and freedom to perform their roles.

Jenny has been a fierce defender of higher education and workers’ rights as a delegate and elected representative.

Jenny assisted many members as a support person and representative and was able to achieve good outcomes and provide comfort to them during difficult times. She helped coordinate the industrial action for Library members, encouraging members to participate and supporting them when they did.

PRESENTED AT NTEU NATIONAL COUNCIL, OCTOBER 2021

PRESENTED AT NTEU NATIONAL COUNCIL, OCTOBER 2021

E MEMBER

E MEMBER

LIF

LIF

Mary Cleary

Steve Shanahan

Monash

NT Division

Mary has been a fierce defender of higher education and workers’ rights as a delegate and elected representative. Mary and Jennifer Klingler co-created the Library delegates network and set up the professional staff workload case committee.

The Monash University Branch wish to acknowledge not only her service, but the enduring impact Mary has had in keeping members optimistic and the Branch united during difficult times. Her legacy is one of the reasons the Branch has now been able to grow in strength and determination.

In recognition of his significant role in local amalgamation of UACA and FAUSA, and for his active role for more than a decade from the earliest NTEU days, his continuing support since, and his contribution to the wider trade union movement, we wish to nominate Stephen Shanahan for life membership of NTEU. Stephen Shanahan is widely respected and acknowledged as a strong advocate for education policy across the broader trade union movement in the NT.

PRESENTED AT NTEU NATIONAL COUNCIL, OCTOBER 2021

PRESENTED AT NTEU NATIONAL COUNCIL, OCTOBER 2021

E MEMBER

E MEMBER

LIF

LIF

Mark Schier

Tim Moore

Swinburne

Swinburne

In his own words, Mark has been ‘a deliberate unionist and accidental leader’ and his work has made a major positive difference to his members at Swinburne University.

Mark has also played an important role beyond Swinburne, with terms as Victorian Division Vice President and President and this work was especially difficult during the 2020 crisis.

Tim led the campaign to prevent the privatisation of Language and Academic Support at Swinburne (2012-2013), for which he was targeted as a troublemaker, and campaigned heavily to organise a no vote against the proposed non-union Enterprise Agreement (2015).

Tim has conducted important research and analysis for the Union around university management and governance issues.

PRESENTED AT NTEU NATIONAL COUNCIL, OCTOBER 2021

PRESENTED AT NTEU NATIONAL COUNCIL, OCTOBER 2021

ADVOCATE VOL. 28 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2021

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◆ MY UNION

Kylie Wrigley wins Carolyn Allport scholarship Kylie Wrigley is the 2021 recipient of the Carolyn Allport Scholarship, for postgraduate work in feminist studies. Kylie is undertaking a PhD at Edith Cowan University (ECU).

Kylie’s project is informed Feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR) and her study entails a research collaboration with the Climate Justice Union of Western Australia. The study aims to create community-led and place-based knowledge and action to develop scalable, replicable and effective actions for climate justice. By working with the Climate Justice Union of Western Australia the study specifically aims to develop and test effective community organising strategies.

The Climate Justice Union of Western Australia is a new social movement organisation that aims to build grassroots power to accelerate a fair and just transition that draws down emissions and prepares for climate change in a way that leaves no one behind. The research questions are practical and action-oriented in that they examine how this aim is being (or can be) achieved.

Kylie has extensive industry experience in community-organising for climate justice. 'I had worked with people from Climate Justice Union of Western Australia before and this is why I wanted to collaborate with them when they proposed the research project with ECU', says Kylie. This collaboration can respond to an urgent need for more action-oriented research in response to climate change. The study is community-focused, collaborative, and will directly inform and collectives of people advocating for climate justice.

Through her studies at the University of Western Australia and her work for a number of NGOs on Climate Justice, Kylie saw that 'existing climate policy and governance in Western Australia and in Australia is top-down, patriarchal, colonial, capitalistic and techno-optimistic. It is inadequate as it does not offer deep or genuine solutions or justice to the climate crisis.' Her concern is that (Western) Australian climate policy and movements risk reproducing, for example, gender, income and racial inequalities and do not sufficiently build resilience in local communities.

Kylie grew up in post-apartheid southern Africa before emigrating to Australia with her family when she was 18 years old. 'When I moved here, I quickly learned how Aboriginal people were marginalised and prevented from managing their own country', says Kylie, 'and I have learnt that climate change and colonisation are linked and there can be no Climate Justice without leadership of and justice for Indigenous people and those who are disenfranchised in a patriarchal, colonial and neoliberal system'.

Kylie thus aims to centre voices of Noongar and Aboriginal people in her thinking and research, such as Ellen van Neerven, award-winning Aboriginal author, editor and educator of Mununjali (Yugambeh language group) and Dutch heritage

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who says, 'if Australia does respond to climate change but does so without seeking the input of its Indigenous people, this response will be perpetuating this country’s colonial history.'

Kylie is also affiliated with ECU's strategic research Centre for People Place and Planet. She works as a research assistant to an ECU researcher working on several feminist and decolonial research projects and papers. ◆ Helena Spyrou, Union Education Officer nteu.org.au/myunion/scholarships/carolyn_allport

Dr Carolyn Allport was NTEU National President from 1994 to 2010, becoming a lobbyist at both the national and international levels.

Described as a ‘warrior for women’, Carolyn advocated for women’s rights to employment equity.

Influential in the struggle for paid parental leave, she established NTEU as the setter of high benchmarks for other unions and employers to match. Carolyn is also recognised as an advocate for Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander education, employment and social justice. She was a driving force to ensure that A&TSI business is core NTEU business.

Carolyn worked as an academic for over 20 years at Macquarie University in economic history, urban politics, public housing and women’s history. Carolyn sadly passed away in 2017.

NTEU established the scholarship in 2014 in recognition of Dr Carolyn Allport. The scholarship is available to a person undertaking postgraduate feminist studies, by research, in any discipline. It pays $5000 per year for a maximum of three years.

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MY UNION ◆

Joan Hardy scholarship awarded to Geraldine Fela Geraldine Fela is the 2021 recipient of the Joan Hardy Scholarship for postgraduate nursing research, for her study, which draws on oral testimony and archival research to examine the response of nurses in Australia to the HIV and AIDS virus between 1983 and 1996, 1983 being the first recorded AIDS related death in Australia and 1996 the introduction of effective treatment, Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy (HAART).

Geraldine also works as a research assistant simultaneously holding down four casual jobs across three universities (Monash University, Australian Catholic University and Melbourne University). She is an active NTEU delegate and Branch Committee member at the University of Melbourne.

Her research is part of her work towards a PhD through Monash University.

Geraldine has collected oral testimony from twenty-seven nurses representing each state and territory in Australia, rural and urban areas and a variety of clinical settings – wards, clinics and community nursing.

'When I began looking into the 1980s and HIV/AIDS, I noticed a huge gap in the available research and was struck by how little history had been documented from the point of view of nurses,' says Geraldine.

Revisiting this earlier public health crisis is highly relevant in the current pandemic, as both share socioeconomic complexities and no cure in sight. Critical to this study also, is the focus on the distinctive role of nurses who were at the frontline of clinical care, a role that has been neglected in previous histories that have focused on doctors, researchers and patients. Moreover, the urgency of this study is paramount as most of those nurses who were working with HIV/ AIDS patients at the time are nearing retirement.

'In the 1980s', says Geraldine, 'the nursing profession was predominantly female and working class. For many nurses, it was the first time they met someone who was gay. So, they had to deal with their own interpersonal and political dynamics not just with a gay person who was dying but dying of a disease that at that time was highly stigmatised.' There were also a lot of gay men in the profession, they faced a particular challenge as their personal and professional lives collided and they often found themselves caring for their friends and partners.

In her research, Geraldine also highlights the pivotal role the nurses union played at the time in responding to the crisis 'because the union was advocating for a new public health approach that was in opposition to some of the draconian

approaches of doctors and other medical experts of the time'. This advocacy was about empowering communities with knowledge about HIV/AIDS how it is contracted, and universal precautions rather than just testing and went a long way to getting rid of the stigma associated with people who were HIV positive and who had AIDS. At the time, nurses offered amazing support. For example, touch was identified as important to patients especially when the disease was so stigmatised. 'A community nurse I interviewed', says Geraldine, 'decided to learn massage so she could offer relief to patients at home.'

Offering conversation was another way of developing an understanding of what patients were going through. Nurses learned that in some instances, family members refused the patient’s partner from visiting. Consequently, nurses enforced different visiting times so that family could visit at one time and the partner at another time. ◆ Helena Spyrou, Union Education Officer nteu.org.au/myunion/scholarships/joan_hardy

Joan Hardy was active in higher education unionism for over 30 years and was the first woman President of UACA (one of the predecessors of NTEU). Joan was a tireless advocate for union amalgamation and was a key negotiator in the formation of NTEU, becoming Vice- President when the Union was formed in 1993.

This $5000 scholarship, established by NTEU in memory of Joan Hardy who died in 2003, is available to a student currently enrolled in an academic award of an Australian public university and undertaking postgraduate study of nurses, nursing culture or practices, or historical aspects of nursing as a lay or professional practice and expects to submit the thesis within one year of being awarded the Scholarship.

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◆ MY UNION

New NTEU staff

to UWA Branch. Beth Cole will be allocated to Curtin Branch (she is currently on Parental Leave returning in mid-2022 – Fi Whittles is currently on a fixed-term contract until mid-2022 to cover Beth). ◆

Anthony Hack

Please welcome new staff in our offices.

Monique Blasiak ACT Division Organiser Monique started with the NTEU in January 2021. In October she was appointed to an ongoing position.

Before joining the NTEU, Monique worked as a political adviser for 5 years in the ACT Government. Throughout this time, she worked on various elections as a Campaign Manager and National Field Organiser. Monique has been working to apply her political and grassroots organising experience to ensure the best outcomes for ACT members.

Christine Steven-Rowe NT Division Organiser Christine has been a union organiser for 4 years prior to coming to the NTEU to be the NT Division Organiser.

Originally born in Southern California, USA, she has experienced some of the worst working conditions and lack of worker rights. Christine wants to continue sharing these experiences and the vital importance of having a union, and having a say in the workplace.

Qld Division Industrial Officer Anthony is a Jaadwa man and is currently living on Yugambeh Country. Having commenced as an Industrial Officer with the NTEU in August, he brings a wealth of experience gained from working with other unions for the last 10 years.

NATIONAL OFFICE STAFF Director (Industrial & Legal) Wayne Cupido Senior Legal Officer Kelly Thomas National Industrial Officer (Research & Projects)

Ken McAlpine National Industrial Officer Campbell Smith Industrial Support Officer Renee Veal

Most recently Anthony worked with the Manufacturing Division of the CFMEU, and before that, with MEAA, CPSU and ACTU. Anthony also worked at Curtin University shortly before taking up his first union role with the CPSU in 2011.

Director (Policy & Research) Policy & Research Officers

Terri MacDonald Kieran McCarron Adam Frogley Celeste Liddle

Staff appointments

National A&TSI Director National A&TSI Organiser

Longtime employees Kevin Poynter (Charles Sturt University) and Angela Scheers (Queensland Division) have left the Union in the last few months. We wish them both the best!

Director (Campaigning & Organising) Dom Rowe National Organiser (Media & Engagement)

Michael Evans National Organiser (Publications) Paul Clifton Communications Organiser (Digital) Jake Wishart Education & Training Organiser Helena Spyrou

In Victoria, Trevor Miller, Mary Doyle and Aimee Hulbert are now at Monash Branch; Jesse Page and Frank Gafa are based at Deakin Branch.

Executive Manager Peter Summers National Membership Officer Melinda Valsorda ICT Network Engineer Tam Vuong Database Programmer/Data Analyst Uffan Saeed Payroll Administrator/HR Assistant Jo Riley Manager, Office of General Secretary & President

Anastasia Kotaidis Executive Officer (Meetings & Events)

Tracey Coster Admin Officer (Membership & Campaigns)

Julie Ann Veal Receptionist & Admin Support Leanne Foote

Simon Dougherty has moved to the full-time ACT Division Organiser position vacated by Lachlan Clohesy who has moved into the Division Secretary role.

Stevie Howson has taken on the CSU Organiser position.

Acting Finance Manager Glenn Osmand Senior Finance Officer Gracia Ho Finance Officers Alex Ghvaladze, Daphne Zhang,

Tamara Labadze, Jay Premkumar

In WA, Henry Booth is allocated to ECU Branch, Eileen Glynn is allocated to Murdoch Branch, James Higgins is allocated

Please update your NTEU membership details if:

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Required if your home is your nominated contact address.

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Update online at

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Transfer of membership between institutions is not automatic.

Please notify us to ensure you are paying the correct fees.

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national @nteu.org.au

If your payroll deductions stop without your authority, please urgently contact your institution’s Payroll Department

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ADVOCATE VOL. 28 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2021

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Trusted by over 360,000 teachers, education staff and their families across Australia.

Andrew, Teachers Health member

We’re for teachers, not for profit.

Visit teachershealth.com.au Eligibility criteria and conditions apply. Teachers Federation Health Ltd ABN 86 097 030 414 trading as Teachers Health.

A Registered Private Health Insurer. THF-NTEU-11/21