Reflections on leaving lockdown and the road ahead

Gabe Gooding, National Assistant Secretary

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 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 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