NTEU focus on casual workers

from Advocate, Nov 2021

Joan Hardy scholarship awarded to Geraldine Fela

Karen Douglas, RMIT University

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 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 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!