Advocate, March 2022

Advocate VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022 ◆ ISSN 1329-7295

ly e f a s s u p m a c o t Returning _____

Senate Inquiry into Job Security

Flood disaster relief for members in Qld & NSW

Senate Inquiry into Unlawful Underpayment

ARC College of Experts resignations

NTEU members’ statements to the Inquiries

Religious Discrimination Bill

Leaving Academia: The harm & heartbreak of precarity Campaign against illegal piece-rates at La Trobe

Federal Budget submission Standing up for international students Raewyn Connell on Remaking universities

Pandemic adversely affects Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander employment Sean Turnell’s Myanmar imprisonment Exodus hits Hong Kong universities Massive teacher strikes in Iran UK universities at breaking point

visit our new website at

aur.nteu.org.au

Since 1958, the Australian Universities’ Review has been encouraging debate and discussion about issues in higher education and its contribution to Australian public life.

Want to receive your own copy of Australian Universities’ Review?

AUR is published by the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) twice a year.

NTEU members are entitled to a free subscription.

However, this subscription is on an opt-in basis, so you need to let us know. If you are an NTEU member and would like to receive your own copy of AUR, send us an email aur@nteu.org.au.

If you would like to become an NTEU member, contact your local Branch office, or join online at nteu.org.au/join.

aur.nteu.org.au

In this edition 2

4

Political interference threatens the future of Australian research

UNLAWFUL UNDERPAYMENT

Dr Alison Barnes, National President

25 Shining a spotlight on unlawful underpayment

Your union has a big 2022 ahead Matthew McGowan, General Secretary

5

Credit: Erika8213/123rf

A whole new NTEU experience is coming Gabe Gooding, National Assistant Secretary

NEWS 6

Supporting our members in crisis

8

Fighting illegal piece-rates at La Trobe

9

Envoy urged to secure Sean Turnell's release from Myanmar imprisonment

10 'Class in Australia' book launch 11 NTEU stands against the Coalition's Religious Discrimination Bill 12 NTEU pushes forward with campaign to fix university funding 13 ARC loses $1.47b 14 NTEU stands up for international students on new bill WERTE! 15 Pandemic adversely affects Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander employment The impacts of the pandemic on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment across the sector has been relatively unclear. Recently, though, the data universities report to the Government have been released and analysis of this has painted a distressing picture.

INSECURE WORK 17 Leaving academia: The harm and heartbreak of precarity When the permanent position created around her teaching and research – the job that would have provided security at the end of a 5 year contract – went to someone else, Dr Una McIlvenna's world caved in.

20 Insecure work & the war on wages: a devastating double As we approach the next federal election, you’ll hear a lot about the war on wages taking place in Australia.

21 In their own words...

Statements to the Senate Inquiry into Job Security from NTEU members: Dr James Stratford, Paul Morris, Dr Liz Adamczyk, Nick Robinson, Dr Sharon Cooper and Dr Chloe Killen.

NTEU appeared before the Senate Committee investigating Unlawful Underpayment of Employees' Remuneration to update it on recent developments around industry-wide repayments, and the impact of COVID.

9

26 In their own words...

Statements to the Senate Committee from NTEU members David Harris and 'Witness 2'.

WORKPLACE HEALTH & SAFETY 28 Return to work, safely The headlong rush to return ‘vibrancy’ to campuses has had a welcome side effect – NTEU members are flexing their WHS muscles for safe and healthy work.

11

29 Monash issued with Provisional Improvement Notice RESEARCH 30 Why we resigned from the ARC College of Experts after Minister vetoed research grants Aiden Sims and Andrew Francis resigned from the Australian Research Council’s (ARC) highly respected College of Experts in protest at the Minister for Education's rejection of grant funding recommendations.

17

FUTURE OF UNIVERSITIES 32 Remaking universities: Notes from the sidelines of catastrophe Raewyn Connell asks: Can we grieve not for a person but for an institution? Should we be angry over possibilities destroyed, young talents denied a chance to flourish? Is there any point in lamenting greed, short-sightedness, the brutality of power?

25

INTERNATIONAL 36 Exodus hits Hong Kong universities as professors and students leave Around 290 academic staff left Hong Kong's 8 public universities in the past year, far higher than the numbers reaching retirement age.

38 Massive teacher strikes rock Iranian dictatorship On Saturday 19 February 2022, the first day of the working week in Iran, thousands of Iranian teachers staged their eighth round of nationwide protests since October 2021, in more than 100 cities and towns.

28

40 UK universities at breaking point University leaders have 'failed staff and students', the University & Colleges Union (UCU) declared as up to ten days of strike action began at universities across the UK over devastating cuts to pensions and deteriorating pay & working conditions.

40

MY UNION 42 Obituary: Professor Pat Ryan 44 Staff appointments & movements

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

1

◆ EDITORIAL

ADVOCATE

ISSN 1329-7295

All text & images ©NTEU 2022 unless otherwise stated

Matthew McGowan Alison Barnes Paul Clifton Anastasia Kotaidis, Helena Spyrou Published by National Tertiary Education Union Publisher Editor Production Manager Editorial Assistance

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

Political interference threatens the future of Australian research In February, the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, announced a $1.6 billion fund for manufacturing research. It was a slap in the face to talented academics across Australia, who perform vital work for the public good. It was also a worrying indicator of the future of research in this country.

The 'Australian Economic Accelerator' program, which seeks to turn early-stage research ideas into commercial successes, confirms what we already knew from this Government: only research that aligns with its own priorities will be supported.

The fine print in the plan is shocking.

Institutions are being told they must rearrange their pay and promotion arrangements to favour commercially oriented researchers or they could miss out on research funding.

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, Ruth Jelley, Andrea Lamont-Mills, Pat McConville, Michael McNally, Andrew Miller, Cathy Moore, Terri Mylett, Rajeev Sharma, Melissa Slee 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.

2

Obsession with commercialisation The Government is also planning to 'adjust' some $2 billion in existing university research funding and Research Block Grants processes – which is used to fund research training – to focus on commercialisation.

Additionally, it plans to 'reform' core funding and grants processes managed by the Australian Research Council (ARC), in line with its commercialisation interests, and has stated that basic research – the fundamental, curiosity-driven research that is the seed of innovation and discovery – will need to be re-purposed so even this is oriented toward what are narrowly defined commercial interests.

This over-emphasis on public funding that preferences commercial research over basic research could derail current research efforts and be detrimental to society in the future.

Basic mRNA research led to the COVID-19 vaccines that have saved millions of lives.

While it may appear the vaccines were

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

developed at record breaking speed, they were in fact the result of decades of curiosity driven research, undertaken by many thousands of scientists worldwide, including here in Australia.

It was through the trial and error of these researchers that essential knowledge was gained and methods discovered that later made the rapid development of these innovative vaccines possible.

This over-emphasis on public funding that preferences commercial research over basic research could derail current research efforts and be detrimental to society in the future.

Indeed, when Chinese and Australian scientists published the SARS-CoV-2 genome sequence online on 10 January 2020, without commercial benefit to the researchers, it was because of decades of pure research into this family of viruses.

The same basic research, which could help us battle future global health catastrophes, now risks extinction through the Government’s commercialisation obsession.

It’s vital to remember the application of this style of research extends far beyond pandemics. Without support for curiosity driven, basic research, we wouldn’t have the innovations and discoveries that later created wi-fi, black box flight

FROM THE GENERAL SECRETARY ◆

recorders or the cervical cancer vaccine, to name a few.

themselves is the equivalent of undertaking a mini-research project.

Many of our greatest research achievements are in spite of the Government's efforts, not thanks to them. The funding announced by Morrison does not come close to the amount of money the Coalition has pulled from research during its tenure in government.

Effectively we are being asked to believe that the wisdom of Stuart Robert trumps this exhaustive process. That one minister, with the flick of a pen, is equipped to decide that highly-scrutinised projects do not demonstrate value for taxpayers’ money nor contribute to the national interest when the ARC has already considered both issues.

Under three Liberal prime ministers, $1.47 billion has been slashed from the ARC alone. This represents not only thousands of research projects and untold numbers of research jobs, but the loss of knowledge, innovation and opportunity.

Cash and control The Morrison Government’s focus is not on research discovery. Instead, it’s about cash and control. The Government exposed its agenda of politically motivated interference when, on Christmas Eve last year, acting Education Minister Stuart Robert quietly vetoed six ARC grants, further eroding the intellectual independence of Australian research.

While the decision itself was alarming, the Minister’s total reluctance to explain his reasons for cancelling the research was even more so. It confirmed Australia’s research priorities are now determined at the whim of ministerial prerogative, independence and due process be damned.

Two of the six Discovery Project grants that were blocked by the Minister focused on the study of modern China.

The other humanities projects examined school students involved in climate action, early English literature and science-fiction novels, all which where trivialised by the Minister.

When pressed, the only reason given by Robert for his veto was that, in his view, he didn’t think there was a 'national interest' in the research. There was no further explanation.

The ARC's decision-making process is thorough and robust. Each project is thoroughly reviewed at multiple stages, including by appointed subject matter experts.

From there, the projects are assessed according to criteria including feasibility, innovation and value, and voted on by a college of experts. The work academics must put into applying for the grants

Even without considering political motivations, the recent changes to the ARC were made unilaterally, without warning or consultation. They represent fundamental changes to Australia’s research framework.

College of Experts resignations

At least two members of the College of Experts have already resigned in protest.

They clearly cannot bear the thought of what might happen if the Coalition is allowed to continue to unleash its destructive ideology on research conclusion and Australian universities.

It’s hard to avoid the that the Minister is deliberately attempting to dilute the knowledge, experience and collegial research culture of the College of Experts to sway it towards the stated political interests of the Coalition...

Undermining the ARC Unfortunately, there is no recourse for the researchers behind those projects.

While the lack of transparency and fairness in the process is concerning, it is set to become even more opaque.

Two weeks before Christmas, Robert foreshadowed his intention to undermine the independence and integrity of the Council, announcing changes to the structure and governance of funding schemes.

Those changes included 'alignment of grants' with 'government-identified priorities'. Eight days later, the ARC announced Chief Executive, Professor Sue Thomas, would step down from her role in January, five months before her contract was due to end.

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the Minister is deliberately attempting to dilute the knowledge, experience and collegial research culture of the College of Experts to sway it towards the stated political interests of the Coalition, which is focused on its re-election strategy and intends to use narrowly defined areas of research commercialisation for future political leverage.

Others have also expressed their dismay and concern, with 63 ARC laureate fellows, including Nobel prize recipient and Australian National University Vice-Chancellor Professor Brian Schmidt, warning that research in Australia has become 'political and short-sighted'.

There are now real fears the Government is risking our international reputation through this political manipulation of research.

Australian research and researchers are too important to be subjected to pork barrel politics and the ideologically driven agenda of the government of the day.

This Government cannot be allowed to continue slashing public funding for curiosity driven research while being applauded by university managements and the business community for pouring money into a handful of cherry-picked manufacturing industries that complement its political agenda.

It is an overt, undisguised and opportunistic political interference that threatens the very future of Australian research and is blatantly at odds with our national interest. ◆ Alison Barnes, National President This article originally published in The Saturday Paper, No. 387, 19-25 February 2022.

See also in this issue of Advocate: Why we resigned from the ARC College of Experts after Minister vetoed research grants (p.30).

Sign the petition to Federal Parliament to 'Prevent political interference in ARC funding grants' bit.ly/no-veto

And it is a tried and tested method for the Coalition, who in 2018, vetoed 11 grants in the humanities and introduced the ‘national interest test’ into the Minister’s approval for ARC funding that Minister Robert would later rely on.

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

3

◆ FROM THE NATIONAL ASSISTANT SECRETARY

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

D @NTEUNational

Your union has a big 2022 ahead Welcome to 2022. I know many of you are in the process of returning to campus life, or continuing to navigate working from home and a safe return to work.

The pandemic delivered a terrible two years, and the handling of the crisis by the Federal Government compounded the problems in the higher education sector.

As hard and difficult as this has been for staff across our sector, it is worth acknowledging how hard this has been for students as well. They have been dramatically impacted by the decisions of the Federal Government during the pandemic – the lack of support and the lack of resources for our critical sector has made their educational experiences worse over the last two years.

The work of our members – educators, researchers, student welfare managers, the professional staff that support and make our institutions function– you have all contributed to students learning experiences (most of the time with little support from the people who manage and govern our workplaces).

The topline issues that are important for this round of bargaining are around casualisation/job security, academic freedom and pay. Many Branches are also highlighting workload issues.

Our goal is to get 60% of agreements across the sector finalised or near finalisation by the end of the year.

The Union can’t achieve this alone. The support and engagement of members at the workplace is crucial to achieving this goal.

tutional Studies, University of Melbourne Law School, two legal cases last year proved the power and importance of our union agreements in protecting academic freedom: 'All academics and anyone who cares about academic freedom should be really happy to see that the courts understand that those clauses in enterprise agreements are legally enforceable.'

To finish up, I want to comment on the coming Federal Election.

This Government has been a clear and unequivocal enemy of the higher education sector.

The Government also failed to deliver on basic health measures for the nation during the pandemic, (the vaccine roll out, management of the outbreaks, the let it rip mentality), they have lashed out using all the tools left available to them – demonising communities, weaponizing culture war rubbish, and imposing their ideological views on learning, research and education.

With strong member support, we will not accept management delays and obfuscation.

Your union has a big 2022 ahead. This year we will be bargaining across our sector to improve wages and conditions.

Over the last year, delegates, members and elected officials have been talking with members and non-members, building greater understanding of why the bargaining process is so important, how you can be involved, and the importance of solidarity and strength at the bargaining table.

We have also used the last 12 months to ensure the claims we want to bargain for have been endorsed by the membership.

Bargaining doesn’t start with negotiation.

It starts with campaigning. The more people at your campus or your workplace who are aware of their rights, the better and stronger we are.

For every member who thinks – ‘this isn’t about me, someone else can take that responsibility’ – we need to get another five members active, standing up, joining people up and showing university man-

4

agement that NTEU has the support of staff in the sector.

With strong member support, we will not accept management delays and obfuscation.

Staff in the sector have a right to feel letdown and angry as many managements used the staff cuts of the past 2 years to bolster their balance sheets. With real wages declining in an environment of rising inflation, staff are going to demand better from university managements.

Members want support, recognition and decent recompense for the valuable work they do. They want safe workplaces.

They want secure work.

And I believe members will take strike action if necessary to make the point.

Job cuts have helped university surpluses, but have put enormous and unfair pressure on our members.

Union enterprise agreements deliver on wages and conditions – but also on our core values such as academic freedom.

To quote from Professor Adrienne Stone, Director, Centre for Comparative Consti-

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

The Religious Discrimination Bill showed how far they would go to pick on and marginalise the LGBTIQ+ community (and specifically our Trans colleagues), and their interference in the ARC’s research grants processes shows they will stop at nothing to create fear and back ignorance over learning.

These strategies will continue in the lead up to the election and worse. I note ACTU Secretary Sally McManus’ call for every union member to be on watch for the demonising of unions and union action as part of the LNP’s playbook.

Let’s hope 2022 gets rid of one virus at least – the current Federal Government and its ongoing war against higher education and learning. ◆ Matthew McGowan, General Secretary

FROM THE NATIONAL ASSISTANT SECRETARY ◆

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

A whole new NTEU experience is coming The culmination of a two-year project is now very close and in late March we will launch a suite of new ways to engage with your union, as well as new services for members. Admittedly it’s not actually a whole new NTEU, but it is a whole new way of interacting with the union, your representatives and other members.

Central to this is a new membership database, which will allow us to better target our communications to you and more efficiently keep your details up to date.

There will be a new refreshed externally focused website aimed at educating the public and potential members about unions, NTEU, what we do, what we believe in and what we stand for. If you would like to be featured as an NTEU member, please let us know.

Not knowing where these important documents are can cause a delay when you need representation.

For academic staff members, we will invite you to submit your details to our public ‘Find An Expert’ page, and we will be offering you opportunities to list in our publications any research surveys for which you need participants, either your own or those of your graduate students.

When members reach out to us for advice or assistance it is often as a result of a very stressful work experience. These new procedures are designed to make the process easier and to provide you with information you need to be comfortable that you understand what is going on.

Finally, there is a much easier way to find information with an extensive set of FAQs about the Union, our campaigns and activities, and about working conditions.

Your member portal will also contain Many of these then link to more extenFor members, there will be a personalised quick links to Tools and Resources which sive documents. If you want to know web page that will allow you to access all can be personalised for you based on what the Union’s policy is on a topic, our your membership details and alter them your preferences and what is going on in Policy Manual will be searchable and easieasily. You will be able to set your preferyour Branch. You can easily access your ly available, if you want to know about a ences and to tell us what you are interEnterprise Agreement here, or apps that condition of employment it will be in the ested in. Conversely, you can tell us what we are using in campaigns such as around FAQs. If we don’t have the information you don’t want to receive information on. workload or wage theft. you are looking for, you can click a In that we way we will remove the link and send a request for that info clutter from your inbox by ensuring - we will provide it to you, and add Importantly, we have simplified we send you news and event alerts it to our library of FAQs. We also reaching out to the Union when in your topics of interest. encourage suggestions for what to you need help at work. A simple include in this library.

No longer will information be presented around NTEU’s internal form will be in your Help@Work Overall the aim is to make working structure and arrangements, from page that will be immediately sent with your union, finding out what’s now on the presentation will centre going on and participating easier to your Branch or Division. around you, the member. There will and more productive for you. also be more options on how to pay This is phase 1 of the project and your membership subscription. we will be adding functionality over Finding out who to contact will be easier Times have changed since our database time as well as some fun ways to join in as your My Contacts page will contain was first set up in 1993. Our new systems the contact details and a direct email the NTEU community. If you have any will be far more flexible and accommosuggestions for functions that you think link to the staff and representatives who date the diversity of our membership. We would be useful please let me know at support your workplace. have updated our gender preferences and ggooding@nteu.org.au personal titles, and there will be a space Importantly, we have simplified reaching for members to indicate to us whether out to the Union when you need help at If we can’t build it in for this release we will work on adding it to the next one. you have altered accessibility requirework. A simple form will be in your Help@ ments for hearing, vision, mobility or you Work page that will be immediately sent Please watch out for an email from us have needs relating to neurodiversity to your Branch or Division. soon asking you to check your details and including quiet spaces. Our systems will There is also information on when to ask to put in your personal preferences to set also be flexible and able to adapt as your up your personal pages. for help, what to do if you are called into needs change. a meeting, how to prepare for a meeting It’s not a whole new NTEU but it is such We will also be providing some new with your advocate, and important terms a giant step towards improving your services for members. You can upload to look out for in communications with NTEU experience, that it may just feel your contract of employment or letter your management. We will also send you like one. ◆ of appointment for safe keeping, and for info on how advice and assistance from easy access by your advocate if you get the Union works.

Gabe Gooding, National Assistant into trouble at work.

Secretary

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

5

◆ NEWS Image: QFES

Supporting our members in crisis NTEU members in Queensland and New South Wales are currently experiencing extraordinary flooding events. For some, this is resulting in the loss of homes, uprooting families and causing trauma.

On 2 March 2022, NTEU sent an email to all NSW and QLD members to acknowledge the immediate and dramatic losses experienced and to offer support.

Emergency Relief Grants and other support Given that many needs are immediate, the Union is making available NTEU Emergency Grants of up to $1,000 for members who have suffered loss of their home, or other significant financial hardship.

In addition, members who are suffering financial hardship can apply to the General Secretary for relief from paying union dues for up to 3 months.

If you are in this position, please email Flood.Relief@nteu.org.au with your details and we will be in touch as soon as possible. NTEU has already received a number of applications and is considering each application and sending a quick response.

6

The grants are intended to provide emergency relief for people in immediate hardship. The intention is to support people in emergency situations who do not have the resources to manage. It is not intended to compensate for loss of income or costs of a clean-up per se.

But for those with significant costs who can manage, but are concerned about their ability to pay for the cleanup, we are offering fee waivers for 3 months, or up to 6 months if there is a need to consider a longer period.

Assistance on associated employment matters Further, any member needs who support securing leave or problems associated with your employment should contact your NTEU Branch or Division Office for assistance.

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

Donations If you would like to make a donation to assist with the flood recovery efforts, please visit the Australian Red Cross to make your contribution. ◆ Australian Red Cross redcross.org.au

NEWS ◆ Image: Name Images: Supplied

Emma Turley

Tfer Newsome

Senior Lecturer in Criminology, CQU

Associate Lecturer, Faculty of Creative Industries, Education & Social Justice, QUT

We live next to the river in West End and so have been affected by the flood water. The basement of our building is flooded meaning there is no electricity – no means of cooking, refrigeration, hot water, cooling (AC) etc.

We lost power late Friday night when the flood water entered the basement.

We have been informed by the building manager that due to the electrics all being housed in the basement estimates are that it will be 2-3 weeks before power is restored to the building.

This is independent of Energex’s timescale to restore power to the street. I have diabetes and my blood sugar is much harder to control in the heat.

On Brisbane Council’s advice, we evacuated to an AirBnB on Monday 28 February due to my high blood sugar readings and we are here until Sunday 6 March.

Flood waters entered our home on 27 February and around 100cm in the house, with 1.8 metres of water around the house. We've lost our kitchen and living area and bathroom, and carport, electricity and hot water. We'll be out of the house for some weeks in temporary accommodation.

Margaret-Anne Messinbird Sessional Lecturer, School of Education, Griffith University Our ceilings are flooded and will need to be replaced. We will also need to get a whole new tiled roof.

Anya Phelan Lecturer, School of Business, UQ Our whole area has been severely affected by the floods. Our block has been completely cut off by flood waters for three days, and we are still without power.

Our daughter’s home has been fully flooded and she and her partner and currently staying with us.

Image: Tfer Newsome. Used with permission

I’m from the UK and fairly new to Brisbane so I have no family or friends that can help.

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

7

◆ NEWS

Fighting illegal piece-rates at La Trobe In February, NTEU La Trobe launched a campaign to stamp out wage theft at the University.

In 2021, following sustained pressure from the NTEU’s La Trobe Branch and the Casuals Network, La Trobe University agreed to pay out over $3m in back pay, reflecting wages stolen from casual staff over a six-year period.

While in theory, these directions are merely guidelines, the reality for casual staff engaged insecurely is that most would not feel confident in submitting a claim for the actual amount of time the marking has taken to complete.

The wage theft came in a number of different shapes and sizes, including failing to pay professional staff the minimum engagement period of three hours, failing to pay staff with a relevant PhD the correct PhD rate and incorrectly applying tutorial rates.

Systems must be developed, in conjunction with casual staff and the NTEU, which ensure that staff are paid in accordance with their entitlements, and that the exploitation stops.

While these back payments were welcome, the University did not address the issue of underpayments in marking, and with evidence collected from our casual members of illegal piece rates, the Branch initiated an industrial dispute this January.

The key factor in the dispute is that the University has for many years systematically directed employees to claim a pre-determined piece rate for assessment/exam marking, often on a 'whole-of semester basis', in breach of the Enterprise Agreement.

nial

o Member Testim

Graham

8

Is this Wage Theft or a simple mistake?

Section 6 (1) (b) of Victoria’s Wage Theft Act 2020 specifies that: 'An employer must not dishonestly… authorise or permit, expressly or impliedly, another person to withhold the whole or part of an employee entitlement owed by the employer to an employee and that other person does so.'

NTEU believes that an employer that continues to participate in a system that routinely underpays an employee is breaching the Act.

As members have discovered across the sector: if you look for wage theft, you probably will find it.

How can I join the campaign?

Casual members and the Branch are calling for casuals, current and former to join the campaign to stamp out wage theft at La Trobe University.

If you think you or someone you know might be owed money from marking underpayments, the Branch has a calculator where you can work out how much you might be owed over a six year period.

To make use of this calculator and to sign up for the campaign, please visit our campaign website.

And please share widely with colleagues.

Together we can fight for secure work and against wage theft. ◆ Simon Linskill, NTEU Industrial Organiser, La Trobe University nteu.info/latrobeunderpayment

After nearly 20 years as a member of the NTEU I will be retiring from academia shortly and so I wish to resign my NTEU membership effective two weeks from the date of reciept of this notice.

I am very appreciative of the NTEU's work over my time as a member. Best wishes to the NTEU in strongly representing employees in our universities.

VIEW MORE MESSAGES AT NTEU.ORG.AU/JOIN/TESTIMONIALS

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

NEWS ◆

Envoy urged to secure Sean Turnell's release from Myanmar imprisonment NTEU is calling on Foreign Minister Marise Payne to intervene and appoint an envoy to help secure the freedom of Australian Professor Sean Turnell who has now been detained in Myanmar for more than 12 months.

Professor Turnell, an Australian citizen, Macquarie University economist and NTEU member, was taken from his hotel in Myanmar on 1 February 2021, five days after a military coup.

Prior to the coup, Professor Turnell had been advising the Myanmar Government on economic policy, using his expertise to help bring investment and job opportunities to the country, to help Myanmar integrate with other economies in the region and the world, and to help lift people out of poverty.

He has since been arbitrarily charged and imprisoned, accused of illegally possessing official secrets.

According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma) he is one of more than 12,000 people arrested since the coup, and more than 1,500 have been killed by the junta.

NTEU National President Dr Alison Barnes said the Australian Government needs to get Professor Turnell home safely before it’s too late.

'We appreciate the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is providing consular assistance to Professor Turnell, however, more must be done to secure his freedom,' Dr Barnes said.

'Professor Turnell’s survival currently rests upon the whims of junta soldiers.

'His trial is a travesty and after more than a year of negotiations, it is clear they have no interest in justice.

'Sean is a much-loved member of his university and union, and on behalf of his colleagues and fellow union members, the NTEU calls on the Australian Government to do everything within its power to secure his immediate release.'

A petition has also been created calling on the Australian Government to insist

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

that the charges against Professor Turnell be withdrawn or the trial closed. And for the remainder of his detention, Professor Turnell is able to receive weekly visits by Australian officials, is able to meet freely with his lawyers and access an interpreter in court. ◆ Sign the petition to Parliament here: www.aph.gov.au/e-petitions/petition/ EN3917 Above: The first image of Sean Turnell inside Myanmar jail, released in July 2021 as he received his coronavirus jab. Global New Light of Myanmar Below: Sean Turnell with his wife, Ha Vu

9

◆ NEWS

'Class in Australia' Monash University Publishing is thrilled to announce the publication of Class in Australia, edited by NTEU members Steven Threadgold and Jessica Gerrard.

At the book's launch in February, Emerita Professor Raewyn Connell from the University of Sydney stated: 'Perhaps I am less optimistic that intellectual work … can change the world in the short term. But in time it does have an effect, indeed many effects. With what tools we can find, it’s important to keep trying. The struggle continues.'

NTEU member discount offer!

Monash University Publishing are pleased to offer NTEU members a 20% discount from the RRP $39.95 when you purchase the book via their online shop.

Use this code: NTEUCLASS20 It should be applied on the cart page before the checkout.

The code is valid until 31 December.

At a time of deepening inequality, Class in Australia features interviews with Raewyn Connell and Larissa Behrendt and brings together a range of new and original research for a timely examination of class relations, labour exploitation, and the changing formations of work in contemporary Australian society.

Two decades since it was claimed that class is dead, social, economic and cultural inequalities are rising. Though Australia is often described as a ‘lucky country’ with a strong economy, we are witness to intensifying inequality with entrenched poverty and the growth of precarious and insecure labour. The disconnect of the rusted-on Labor voter and the rise of far-right politics suggest there is an urgent need to examine the contemporary functions of class relations.

Class analysis in Australia has always had a contested position.

The prominence of scholarship from the UK and US has often meant class analysis in Australia has had little to say about its settler colonial history and the past and present dynamics of race and racism that are deeply embedded in social and labour relations.

In the post-war turn away from Marx and subsequent embracing of Bourdieu, much sociological research on class has focused on explorations of consumption and culture. Longstanding feminist critiques of the absence of gendered labour in class analysis also pose challenges for understanding and researching class.

Contributors are Jasmine Ali, Tom Barnes, Rose Butler, David Farrugia, Hannah Forsyth, Jessica Gerrard, Christina Ho, Keith Jacobs, Julie McLeod, Barry Morris, Greg Noble, Henry Paternoster, Barbara Pini, Laura Rodriguez Castro, Penny Rossiter, Steven Threadgold, Eve Vincent, Deborah Warr, Mark Western, and Lyn Yates. Plus interviews with Raewyn Connell and Larissa Behrendt. ◆ publishing.monash.edu/product/class-in-australia ISBN (pb): 978-1-922464-89-7

‘This book is a powerful and vibrant study of the complex realities of class in modern Australia.’

Sally McManus, ACTU Secretary ‘The definitive book on class for this generation. We have never needed the debate more than now.’

Dr Meredith Burgmann AM ‘This captivating volume dives deep into how class has shaped our nation.’

Dr Andrew Leigh MP

10

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

NEWS ◆

NTEU stands against the Coalition's Religious Discrimination Bill As most members will know, the Morrison Government has recently re-introduced a complex series of laws nominally intended to protect people from discrimination on the basis of religion – a goal that is not particularly controversial.

• For religious organisations to discriminate in hiring, admissions and service provision on religious grounds where their views are articulated in a policy or statement of beliefs.

What has been controversial in these laws is that they aim to create special new rights:

The state of these laws has been a moving feast, as the Government has made several amendments since the first version was published in 2019, and promised a series of other amendments and trade-offs as internal support in the Coalition has waned.

• For people to express religious views that may be offensive but that are not explicitly intended to cause harm or harass (in any context).

On 10 February 2022, five Government MPs crossed the floor to vote in favour of Labor amendments that would see current special exemptions for religious

schools to discriminate on sexuality removed from the current Sexual Discrimination Act. The removal of these exemptions is contingent upon the passage of the other parts of the Religious Discrimination Bill.

However, these amendments do not address several other issues with the Bill, which the NTEU outlined in its recent submission to two concurrent parliamentary inquiries.

In particular, we outlined our concern that religious universities may impose discriminatory views in their statement of belief policies, which potential staff would have to sign and abide by.

We also highlighted the potential for university teaching staff to be exposed to legal liability in classroom contexts where students make protected statements of belief – an issue that has gone largely under the radar but could affect our members.

For example, if a student in a tutorial were to consistently express offensive views about women or LGBQTI+ people on religious grounds, and the teaching academic was to ask them to leave, would they be violating the law that protects this speech?

Universities may also become entangled in legal difficulty in dealing with extreme religious groups on campuses.

It is not clear how these special protections would play out in the university environment and there is a risk that self-censorship will occur among academic staff in these contexts.

Notwithstanding this issue, it is clear that the Bill in its current form will likely increase, rather than decrease discrimination.

For these reasons the NTEU, and many other community groups have strongly opposed this Bill. ◆ Kieran McCarron, Policy & Research Officer Image: Protesting against the Religious Discrimination Bill, Mardi Gras 2021. Bruce Baker

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

11

◆ NEWS

NTEU pushes forward with campaign to fix university funding In late January, the NTEU made a substantial submission to Treasury putting forward our views on higher education funding in the lead up to the next Federal Budget.

Poor public funding remains a defining issue for our sector and is a contributor to several problems we face including: over reliance on international student fees, casualisation, insecure work in research and the excessive use of short-term contracts, excessive workloads, the absence of career opportunities for early career academics, and the erosion of university support for key discipline areas (especially when they cannot attract international student fee revenue).

Our submission outlined the current state of higher education funding, the impacts of COVID and the Job-ready Graduates cuts on the sector, and our proposals for improved public investment in the sector.

The current state of higher education Since the introduction of the Demand Driven System (DDS) by the Rudd/Gillard Government, both sides of politics have targeted higher education for reform.

The targeting of public higher education

by Government is part of a long term, ongoing pattern, whereby successive governments over time have cut public funding in repeated and persistent attempts to supposedly 'reform' higher education, but in reality, this has been a claw back of funding for budgetary ‘savings’.

In the most recent Budget the impacts of the now implemented Job-ready Graduates package were clear, it showed:

The effect of this approach is that higher education is now hamstrung by a high degree of uncertainty, for both funding and regulation, and the sector is mainly reliant on student fee income.

• Continued decline in funding for ARC when measured against inflation.

As a result, Australia has one of the lowest levels of public investment in tertiary education in the world and students attending public universities pay amongst the highest fees in the world.

The Government’s continued squeeze on higher education comes at a particularly bad time for the sector. Research published by the Australia Institute in 2021 estimated that around 35,000 positions had been lost in the sector between May 2020 and May 2021.

• A 4% decline in the nominal amount of CGS funding for this financial year.

• A decline of 9.3% in funding in real terms by 2024-25.

Job losses and the impact of COVID

Despite this, the Government pursued the Job-ready Graduates reforms in 2020 and 2021, which essentially entailed a cut (on average) to public funding per student place, and a subsequent increase in average student 'contributions' (fees).

Recent NTEU analysis of new data released by the Department of Education, Skills and Employment broadly enforces the evidence of mass jobs losses,

30% 28% 26%

Relative share

24%

26.6%

Commonwealth Grant Scheme 23.8%

22.2%

22%

Student Contributions

20%

18.4%

18% 16% 14%

16.0%

International Fees

14.9%

12% 10%

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

Years Fig 1: Relative shares of total public university income, 2006-2020

12

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

2018

2019

2020

NEWS ◆

12,500

12,474

12,460

11,918

Real Public Funding

12,000 11,500

11,117

11,000 10,672

10,500 10,000 9,500

2019-20

2020-21

2021-22

2022-23

2023-24

Financial Years Fig 2: Real Public Funding per Commonwealth Supported Place (Real 2019-20 values) Source: Derived from Department of Education Portfolio Budget Statements Outcome 2, 2020-21

showing a net loss of around 29,000 people from the sector from March 2019 to March 2021, and reports collected by our branches on the ground confirmed continued job losses after this date.

Time to rethink higher education policy In summary, the NTEU argued that a major re-think of higher education policy is needed, that should:

Those employees that retained their jobs were required to devote enormous amounts of time and energy to transition to online delivery of classes.

• Acknowledge the important and unique role of our public universities and promote and protect institutional autonomy and academic freedom.

Despite the Government spending $200b on COVID-19 stimulus and support in 2020, public universities were largely excluded from any kind of support. Indeed, the Government instead implemented a policy agenda that created additional financial stress for the higher education sector.

• Establish an independent higher education agency with funding and regulatory powers.

• Raise the level of public investment in our universities to 1% of GDP while phasing out of tuition fees for government supported students.

ARC loses $1.47b

$1600

Cumulatively, over the past 9 years, the Coalition Government has pulled $1.47 billion from the ARC alone.

• Reduce the influence of corporate governance and executive power in our universities by reverting to a more collegial model of governance.

• Directly cap the level of insecure employment at our universities which is a direct threat to the quality of teaching and research and academic freedom. ◆ Kieran McCarron, Policy & Research Officer

ACTUAL

In the 2012-13 financial year, total ARC funding was $906 million. However, reductions in funding over the last decade have seen that, even with some modest increases in recent years, only $844 million was allocated in the 2021-22 Federal Budget.

If this figure had been indexed for inflation the current budgeted amount for 2021-22 would be $1.07 billion.

• Use Public Accountability Agreements (PAA’s) as a planning, accountability and funding framework that is a flexible yet managed way of allocating public funding to individual universities.

$1400

CUMULATIVE

Indexed vs 2012-13

$950

$1000

$600 $400 $200

$1050 $1000

$1200

$800

$1100

$900

Actual Spend

$850 $800 $750

Cumulative Shortfall 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 -12 -13 -14 -15 -16 -17 -18 -19 -20 -21 -22

$700 $650 $600

Fig 3: ARC Funding Shortfall ($millions)

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

13

◆ NEWS

NTEU stands up for international students on new Bill NTEU is generally supportive of aspects of the Morrison Government's recently introduced Migration Amendment (Protecting Migrant Workers) Bill 2021, but has identified some shortcomings.

Stronger penalties for employers The Bill attempts to apply new penalties to employers who coerce visa holders into breaching their visa conditions. The NTEU is generally supportive of stronger penalties for employers. After all, this coercion generally contributes to the circumstances under which temporary migrants are exploited.

This topic is of particular concern to the NTEU given how poorly many of our international students are treated in the labour market. We know anecdotally that employers actively use the penalties imposed on students for breaching the 40 hour per fortnight work limit as a way to get away with systematic underpayment and mistreatment.

Under current rules the student would be punished for this breach, but the employer would not be.

flaw, and raises questions about how genuine the Government is about stopping this practice.

The Bill proposes introducing new penalties for employers in these circumstances of up to two years imprisonment or an $80,000 fine depending on the nature of the coercion. NTEU’s official submission to the Senate Inquiry into this Bill supported these penalties.

The Bill also gives the Minister powers to prohibit certain employers from hiring visa holders as a penalty for coercing visa holders to breach work related requirements.

No whistleblower protection However, NTEU also pointed out the flawed logic of imposing new penalties on employers with out protections for whistleblowers from prosecution for the same breach.

It is hard to believe that an international student would report their employer for coercing them to break the rules (work more than 40 hours or we’ll withhold the whole fortnight’s pay and fire you) when they are still liable to be penalised for the rule breach that they report!

The Bill does not provide any incentive or protection for exploited workers to report their employers. This is a major

NTEU’s recommended changes The NTEU’s submission recommendations included: 1. Restrictions that disempower temporary visa holders and empower exploitative employers should be removed.

Including the mandatory 88 day work requirement for working holiday visa holders. International students should be given leniency around work hour restrictions when precariously employed in non-regular pattens of employment.

2. Protections should be added to indemnify temporary visa holders who report contraventions of the Migration Act. 3. The Department of Home Affairs should notify trade unions and the Fair Work Ombudsman of the list of prohibited employers and check in with trade unions about the activities of prohibited employers.

4. Empower the Fair Work Commission to make the determination that the relevant provisions were contravened (rather on relying only on the courts).

5. Allow parties to make written submissions setting out the reasons why the Minister should or should not make a declaration that an employer be prohibited.

The NTEU is actively monitoring the progress of this Bill and remains in contract with the ACTU and Migrant Workers Centre regarding temporary worker policy. ◆ Kieran McCarron, Policy & Research Officer Image: Stefano Lubiana/Flickr

14

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

WERTE! ◆

Pandemic adversely affects Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander employment The impacts of the pandemic on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment across the sector has been relatively unclear. Recently, though, the data universities report to the Government has been released and analysis of this has painted a distressing picture.

In 2020, there was a net loss of 52 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff (headcount) appointed to fixed term and ongoing roles, representing a 3 per cent decrease across the sector. This actually equated to a loss of 73 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander full time equivalent positions, representing a 4.6 per cent decrease in the same period.

Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Staff

Of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff who left the sector or lost their jobs, professional staff were the most dramatically impacted. Indeed, 73 pro-

fessional staff members lost their jobs, yet there was an increase of 21 academic staff.

(HEWRRs) that we have seen a real decrease in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff numbers in the sector.

While this increase in academic staff is encouraging, it is important to note that this headcount of 21 new Indigenous academics actually only equated to a full time equivalent gain of 5 staff, suggesting that any gains were in fractional employment.

Indeed, apart from a couple of years which included institutional reporting anomalies, the numbers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff have continued to steadily increase since 2006.

It is the first time since the Howard Government's introduction of the Higher Education Workplace Relations Requirements

There are two important things to note about this data. The first is whilst the Government reports data on ongoing and fixed term Aboriginal and Torres Strait continued overpage...

1800 1600 1400

Full Time Equivalent

1200 1000 800

Number

600 400

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021

Years Fig 1: Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander staff in tertiary education

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

15

◆ WERTE!

Islander staff, it does not report the number of casual staff employed in the sector.

Therefore, we have no idea just how many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander casual staff are in the sector in the first place and subsequently, how many found themselves without contracts due to COVID and reduced student loads during the pandemic.

We can make the assumption, however, that considering how many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff positions are funded either via Indigenous Student Support Program (ISSP) funding or via research grants, the loss of Indigenous casual staff has been pronounced due to the loss of the student cohort.

The membership decline has tended to reflect this. Of the members who have dropped off the NTEU system, the vast majority have either been members who have left their institution or have had a contract end. Some redundancies have featured in the mix but they are greatly outnumbered.

The second thing to note about the data is that whilst the drop in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff numbers is notable and distressing, it is lower than the recorded data for all staff. These losses were recorded at around 7 per cent – severely under-reported according to NTEU estimates.

tion parity, any losses of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff are unnecessary and contrary to what the supposed goals are of universities.

NTEU is in a bargaining round and throughout this, we will be pushing for hard Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment targets at all universities, better and more culturally appropriate working conditions for Indigenous staff, and the recognition of Indigeneity as a genuine occupational qualification.

Get elected!

In order for these claims to be successful, we need bargaining teams to push them at the table and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members to be advising Branches on what sorts of things would make your campus a safer environment to work in.

We also need as many members as possible to consider running in the upcoming NTEU elections to ensure all Branches and Divisions have Indigenous representation on their committees.

Finally, members are encouraged to look out for upcoming member meetings, as well as member information sessions.

It is our hope to hold a couple of Indigenous-specific information sessions, particularly with regards to bargaining and our goals for 2022.

Change through bargaining

Reversing the trend

Whilst this is some solace, we must remember that as part of their funding agreements with the Government for ISSP funds, all universities are supposed to be pushing towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staffing cohorts of 3% of the total number.

It is truly hoped that this downward turn in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander higher education staff cohort is short-lived and, as universities start to move back towards operating as they did in pre-pandemic times, so too we see a recovery and increase of Indigenous staffing numbers.

At this point in time, the Indigenous staffing numbers are still equalling about 1.3 per cent nationally. Given that the sector is not even halfway to achieving popula-

Certainly, if universities do indeed wish to continue working towards being inclusive spaces which respect the longest continuing knowledge systems in the world, it is imperative that they work towards retention and diversification. ◆ Celeste Liddle, National A&TSI Organiser nteu.org.au/atsi If you would like further information on the staffing data, bargaining or the NTEU elections, please contact the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Unit.

Alternately, please contact your local Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander elected representative. Information on all this can be found on the NTEU website at nteu.org.au/atsi.

16

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

INSECURE WORK ◆ Image: Marten Bjork/Unsplash

Leaving academia

The harm & heartbreak of precarity The call came a few days before Christmas. It was my Head of School. ‘This is going to be a difficult conversation’, she said. And then my world caved in.

The permanent senior lecturer position that the University had created around my teaching and research, the job that would have given me and my family security at the end of my 5 year contract, had gone to someone else.

As of 31 January I would be unemployed.

Anyone who knows the job market in Australian academia, especially in the Humanities, knows that there are no other jobs, and that therefore my academic career had effectively ended.

The fear that every precarious worker knows only too well had materialised for me in spectacular fashion.

You might have read this and thought, ‘Well, perhaps she wasn’t a stellar enough candidate and the better person got the job. Perhaps she hadn’t published enough, or in journals that weren’t prestigious enough. Perhaps she wasn’t perceived as internationally accomplished, of high enough calibre for a world-class university.’

Such assumptions would be understandable, but they would be wrong. You might also think, ‘Well, these days one needs to understand the global nature of the academic job market. Why doesn’t she just seek for employment abroad?’ To continued overpage...

Dr Una McIlvenna, ANU

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

17

◆ INSECURE WORK Image: Name

Leaving academia: The harm respond to what seem like reasonable queries, my journey through academia will be illuminating.

I completed my PhD at a Russell Group university, Queen Mary University of London, at the end of 2010. I then emigrated with my husband and two young children (1 and 4 – yes, I had two babies while doing my PhD) to Australia, where I knew no one in academia. Despite this, I managed to be awarded a postdoctoral research fellowship a few months later with the ARC Centre for the History of Emotions in Sydney.

During those three years, I published a monograph of my PhD research as well as multiple articles on my new project on execution ballads. Having a research-only position for that time was crucial in allowing me to get enough published to make me competitive on the job market: I even published this new research in Past & Present, the top-ranked journal in my field.

But as anyone in a fixed term position knows, no matter how well you’re doing, you never stop checking the job listings.

You never stop applying for jobs. The dread of ending one position without another one to move to never leaves you.

I probably spent as much time looking and applying for jobs in my final year of that contract than I did researching – imagine if the contract had only been for a year! And as I drew closer to the end of my contract the lack of jobs in Australia was making that dread feel like a ball of concrete in my insides.

Then a one-year position came up in London, back in the department where I’d done my PhD: replacement cover for 12 months for someone who’d won a prestigious research grant. Unlike in Australia, where one is lucky to get a fractional contract to cover the teaching of those who secure grants, in the UK full-time contracts are created to entirely replace them.

These not only allow the grant-holder to focus on the research they applied to do, but also allow early career researchers a measure of security, and to gain experience as a fully recognised member of the department.

And, importantly, the full year contract means that the research you do outside of the teaching terms is recognised and reimbursed – needless to say, one still has to pay rent in the summer!

18

But the big stumbling block was my family: would they be prepared to uproot themselves only a few years after we’d emigrated to Australia? Luckily my husband viewed it as an adventure and was positive about it – it’s only for a year, we said. We put our belongings in storage and moved the family from Sydney back to London. I moved from a Group of Eight university to a Russell Group institution, with a monograph and multiple publications under my belt, including multiple prestigious journal articles. I was doing well.

But as anyone in a fixed term position knows, no matter how well you’re doing, you never stop checking the job listings.

So well, in fact, that when the one-year contract ended I had already secured another position, at the University of Kent – and this time it was a permanent position! I should have been thrilled: from what I was told it was the only permanent position in my field in the country that year. But the salary was dramatically lower than I’d been earning (even after negotiation), and the commute to work was two hours each way. I left home in the dark and returned in the dark. My colleagues were wonderful, but the strain was too much on my family. Plus we’d never intended to stay in the UK: our plan, our dream was always to return to Australia.

A year into my new job, a dream job appeared in Melbourne (remember, you never stop checking the job listings). A major philanthropic gift meant that there were jobs in Australia once again. That universities need to rely on philanthropy, rather than the government, to provide jobs in academia is a sad indictment of our current political system, but I was excited about the prospect. I was shortlisted and even flown from London to Melbourne for the interview. But when a month passed without any news I tried to let my children down easily: they wouldn’t be returning home for a while.

And then, over a month after my interview, an extraordinary phone call: I had been successful after all (their first choice had been offered a permanent contract elsewhere and so had turned down the offer), and would start a five year contract. That the UK had just voted for Brexit made our

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

decision to get out of the UK an easy one for my colleagues at Kent to understand.

Once again, we packed our belongings and emigrated for a third time to another continent. Thus, I would work at four different universities in a space of six years, and would emigrate three times in the same space of time. But I was happy to make these sacrifices: they were investments in my career, and ultimately my sacrifices would be rewarded, right?

I’m often asked about the impact on my children of emigrating multiple times.

But in fact they’re the easy ones: when they’re young they make friends quickly and that’s all that matters for them. It is your partner, the one who has established a career, a business, and friendships in the place you’ve chosen to live, who suffers the most when your academic career requires you to move once again.

I was fortunate that my husband was willing to do this, but it puts an enormous stress on your partner and on your relationship. Those who have never known the itinerant, precarious life that is so common for those chasing success in academia these days will never understand this.

Despite this, I was viewed as one of the great success stories of the ECR world. I was asked to give talks on ‘how to succeed in academia’. I spoke to the History Postgraduate Association’s annual dinner, giving fresh-faced PhD students advice on how to navigate the treacherous waters of academia, offering them insight into the unwritten rules that govern so much of what often feels like a secret society. I had managed to do well, securing one full-time position right after the other, and I wasn’t going to pull up the ladder behind me. I would share my wisdom so that others could find success too.

I also threw myself into being a great colleague. I organised Staff Writing Boot Camps twice a year where academics from any discipline could come together for a week of uninterrupted writing. I’d organise a classroom for a week during the holidays, and act as friendly disciplinarian, making sure everyone stayed in their chairs typing. The volume of research output from those weeks was astonishing, and I had plenty of Boot Camp alumni who would immediately sign up for the next one. Because being an academic should be about collegiality and loyalty, right? continued next page...

INSECURE WORK ◆

& heartbreak of precarity Five years was, comparatively speaking, a luxuriously long term for an academic contract: I even decided – for once – to turn my job alert emails off. But, despite a full teaching workload, my publication profile never dipped. I completed my second monograph, this time with Oxford University Press, and continued to publish articles and chapters in prestigious journals and presses.

Because as much as I enjoyed not having to constantly apply for jobs, I knew that I could never rest on my laurels; the fixedterm job would eventually end like all the others and I would have to continually strive to prove that I was producing world-class research. And it worked: I got promoted to Senior Lecturer. I was doing really well.

In fact, I was about to apply for promotion to Associate Professor – my performance in every area was agreed by my superiors to be easily within a Level D range. But in the end I was advised not to: a permanent position had been agreed at Level C and would be advertised soon.

The job asked for research in early modern history, and teaching in the subjects that I currently taught. But it was to be advertised externally, I was told. Despite the fact that my colleagues universally wanted me to stay, creating a position that looked ‘just like me’, and that the University had agreed to fund it, I could not have my contract extended. It had to be a ‘genuine external search’.

Months went by before it was advertised, and multiple subsequent delays meant that I was sitting the final section of the interview just before Christmas. As it turned out, there was only one other shortlisted candidate.

I will never know what happened during the discussion when the decision was made. I know that three of the committee were my own colleagues in the department. I will never know what the justification was; I will never know who fought for me. I will never know how those people, my own colleagues, could decide that it was better for the University to give a permanent job to someone who already had a permanent job in Melbourne and make me unemployed at 50.

To say I feel betrayed is an understatement. My family were devastated too: they were convinced that I’d done enough to allow us to finally stay in the place

where we’d started to put down roots. I spent Christmas and January in a well of anger and grief at losing the career I had invested so much in. I had been wrong all along: my sacrifices would not be rewarded. The collegiality was irrelevant. There was no loyalty.

On the final day of my contract I emailed the department to let them know I was leaving. Several of my colleagues had still not been informed – there had been no formal announcement. They were just as shocked as those who had already found out.

I then tweeted about my situation, mostly to inform friends overseas about what had happened. To my surprise the thread instantly went viral, and I was flooded with messages, both in the replies and in every inbox I have, of support, of disbelief, and of anger at what had happened.

Several said that if someone like me couldn’t secure a permanent job in academia, then what hope did they have?

Years of defunding by the Federal Government have resulted in a sector that has been decimated. But these problems are also global...

Incredibly, I was overwhelmed with private messages, many from people I had never met, relating their own stories of how they had been used and abused in the academy. Many were heartbreaking: while my five years in Melbourne were delightful, surrounded by warm, friendly colleagues and a culture where my research was praised and supported, many others have known nothing but exploitation and abuse. I also heard from senior and retired colleagues, many of whom expressed their frustration that little about hiring practices had changed since their day.

Sadly, many of those who contacted me told me how ‘brave’ I was, how I’d shown such ‘courage’ in coming forward with my story. But why should it be considered courageous to simply state what had happened?

I had just said that I was leaving academia because there were no jobs, because that is the reality. What state is academia

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

in that we can’t admit reality for fear of retribution?

Years of defunding by the Federal Government have resulted in a sector that has been decimated. But these problems are also global: the Facebook group that I joined for those leaving academia, ‘The Professor Is Out’, has exploded in recent months, with countless members from all over the world, relating heartbreaking stories of endless precarious adjunct and casual labour, financial exploitation, and a system that seems to only favour a small elite. The academy is in trouble.

In my four universities in six years, I witnessed exactly the same phenomena in each one: the library was effectively rebuilt, with most books moved off-site and most of the librarians made redundant; multiple billion-dollar construction projects were completed on campus (usually for the Faculties of Business, Law or Medicine); huge swathes of academics were made redundant despite massive campaigns of industrial action; casual working practices expanded exponentially to become the dominant model for university labour; and the Vice-Chancellors each earned over a million dollars a year.

Maybe that’s a success story for some. It isn’t how I see things.

So what happens to me now? Since tweeting about my situation, I have been contacted with multiple offers: I was immediately contacted by a literary agent who wants me to send them a book proposal for a popular audience, and I’ve been asked to write multiple paid articles and to give paid public talks and podcasts. Two other universities have also approached me to collaborate with them.

It would seem most likely that I’ll become a freelance writer and historian.

There is a vibrant popular appetite for the knowledge and skills that I have, free from the bureaucracy of university administration. It feels precarious, yes, but as an academic in our current era that is the only feeling I have ever known. ◆ Dr Una McIlvenna is Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Early Modern Studies at ANU. She is a writer and historian specialising in the history of crime and punishment, and the tradition of singing the news.

19

◆ INSECURE WORK

Insecure work & the war on wages: a devastating double As we approach the next federal election, you’ll hear a lot about the war on wages taking place in Australia.

Australians suffered their biggest real wage cut in more than two decades in 2021, hot on the heels of eight years of record low wages growth.

COVID-19 border restrictions plugged the flow of cheap temporary migrant labour for almost two years, in turn driving down unemployment well below the rate which many economists thought would trigger wages growth.

Now those economists are stumped as to why wages haven’t magically started rising again.

The answer can be found in the work of the Senate Select Committee on Job Security, which for the last 15 months has heard from workers across the country and every corner of the economy.

The Committee’s Job Insecurity Report released last month concludes that rising job insecurity is a fundamental cause of the wages crisis plaguing Australia.

The evidence of skyrocketing job insecurity is plain to see. Australia has among the highest rates of casual employment in the OECD, and the number of Australians forced to work multiple jobs to get by recently hit a new record high.

Pair that with massive increases in parttime, fixed-term, labour hire and gig work, and you have a workforce that in 2018 for the first time ever, had less than 50 per cent of people in permanent full-time employment with leave entitlements.

What is most disappointing is the rates of job insecurity in industries funded by Federal and State Governments, such as aged care where 9 in 10 workers are casual or part-time, or in disability care, schools, the public service and the NBN. Another of those sectors is of course higher education, where two thirds of university employees are now on casual or fixed-term contracts.

However as NTEU President Dr Alison Barnes told the Committee, these jobs are not genuinely casual or short-term in nature.

20

'The majority of work performed by staff employed on casual and fixed term contracts is needed on an ongoing basis – and it is standard practice in the sector for employers to employ the same casual and fixed term employees on new, precarious contracts every year or semester, to perform the same work in perpetuity,' Dr Barnes said.

The proportion of university staff in these precarious employment arrangements has been steadily rising for two decades, and the impact it is having on workers, students and our national research capability is diabolical.

The inquiry heard from the NTEU, workers at the Universities of Sydney, Melbourne, Newcastle, and Wollongong, and Australian Catholic University, and management at the Universities of Melbourne and Newcastle.

Last month, Dr James Stratford from the University of Melbourne told the Committee he has been stuck in casual employment at the University since 2000.

After 22 years, a PhD and two masters degrees, Dr Stratford remains a casual even while clocking up 47.5 working hours per week during semesters.

'One of the most serious effects is that of mental health and wellbeing. Chronic insecurity breeds chronic anxiety, and this constant insecurity also fosters a culture of fear,' he told us.

Dr Stratford’s story is far from unique, but the Morrison Government’s only response to the insecure work crisis has been to introduce a toothless casual conversion provision, that in many cases is less effective than existing conversion provisions in Awards and Enterprise Agreements. The results of the casual conversion laws have been particularly farcical in the university sector. As NTEU NSW Secretary Dr Damien Cahill explained: 'We got data from around 19 universities.

What that showed is that, of all of the casuals who were assessed for conver-

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

sion under the obligations of the Fair Work Act, only about two per cent of them were converted,' Dr Cahill said.

Brazenly, the University of Sydney sent a generic email refusing conversion to 4,000 casual staff, while the University of Newcastle sent an identical form letter to almost 2,300 casual staff.

The evidence presented to the Committee clearly set out the damage job insecurity is doing to the financial and mental wellbeing of university staff, but also the impacts it has on academic freedom and the quality of both teaching and research work.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

As an industry funded largely through federal funding, a Government actually interested in the wellbeing and sustainability of our universities could require, as a condition of that funding, that the workforce is secure and fairly paid.

That is just one of many recommendations made in the Job Insecurity Report aimed at providing casual and fixed-term staff with a genuine opportunity for a permanent job, paid leave entitlements, and protection from wage theft.

The Morrison Government’s kneejerk response to that report has been to dismiss the issue of job insecurity entirely, in the same fashion it has regularly dismissed the critical role of universities in Australian society over the last nine years.

Change will not come until we change the Government. ◆ Senator Tony Sheldon (Labor, NSW) is Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Job Security

INSECURE WORK ◆

In their own words...

A number of NTEU members have given evidence to the Senate Inquiry into Job Security. Without exception, their testimonies provided moving and effective judgements of the casualisation of the Australian higher education system. Here are some of their statements.

Dr James Stratford I began teaching at the University of Melbourne in 2000 as a 25 year old Masters student. By 2011, I had graduated with a PhD and two Masters degrees. Over those first years I taught 9 subjects, published regularly, won grants and built a wide network of professional and institutional relationships both in Australia and abroad.

In the 10 years since, I’ve taught an additional 33 subjects in two different areas.

Over this time, the cancer of casualisation has set in and we have also seen the emergence of a generation of academics like me – long term casuals on whom the universities rely. This reliance is born out by the sheer volume of work done. Last year for example, though casual, I was employed for an average of 39 hours a week spread across a 48 week year. The problem is that as a casual tutor there are only about 40 weeks at most, so the average was closer to 47.5 hours per week.

This just underscores the fact that the University is utterly reliant on casuals, men and women like me – seasoned

professionals, masters of our craft and yet given the same recognition and rewards as those who are just starting their careers.

complain about our situation. This fear, as subtle as it is, is utterly corrosive to the quality of life, just as it is to the very heart of the University itself.

This really challenges the myth that casual work is short term, and done by young, highly mobile individuals who don’t bear significant responsibilities, it’s just a few hours here and there - that casuals like being casual.

And the gross power balance underscores one of the most harmful effects of this casualised system. It creates a two-tiered system, where casual staff aren’t even really acknowledged as proper staff, because no matter how much expertise one has, no matter how many years of service one has given, a casual is just a casual.

This myth may have once reflected reality but no longer. Rather than a short term period in which one might prove their merit, long term sequences of casual contracts have become a structural condition for the majority of workers.

Work is typically only assured for one semester at a time, creating chronic instability that affects all aspects of personal and professional life. Often, it’s only a week or so before semester that employment is confirmed. One year I was actually asked to coordinate and lecture on a week-by-week subject.

At the end of the academic year I face 3 months without work, at a cost of approximately $13,000 after tax. This is true even under the new periodic contracts. In effect, I pay for a European holiday without leaving home. And that home can be very hard to secure as a casual employee.

I don’t mean buying a home – this is a remote fantasy as a casual worker. Even rental housing is hard to secure, further undermining the basic conditions needed to provide for my son and I. One of the most serious effects is that on mental health and wellbeing. Chronic insecurity breeds chronic anxiety. This constant insecurity also fosters a culture of fear. Indeed I was afraid to speak here today, especially knowing that senior management would be present – I was afraid that by speaking up I might be seen as a trouble maker. Given the precarious nature of our employment, I and I would say most of my colleagues, have always been afraid to speak up, afraid to

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

After 21 years as a casual you’ll understand my jubilation when late last year I was offered a permanent full time teaching role. The offer came out of the blue, so to speak. I joked with my manager that finally my mother could stop asking when I was going to be converted to permanent. It was one of the happiest days of my life.

My son and I discussed what this meant for us. It meant that we could finally get our own home, that we could plan for holidays. We could live with a degree of security that we’ve never had. It was life-changing. Five days later I received a second phone call telling me the offer was off the table. It’s difficult to overemphasise how crushing this was. It was utterly humiliating.

Like many casual academics I have accepted these costs because I love what I do and it’s my passion for teaching and the subjects I teach that makes me very good at what I do. The universities are as reliant on this, on the commitment that academics like me bring, and it’s this commitment that they continue to find new ways to exploit year after year. ◆ A week after he gave this statement , James was provided with a full reinstatement of his original contract, backdated to 1 Jan 2022. He had been a casual employee since 2000.

21

◆ INSECURE WORK

In their own words Statements to the Senate Inquiry into Job Security vicissitudes of often questionable management practices, practices that see me as a cost rather than an asset. In such a relational profession as teaching, which I see as a calling, this treatment not only devalues staff but disrespects and undermines the future of each of the students that we mentor.

Paul Morris I have been working for the University of Newcastle on a casual contract since 2004. I was studying between 2004 and 2008. Since 2008 I have been a casual, non- continuous academic and this has been my professional and financial mainstay.

It's a mainstay that's founded on a very precarious basis, being open to the

Precarity at work pervades personal life and impedes the ability to take opportunities such as marriage, family and, increasingly, retirement planning. It creates anxiety, which persists as a matter of course in my everyday life and intensifies each Christmas, when I again become unemployed, leaving me wondering whether I'll be picked up again in three months time and contemplating my ability to cope in the meantime.

This is but one example of management's choice of shifting burden onto others, proclaiming that in doing so the reduced operating costs will bring a better future to the management.

This is a proclamation that simply never becomes realised, regardless of the amount of change that occurs, change that adds to already existing anxiety.

Part of the reason that we see a little bit of strength in appearing together is that we are married.

We have lived precarity through both of our employment in the university sector and through Paul's employment in the private higher education sector and in the TAFE sector.

We have lived this for the last 10 years together, and Paul has lived it for two decades.

Dr Liz Adamczyk I'll quickly give a brief intro to build on what Paul [Morris] said. We're appearing here today to humanise what we know of the numbers and the stats, to make sure that there's a face that is put to this problem.

22

I think you can see in Paul's testimony the way that we embody and internalise the emotional costs of these things. We know all the really visible, monetised costs like the wage theft and underpayment that goes on, where we're often misallocated, misclassified or underpaid for the things that we do, which then reflects in the classroom, as Paul noted.

It's a systematised set of logics that is marginalising and excluding casual staff, but it comes with an emotional cost as well. For some, it erodes a sense of self.

I've seen this in my work as a casual rep.

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

I say this with two decades of experience of so-called change management.

I have seen change in the workplace pit employee against employee in an increasingly competitive environment as opposed to the collegiate environment that academia has traditionally been founded upon. In the main, the spoils go to the organisation rather than the employees, and very rarely to our students.

Change has ensured a race to the bottom for all except those making the decisions, who invariably move on to better things.

The future I hope for is one in which employees are recognised and respected for who they are, as people first and foremost.

I hope for real recognition of the contributions we make as productive members of our organisation, and I hope that the indifference and disaffection that insecure work often engenders within the workplace becomes a memory for the betterment of ourselves and those for whom we work – our students, who after all are our future leaders in business, the wider community and politics.

Thank you. ◆

I get a lot of really disturbing emails about how people internalise this sense of shame and guilt at not hitting the social norms, conventions and progressions by which we mark ourselves in life, in society – career, family and all of those kinds of things.

Also really perturbing is the way that this has come to infiltrate the culture of how staff are relating to each other – not just how casual staff are relating to each other but also how ongoing staff are relating to casual staff and to each other.

You can see this sense of shame sometimes, when people say they feel lucky to have a full-time job or that casual staff should feel lucky to be given the work that they're given.

This just should not exist. We're here to build, hopefully, for a broad scale overhaul, where permanency is the norm and not the exception. ◆

INSECURE WORK ◆

In their own words Statements to the Senate Inquiry into Job Security work done at the University of Melbourne. Yet, I was pretty sure, they had all done something wrong to still be teaching sessionally after so many years. To be in such a degrading position. I was certain that it would be different for me – that I was smarter, and more savvy.

Nick Robinson I started teaching sessionally in 2016. At first, I loved teaching. I was being paid to share my passion for writing, and thinking and it felt like the greatest privilege.

That my students identified in me the possibility of the intellectual world, and the esteem of the institution I taught in, was incredibly gratifying and motivating.

I learned a lot in those first years from my long-time sessional colleagues, who took me under their wing. The majority of them were in their 40s–60s. They held doctorate degrees, they were accomplished poets, essayists and novelists in their own right. And, I knew many of them by reputation, and through their writing.

As the semester went on, I could see the fear building amongst my colleagues, who didn’t know whether they would get another contract next semester – whether they would be able to keep food on the table or pay their rent. As a PhD student I had an office I could use for consults, but my senior colleagues had to improvise space in campus cafes to perform unpaid student consultations. They prepared their classes in the library, alongside the students who would take them. Or, sometimes in their cars.

From the quality of the mentorship they offered me, I knew they commanded respect in their classrooms – but, outside of class, they moved through campus each day, with nowhere to put their bags, or eat their lunches – an unclaimed, uncounted workforce – often, teaching weeks at a time without a contract. In reality, casuals make up over 60% of the

I had received the only PhD scholarship that year. I had been awarded one of the highest marks anyone had ever received in the program for my minor thesis. I had work forthcoming in the countries’ best journals. And, I believed I was on an unofficial tenure track – that’s how people spoke to me. Yes, as a tutor, I was being paid on a piece rate system for marking, and teaching preparation. Yes, for every hour I was paid I was doing twice as much work, sometimes three times that amount. But, my superiors told me I would become more efficient with time, and in a few years I would make those hours back.

I am here giving evidence at this Senate Inquiry, because, after six years of teaching at Melbourne University I can tell you I never got any faster at marking, I only got better at it – that is, I learned to give more acute feedback, to meet the students at the register of their own thinking. I’m no faster at preparing for classes I’ve taught four, or five times – but my approach to teaching those classes has matured. Now, that I’m weeks away from submitting my PhD, with nothing resembling a believable path to secure employment, I see now that I fell prey to the collective dream of exceptionalism which runs rampant at the University of Melbourne. It is a dream that has allowed a multi-billion dollar institution to let an entire generation of academics blame themselves for its failure to provide dignified, permanent work.

Following changes to the Fair Work Act last year, the University of Melbourne emailed thousands of casual staff informing them they were not eligible for conversion into secure academic employment. Less than 1% of casuals qualified.

How is it that people who work five days a week, for the same university for 20 years, do not qualify for the dignity and stability of ongoing employment?

Academic casuals are not interns, they are not gig workers. They write courses from scratch that they teach sometimes for years on end, supervise thesis degrees, conduct research. Many of us

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

will mentor students from first year to the completion of their degrees, and into PhD programs. I teach alongside casuals who taught me over 10 years ago – and now I organise with them through the Union. We fought tooth and nail, as union members, to have the incredible extent of our underpayment remediated, and our commitment, and service acknowledged.

The University will claim they have paid their debts, that they’re investing in new processes of payment and record keeping to correct a series of innocent administrative errors. That they’re making moves to decasualise.

What our campaign to end wage theft at the University of Melbourne exposed was that the exploitation of casual contracts has invisibilised the true cost of running Australia’s leading universities. But, rather than acknowledging these costs as necessary to funding quality education, we have seen further measures implemented to erode our conditions. We have seen our employer scrap the right to the PhD rate – an industry standard, which equals almost a $10 an hour pay cut for tutors with PhDs. How is it that a University which claims to be the best in the country, is no longer honouring the qualifications of its teachers?

Meanwhile, we are seeing the wholesale roll out of 2 year fixed term teaching-only contracts, billed as an improvement in job security. These so called conversions, repurpose the broken piece rate system we fought against as the basis of their workload model. A new lecture must be researched, and written in three hours.

This is impossible.

My converted colleagues, by and large, tell me they have never been paid less or worked harder. The University of Melbourne has become dangerously reliant on the wholesale exploitation of casual labour. It’s an addiction it can’t kick. But, the future of higher education depends on a workforce that have the security to do the research and teaching and mentoring that will foster the growth of a vibrant sector. Yet, the institution as it presently exists, works against these goals, by entrenching a second-tier of teaching-only staff whose commitment to their students must come at great personal expense. A better university is one that not only readies students for professional life, but treats all its staff with respect, security and dignity. ◆

23

◆ INSECURE WORK

In their own words Statements to the Senate Inquiry into Job Security What this means for me is a constant feeling that I can never say no to any opportunity because I don't know what work I will or will not have in the future.

Dr Chloe Killen Working as a casual academic and a research assistant has been my professional and financial mainstay since I first started in a sessional capacity at the University of Newcastle in 2007. Fourteen years later, post PhD and extensive work experience, I am still precariously employed.

Dr Sharon Cooper I have a Bachelor, Masters and PhD in Education. I've been working and teaching at the University of Newcastle for 20 years as a research assistant, a casual academic, a full-time academic and now again as a casual academic.

24

This constant stress and pressure affects every aspect of my life, from having to squirrel away money every year to cover the three months of unemployment I face from November to February, to continually having to advocate to be paid appropriately for the work that I do, to the never-ending fear and worry that I may not have work next month, next semester, next year.

It impacts my ability to plan for my family and my health, to buy a house and to plan for retirement, among other things. This year alone, I have had five research-related short-term contracts; taught for two semesters; written and presented my research in academic conferences and journals; applied for and been awarded several grants; worked as a freelance grant writer; and managed a unique co-retail store in the Newcastle CBD, as well as raising a rambunctious five-yearold. So I might be employed as a casual, but the duties that I carry out and the commitment that I have to this job are anything but casual.

There is an academic underclass and, although sessional staff provide a valuable resource through the maintenance of excellent teaching, research and industry connection, we're not often given much consideration beyond our hourly contracted work.

For instance, we cannot supervise HDR students who specifically request us; we do not get invited to meetings that impact our teaching and our ability to do our jobs; we are not included in training or professional development opportunities related to our teaching or research; we've been told we cannot participate in staff exhibitions of work; and we cannot apply for grants or funding as chief investigators or, in my case, as a named investigator on my own research projects.

This is career theft. We have not even been invited to the end-of-year staff parties, despite being integral team members for the entirety of the year and often for many years before that.

In this two-tiered workforce, casual academic staff are marginalised and structurally excluded, and there are significant internalised costs that we, and ultimately our students, are forced to bear. So something needs to change. ◆

I choose to work as a casual academic.

I am not seeking conversion despite being employed almost continuously for 5½ years to do teaching and curriculum design. My experiences as a full-time academic were not at all positive.

fit in with the limitations of my contracts, and that is why I work more hours than I get paid. The reclassification of some tutorials as workshops is also something that has decreased my pay over the last three years.

Many of my casual colleagues would not talk up for fear of losing work. I want to give voice to casual academics without whom core university business would not get done, even as we know we're exploited. I don't just teach at university; I design and manage the delivery of the units as the unit coordinator.

This semester, for example, over 12 weeks alone, I lost almost $3,000 because of this reclassification. This has been going on for three years for me.

But I'm unable to claim for all the time I spend doing this core business of a unit coordinator. I'm provided with an elevated teaching rate as compensation for the non-teaching administrative duties, but this is exactly the same rate I would get for just having a PhD, without those extra duties.

My professional identity is tied up in education as a discipline. I cannot bring myself to limit the quality of my work to

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

I would like to see a revision of unit-coordination pay-rate classification that recognises both expertise and workload.

I would like to work at a university where students and their learning needs are valued enough to pay fairly for it.

And I'd like to work at a university where my expertise is recognised not by a thank you but through actual benefit to me. ◆

WAGE THEFT ◆

Shining a spotlight on unlawful underpayment NTEU appeared before the Senate Committee into unlawful underpayment of employees' remuneration to update it on recent developments around industrywide repayments, and the impact of COVID. While we appeared almost a year ago and spoke of our experience of systematic and chronic underpayment of higher education workers, we were given the rare opportunity to provide an update.

National President, Dr Alison Barnes highlighted how the university sector has been hit particularly hard by COVID, with the collapse of international education, which universities relied on to subsidise teaching and research, followed by the Government’s disastrous Job-ready Graduates package, which stripped even more funding from universities during the worst financial losses ever seen. As a result, we saw thousands of jobs lost – some estimates of up to 35,000 – in public higher education institutions.

Importantly, Dr Barnes emphasised that real jobs were lost, not full-time equivalents, which is how the Government and university management prefer to calculate the hardworking people who teach, research and support thousands of students. This use of what is essentially a mathematical formula obscures the real numbers of university employees and dehumanises workers even more.

However, NTEU is very much aware of who the workers in our universities are.

We know that higher education is a feminised industry, but not at senior management levels. We also know that it is one that relies on insecure employment, with only one in three jobs being permanent.

It is also one where underpayment – wage theft – is systematic and widespread. In a 2020 survey we undertook of 2,174 professional and academic staff at every university (except CDU) almost four in five academic respondents claimed one or other form of underpayment. In October 2021, the Fair Work Ombudsman announced that it was investigating 14 institutions over underpayment.

The Union is the first to welcome the spotlight that is now on the treatment of

university employers.

However, the NTEU has been pursuing pay justice for higher education workers – be those academics or professional staff – for many years.

Wage theft is a core Union concern. We have run campaigns and surveys, taken industrial action, pursued bargaining claims, raised disputes, exposed injustices in the media, lobbied politicians, provided briefings, made submissions and appeared before inquiries. We have had countless conversations with members who have been exploited, advocated on their behalf with recalcitrant managements, and taken industrial action to enforce their rights.

It has taken thousands of hours of work and dedicated resources by NTEU delegates, activists, members, staff and officials. It has been hard, but we have had wins, recouping millions; in the last few years, just from Victorian universities alone, around $30m has been refunded to underpaid staff, mostly casuals.

Unfortunately, this is the tip of the iceberg of what is really owed. That it is primarily the most precariously employed who are most vulnerable to wage theft is no coincidence – there is a clear link between underpayment and job insecurity. Insecurely employed workers are seen as the ‘cheapest’ labour and least likely to speak up should they be underpaid. They are often fearful of losing what work they may hope to get and university managements profit from this fear. Despite

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

Image: Lightwise/123rf

this, NTEU members have repeatedly taken the stand to give often shocking evidence to Government inquiries and hearings. Their individual accounts of the exploitation that permeates through our higher education system are compelling and informed through their own lived experiences.

At the Inquiry, Swinburne casual academic and NTEU member, David Harris spoke not only of chronic wage theft, but of demands for repayment by the University, who through their own error overpaid him and dozens of others.

Even worse, over the Christmas/New Year holiday, the University sent emails of demand to his university account – when he wasn’t employed at that time – and then engaged debt collectors who threatened his credit rating, all to recover a few hundred dollars. At the same time, the University owed him thousands of dollars. continued overpage...

25

◆ WAGE THEFT

Shining a spotlight on unlawful underpayment cont...

One witness chose to present their evidence anonymously, fearing retributions would jeopardise future employment opportunities. However, they were able to describe how their university had not only repeatedly underpaid them but, after action was taken and the University admitted underpayment, only partly repaid what was owed.

Another witness, Hayley Singer, told how she was even ‘paid’ for her work on a postgraduate advisory panel as a casual academic with a gift voucher. As she told the Inquiry, gift vouchers don’t pay rent, medical bills or transport costs, nor attract superannuation. It certainly isn’t appropriate payment for work the University wants and expects.

Even worse, the witness detailed how management also took steps to prevent their conversion to permanent employment, despite our witness having met the work tests that otherwise would trigger conversion.

While being able to tell our political representatives about these and other similar experiences is vital in fighting the rhetoric of university managements who maintain there are no problems with their employment practices, there is more at stake. It is also an opportunity for NTEU

members to have a direct and unfiltered voice to power, and to shine a light on the reality of what their lived experiences.

We have made important gains and had meaningful wins in the fight on wage theft and insecure employment, and the focus now is on employers – that we have come this far is due to the tireless work of our activists, our elected officials and staff and, most importantly, our members who have chosen to speak out. ◆ Terri MacDonald, Director (Policy & Research)

In their own words Statements to the Inquiry into Unlawful Underpayment been doing these units for the last 5 years.

The number of hours are all the same – more than 150 hours for each year, except last year. I am eligible for conversion.

They dropped my hours from almost 200 hours to 62 hours in the first semester.

I was contacted by the Unit Convener in the second semester in 2021 to do more than 50 hours, which would be enough for me to meet the minimum requirements for conversion. But they cancelled everything two days before the start of the semester.

Witness 2 The problem started in 2020, when the University moved to the online learning. At the end of the year, I applied for conversion. Basically, I advised them of what I had done and the hours that I was paid on that basis or at that rate.

Basically, the Department Chair instructed the Unit Convener not to give me any classes in the current semester, in order to avoid my conversion. My belief is that maybe it is because I spoke up.

I said: 'This is not the fair payment. I didn't get my fair payment for last year.' In my belief, mostly it is related to that. I have

26

I already lodged a formal complaint in the first semester through the Union. To the Union I said, 'I will be targeted for the upcoming semester.' Unfortunately, the University failed to investigate my allegation. When they cancelled my classes, I went to them again and they said: 'We didn't cancel your classes because we targeted you in order to avoid conversion.

We want to save some money in teaching this class.'

That is wrong because the hours taken from me were given to the permanent staff and another sessional. So they just played around in order to avoid my employment.

Senator Faruqi: So there was no money saved?

There was no money saved at all. I tried to talk with the Department Chair and the Dean at the time. I said 'I've been

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

working for [the University] for the last 6 years.'

Especially during COVID-19, we used to give more of our free time in order to support the students. We moved to online learning, but the students needed more help with online learning. It is not normal tuition we did through the pandemic, especially in 2020. But they don't care about all that.

Our feedback is good. We maintain this feedback. Especially in the last two or three years I have had more than nine out of 10 in student feedback. They don't look at this at all. They don't look at my work in the previous years. They just want to avoid my application.

As a casual, I have no chance to stand in front of the University. They have lawyers. I went to the Fair Work Commission (FWC). They said, 'You can't represent yourself.' At the end they said, 'You need to submit your case in court form.' I do not have the knowledge to do this. I went to a lawyer and they said, 'We will charge you $20,000.' I can't afford to risk $20,000 to support my case.

So I had to go to the FWC. Then, on my payment, which they had to pay me from 2020 (and they agreed at the beginning of the year to pay after I dropped the case) they gave me only $1,500 out of $6,000 and they said, 'This is your money and we will not give you any more.' ◆

WAGE THEFT ◆

In their own words Statements to the Inquiry into Unlawful Underpayment help them navigate the bureaucracy of these universities as well as the day-today lives of a COVID student.

But this goes way beyond COVID as well.

I'm underpaid in almost every aspect.

The Catch 22 with this is, if I did my job according to the standard to which I'm paid at the University, I would be considered a pretty poor teacher. The University could then turn around to me and say, 'Well, you're not very good, your student feedback doesn't give you a very good recommendation, and therefore we can let you go.'

David Harris I've been teaching at Swinburne University for six years now – or just under six years.

It's a job I am very passionate about with students that I'm very passionate about teaching.

A problem with the sector is that it relies on my goodwill and my love for teaching and my care for the students to do work that would be minimum requirements.

The University itself doesn't pay me to meet those minimum requirements, so to speak. I'm supposed to give good feedback on an assignment. I'm supposed to give detailed understanding and focus to what a student is creating or making or if they're having out-of-hours issues or problems.

Over the last two years, I can say quite clearly that I have had tens of students come to me with mental health problems, with economic problems. A number of these are international students as well, who seek my guidance on how to

So it relies on me needing to prove to them constantly that I am good enough to be employed for another semester, and if I don't do that then I am technically working to their standard or to what I am being paid for but I have the risk of being let go.

Senator Faruqi: Despite casual staff being underpaid by thousands upon thousands of dollars, the University then sent debt collectors after you for three hundred and something dollars that you owed them?

Yes, that's correct. It was about $332.82.

That number is burned into my brain.

They attempted to contact me during the Christmas period with a single phone call.

I am not employed at the University during holiday breaks; I am only employed during the semesters that I teach.

They tried to call me. They left a message.

I tried to call them back and reached an answering machine. They said to look out for an email over the next couple of days.

I then checked my emails over the next couple of days. No such email arrived, so I refused to continue working for them by checking my emails, because I'm not paid to do that when I'm not working for them.

I then started work again once I was contacted by my boss and received two emails. The date that I checked my emails, I believe, was 20 January, and I had received an email on 7 January and an email on 18 January. The first email, on the 7th, said that I had been overpaid by an administration error and that I needed to pay back, at my best convenience, by 30 January. It was very cordial and absolutely polite, I would suggest.

But the second email, which was on 18 January, was much sterner, saying that I had avoided their attempts at contact, which I hadn't, and also that they would be sending debt collectors after me and that might affect my credit score. I'm sure all of the Senators are aware that getting a house at the moment is a very difficult process. I'm trying to save up for a house, and credit is obviously an integral part of getting a loan.

I have been the sole breadwinner of my household, due to COVID, for a number of years, and the idea of a debt collector coming after me and potentially affecting my credit score is absolutely terrifying.

They had changed the dates. Not only had they changed the date from 30 January but they even reduced it by six days, saying that I had to contact the debt collectors, and not the University anymore, by 24 January, which left me kind of bereft. It felt as if I was just a number, not a person and not a teacher at an institution that really didn't care for me.

It really put a sour taste in my mouth, knowing how much unpaid labour I had done for them over the years and how little patience they had provided for me. ◆

Image: Lightwise/123rf

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

27

◆ WORKPLACE HEALTH & SAFETY Image: Unblast

Return to work, safely The headlong rush to return ‘vibrancy’ to campuses has had a welcome side effect – NTEU members are flexing their WHS muscles for safe and healthy work.

No-one has escaped the pandemic unscathed. Even for those of us who have been lucky and not yet contracted COVID-19, we have suffered lockdowns, separations from our family, and literally years of underlying anxiety. Of course, for those who have been ill and whose families have had COVID-19 the impact has been far greater.

consultation including what is being done to reduce the risk to your mental health, as you have been to consultation on the return to campuses.

NTEU: 'So if you are relying on air conditioning to provide COVID safe ventilation, what should employees do if the air conditioning breaks down?'

University: 'Put in a maintenance request.'

It’s not over yet, but some good may have come out of this. Just to start with, an understanding that flexible working arrangements are perfectly viable forms of working, and a growing awareness of, and commitment to, work health and safety.

One of the most difficult problems we have had in dealing with employers during this period has been their lack of understanding or wilful ignorance of the differences between public health orders and work health and safety obligations.

The first are community wide and take into account a host of factors around community well-being. In a sense, they are the minimum that employers must do for the overall health of the wider community.

This was reflected in the just under 2000 people who registered for our Zoom session on Omicron and Return to work, the interest in our follow-up about becoming a health and safety representative, and the numerous emails we have received from members who have put our advice into action and asserted their rights. It’s also reflected in our members supporting actions to hold their employers to account. If you missed those Zoom sessions the recordings and slides are online at nteu.org.au/whs/presentations.

Work Health and Safety obligations go far further; consult with your employees, identify hazards, assess risks, propose control measures, consult, implement, monitor the health of your workforce. If the State Government says masks aren’t mandatory but the ventilation in your workspaces is not adequate, mandatory masks at work may be a required control measure. Too often employers have tried to take the easy way out and just follow public health orders, rather than undertaking their own risk assessment processes.

Long term the future can only look brighter if we apply what we are learning now about the protection of our health at work, to the otherwise seemingly intractable problems of workload, harassment, and bullying, which are all work health and safety hazards that can be dealt with through that system. Very few readers would have seen a WHS risk assessment on the mental health impacts of a change management process that foreshadows redundancies, but you are just as entitled to health and safety

Some of the quotes we have had from university managers have been ‘brilliant’ (in the worst conceivable way).

28

University: 'We have the ventilation data at workplace level.'

NTEU: 'Can our members see that?'

University: 'No, we didn’t write it down.'

NTEU: 'Did you consult your employees?'

University: 'We consulted some internal committees.'

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

NTEU: 'And continue working in an unventilated environment?'

There are many, many more.

As a result of these sort of responses, in the first few months of this year, NTEU members have raised health and safety disputes with employers. Universities and shortly a private provider, have been, or will be referred to the relevant state authorities (usually known as Worksafe), as NTEU members start to flex their not inconsiderable WHS muscle.

Some universities have immediately retreated when faced with their failure to meet legislative requirements and should be praised for going back and doing the right thing. However, others are still seeking to tough it out by only making minimal changes to their plans, seemingly unable to contemplate any challenge to their decision making. As a result, universities in Qld, NSW, ACT and Victoria have all been referred for breaches of the relevant Act. The problem for the universities who have failed to meet their obligations is that they either have to say they didn’t know what their legal obligations as employers are (hard to sustain when Safe Work Australia provides a comprehensive library of Guidance materials for employers), or that they knew and ignored them, or that they somehow assumed that the rules do not apply to them. The arrogance underlying that final position will be

WORKPLACE HEALTH & SAFETY ◆

The PIN notice effectively got Monash to actually commencing consultation. Following the issue of the PIN, all-staff emails were sent out calling for views on return-to-work and the COVID Safe Plan; an extroadinary meeting of the top-level OHS Committee was to update the Plan and improve consultation was held; and a formal briefing from Senior Management on the response to the PIN was secured by the HSR and the Union. The PIN resulted in the University making genuine efforts to consult with staff on the return of face-to-face teaching and operations.

It’s a shame that it took Union action for the University to properly talk to its staff about OHS issues in the middle of a pandemic.

Monash issued with PIN NTEU Monash University Health & Safety Representative (HSR) Michelle Giovas issued the University with a Provisional Improvement Notice (PIN) in relation to their failure to consult on the return to face-to-face and the University's COVID Safe Plan.

Monash announced they were sending their whole workforce back to campus in January. No-one was asked about this decision. In mid-January, HR promised to consult about that decision before taking it. Four days later, they took it without consulting any staff at all. It took the courage of Michelle (who is also a Branch Committee member) to highlight the issue.

The genuine consultation has resulted in improvements in the University’s COVID Safe Plan to protect staff, includign the provision of RAT tests and N95 masks to frontline staff. The fact that it took a formal PIN notice to

NTEU WHS info sessions Visit nteu.org.au/whs/presentations

FILE-PDF DESKTOP

Download session slides

force Monash management to genuinely consult with staff about a critical safety issue is disappointing.

While we’re happy they now have done so, it highlights that for many Monash managers, the word ‘consultation’ really means ‘announcing a decision’. This is a university full of intelligent and knowledgeable people. Genuine consultation is not informing staff about a decision that has been taken: it’s asking staff what they think beforehand, and then listening to and considering what they say.

Consultation is not just a nice thing to have: it’s essential for staff health and safety. It also actually prevents major stuff-ups. No manager, no matter how skilled, can know every important detail, and no manager can adequately discharge workplace health and safety responsibilities without engaging with the people who need to be protected. ◆ Ben Eltham, NTEU Monash Branch President

Omicron

Becoming a Health & Safety Representative (HSR)

Know your rights & how to return safely to work Omicron continues to pose health and safety risks to workers across the country. Join us to hear NTEU’s plans for securing adequate protections for all staff and students, and our position on how employers can prioritise the health and safety of university workers.

Fri 11 Feb

Following last week’s highly successful session on Omicron and how to return safely to work, this session is for members who wish to learn more about the role of Health & Safety Representatives in the workplace.

Join Gabe Gooding (NTEU National Assistant Secretary) who will step you through this very important role and why we need union members to become HSRs.

Fri 18 Feb

2pm AEDT via Zoom

2pm AEDT via Zoom

Dr Alison Barnes

Watch the full sessions

NTEU National President

Gabe Gooding National Assistant Secretary

Don't miss out on any future Friday Sessions!

Sign up for updates at nteu.org.au/fridaysessions

familiar to many members when thinking about your own university management.

We don’t yet know the final results of the Regulator interventions but we are already seeing improvements. It all goes to show the importance of being informed and exercising your rights. It also demonstrates how effective good health and safety reps have been in ensuring that the people they represent are not exposed to risk.

Simple things you can do Look up your HSR. Make contact, offer your support. If you don’t have one, consider taking on this key role (which is done in work time).

If your Designated Work Group is too large e.g. one for a whole campus, or it doesn’t reflect how your work is organised anymore, get together with workmates and colleagues, and request a new structure and an election for a HSR.

Gabe Gooding

Dom Rowe

National Assistant Secretary

Director, Campaigns & Organising)

Authorised by Matthew McGowan, General Secretary, NTEU, 120 Clarendon St, Sth Melbourne VIC 3205

If you need advice contact us on whs@ nteu.org.au, and either an NTEU staff member or I will answer your query.

Remember also that we are available to talk to members and potential members about anything regarding health and safety. Including talking through how you can make changes to make work safer. Large or small groups, we don’t mind. Please also let us know if there are any additional fact sheets that you think would help.

COVID will be with us for a while longer and will be front of mind when thinking about WHS. We shouldn’t forget, however, that many of our bargaining claims in 2022 have a WHS element or seek to lock improvements to our health and safety into our Enterprise Agreements.

Some that come to mind are the right to disconnect from work, rights to work from home for professional staff, gender affirmation leave, workload clauses, and improvements in job security. All are

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

Authorised by Matthew McGowan, General Secretary, NTEU, 120 Clarendon St, Sth Melbourne VIC 3205

about making our working lives safer and healthier. Yes, we are bargaining for better workplaces and better universities, but underneath it all we are also bargaining for better and healthier lives.

The past two years have shown us all how important and fragile our health can be. We know that we all have the right to return home at the end of the working day as healthy and safe as when we started it. By enforcing our rights to safe and healthy workplaces we can make that so.

It has been wonderful to see so many members doing just that in the past few months, and I look forward to seeing and helping many more members to keep their employers honest about health and safety during the rest of 2022. ◆ Gabe Gooding, National Assistant Secretary Find out more at nteu.org.au/whs

29

◆ RESEARCH Image: Asawin/Pxhere

Why we resigned from the ARC College of Experts after Minister vetoed research grants On Christmas Eve 2021, the pub-test folly struck again. The two of us found ourselves, angry and heartsore, resigning from the Australian Research Council’s (ARC) highly respected College of Experts in protest at the Minister for Education's rejection of grant funding recommendations.

30

Andrew Francis, Western Sydney University

Aidan Sims, University of Wollongong

Professor of Mathematics

Professor of Pure Mathematics

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

RESEARCH ◆ Sign the petition to the Federal Parliament to 'Prevent political interference in ARC funding grants' bit.ly/no-veto This was not a comment on the college, a laudable body of experienced research leaders committed to supporting the best and most worthwhile research. Nor on the ARC, whose dedicated, knowledgeable staff operate on a shoestring to maximise how much of the organisation’s limited funding is spent on research.

We were prompted by the Acting Minister for Education and Youth disregarding the expertise of Australia’s best by blocking six grants they had recommended for funding. The explanation? Unsupported statements about 'value for taxpayers’ money', and 'the national interest'. That is, a pub test: if the imagined average punter can’t immediately spot its value from a potted summary, then it’s not in the national interest.

You can’t pick good-value research with a pub test Deciding what research to support is hard. As argued previously, it is difficult, maybe impossible, to predict what lines of inquiry will bear the best fruit – or even what fruit to grow. As is generally attributed to Oren Harari: 'The electric light did not come from the continuous improvement of candles.'

It is only obvious in hindsight that understanding electricity represented 'value for money'. Likewise, as Ofer Gal explains, the national interest in understanding history and culture may only become visible after the fact, through the tragic consequences of ignorance.

In an ideal world, we could just do all the research. But research costs money: for equipment, lab space, consumables, travel to collaborate with experts elsewhere, and capacity, typically in the form of postdoctoral researchers. The investment repays itself many times over in future economic activity, but we must live within our means. So we must choose.

And there is much to choose from. How do we fight COVID-19? Research. How can we achieve a carbon-free future? Research. What lifestyle choices maximise health in old age? What factors led to the emergence of the modern state of China?

Research, and more research.

Pen-fancy

Sometimes only experts can understand even the questions.

How can we construct symmetric informationally complete positive operator valued measures in arbitrary dimensions?

It sounds abstruse, but this research could enable reliable error correction in quantum computing.

How are grant applications assessed?

Of course, government should be involved in setting strategic research funding directions. It should determine funding parameters and areas of immediate priority, and clear rules, procedures and criteria. For example, the research should be: • Original – don’t re-invent the wheel.

• Significant – not just minor tweaks to existing understandings.

• Feasible – anyone can make grandiose claims, but funding requires a reasonable expectation of results.

• Of benefit – a positive impact on the field or society.

These criteria have been at the core of ARC funding decisions for decades.

But assessing these criteria is wickedly difficult. In particular, assessing value for money requires expertise: the expected benefit of research can be deep and very real, without being superficially visible.

The ARC’s College of Experts provides, and facilitates, this expertise.

At least two college members assess each proposal, running to 50-100 pages, in detail. They read every word.

College members also select four subject experts to assess each proposal. The members then meet over multiple days to discuss the applications in detail and make funding recommendations.

By and large this arduous process, though imperfect, works. It taps both the expertise of college members – in assessing grants and in selecting detailed assessors – and of those assessors. The resulting funding recommendations represent the collective best judgment of world-leading minds and experience that Australia has proudly cultivated over generations.

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

Political meddling does lasting damage The Minister spurned this in favour of a pub test. It’s already been argued strongly that ministerial veto compromises academic freedom. But it also betrays ignorance of the complexity of assessing cutting-edge research and shows contempt for the expertise, time and diligent effort embodied in the College’s recommendations.

Further, it compromises our capacity to assess in future. Will international leaders in their fields continue to give their time to assess applications knowing their recommendations may later be overturned on a Ministerial whim?

The damage to our international reputation is apparent. The Minister’s decision has been condemned by international voices and numerous Australian bodies: the Australian Mathematical Society, members of the ARC College of Experts, Australian Laureate Fellows, the Australian Academy of Arts and Humanities, and more.

Of course researchers must communicate the goals and value of publicly funded research to the public who fund it. The ARC has long published such benefit statements. But these statements, divorced from the nuance and detail in the applications, and from the expertise needed to understand their implications, cannot be the test for funding.

Such meddling is unheard of in comparable democracies (like Canada, New Zealand, the UK, the US). Per Britain’s Haldane Principle, once funding parameters, rules and assessment processes are set, the complex and wickedly hard decision as to which research represents the best mixture of originality, significance, feasibility and, yes, benefit should be left where it belongs: in the hands of experts.

As mathematicians, we are not experts in the areas of the vetoed grants – we are the mythical 'pub-goers'. So we trust the expertise of those who assessed them.

We resigned from the College of Experts because we could not be complicit in a process that does otherwise. ◆ This article first published in The Conversation, 2 February 2022

31

◆ FUTURE OF UNIVERSITIES Image: Tolu Olubode

Remaking universities Notes from the sidelines of catastrophe

Raewyn Connell, University of Sydney Professor Emerita in Social Science

32

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

FUTURE OF UNIVERSITIES ◆

Can we grieve not for a person but for an institution?

Should we be angry over possibilities destroyed, young talents denied a chance to flourish? Is there any point in lamenting greed, short-sightedness, the brutality of power?

As I write this, in September 2021, Australian higher education is in a deeper hole than it has been since the 1950s, when the creaky collection of universities inherited from colonial times, under severe stress, was rescued by the Menzies Government. I worked in that rebuilt sector as student, teacher and researcher for about 50 years. Then I retired and wrote a book called, with a mixture of irony and hope, The Good University.

In the past couple of years I’ve watched the COVID-19 pandemic place huge new demands on university workers – my colleagues and friends – who had already come under heavy stress. This is a brief reflection on what has happened and why, and how we might do better.

The history matters We’ve only had a national public university system for two generations; the sector has been through mighty changes in a short span. At first, Australian universities were separately funded by the colonial and state governments that set them up.

Building a national system made sense under the agenda of modernisation, industrialisation and nation-building that was more or less shared by Liberal and Labor parties in the postwar decades.

High-school enrolments boomed in the 1950s and undergraduate enrolments followed, spurring governments to launch new universities as well as expand the older ones. National coordinating bodies were established.

At the same time there was a spurt in higher degree studies, giving Australia, for the first time, a capacity to produce its own research workforce. This was, potentially, a revolutionary change for the economy and society – a potential never realised.

Universities in the 1950s and 1960s were not comfortable places. They were run by an oligarchy of male professors who were

linked, especially in faculties of law, medicine and engineering, with professional establishments outside. The odour of the British Empire still hung around academic life. Curricula were monocultural, despite the mass immigration of Australia’s postwar decades and the presence of Indigenous cultures.

There’s research showing that many of the students were quite alienated from these institutions. The majority were enrolled in bread-and-butter 'pass' degrees; they listened to lectures and sat for exams but got little attention from academic staff. Only a minority were in honours streams with a more challenging agenda.

Through the 1960s, students increasingly became politicised in groups that opposed the war in Vietnam, supported Aboriginal causes and demanded democratic reform of the universities themselves.

When the Whitlam Government took over the entire funding of universities in the 1970s and abolished fees, the stage was set for further expansion.

New suburban and regional universities were launched, and the combination of rapid growth and new institutions made space for experiments in curriculum and teaching methods. New fields such as urban studies, environmental studies, women’s studies, information science and molecular biology opened up.

Both the students and the university workforce became more diverse. Yet universities remained privileged institutions, gateways to the elite professions. Most vocational education was the business of TAFE (Technical and Further Education) colleges and the Australian equivalent of polytechnics, the CAEs (Colleges of Advanced Education).

By the mid-1980s, as the political system shifted towards a free-market agenda, a new kind of pressure was exerted on education. At the end of the decade, Labor’s Education Minister, John Dawkins,

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

introduced dramatic changes for universities. Fees were restored, the CAEs were folded into the university system in a chaotic free-for-all of amalgamations and takeovers, coordinating and consultative bodies were ditched, and university administrators were encouraged to become corporate-style managers and entrepreneurs.

The rise of universities as competing businesses To do him justice, Dawkins wanted to widen access to universities. Basically, he instigated a fresh expansion of the system by beginning to privatise it.

Though a less obvious privatisation than the outright sale of Qantas and the Commonwealth Bank, this would have huge consequences in the long run.

University enrolments did grow, while the proportion of public funding in universities fell. Fees rose steadily, and student debt – more or less hidden by the deferred payments of HECS and then HELP – grew.

Some universities became heavily dependent on fees from overseas students.

University managers’ salaries and bonuses rose steeply, losing any connection with university workers’ pay packets. (By 2019, Australian Vice-Chancellors’ average package was a million dollars a year, very high by global standards.)

The system began to split, with a cabal of older universities declaring themselves an elite – the 'Group of Eight', derisively known as the Sandstones. Universities were gradually redefined as market-oriented, competing firms rather than co-operating parts of a public service.

More and more executives and directors from for-profit companies were appointed to university councils, bringing their business connections and their business ideology. University managers centralised decision-making in their own hands, imposing 'performance' demands on staff continued over page...

33

◆ FUTURE OF UNIVERSITIES

Remaking universities: Notes from the who had previously been trusted to do their work as professionals.

Managers increasingly saw their younger workforce not as the teachers, researchers and operations staff of the future but as a budget cost needing to be reined in.

The result has been a massive casualisation of the teaching workforce, outsourcing of more and more general and professional staff, and a growing distrust between the university workforce and its managers.

Exploring the role of universities This was the situation when I wrote The Good University, in the years after a long industrial struggle at the University of Sydney – an enterprise-bargaining affair in which management tried hard to degrade our conditions of employment.

Meditating on the picket line, I thought that university workers had been on the back foot too long, responding to every policy disaster from Canberra or aggression from management. To shift the terms of debate required serious rethinking of what these institutions were.

I tried to re-examine the work that universities did, their social role, their history (much more varied and interesting than most people know), and what alternatives to the dominant model could be found for curriculum, control and social purpose. I thought we needed, above all, fresh ideas about the kind of university that would be good to work in, good to study in and worth fighting for.

Well, the book had been out for a year, and I was in the United States on a tour to publicise and discuss it, when the COVID-19 pandemic arrived. I scrambled home on one of the last scheduled Qantas flights and went straight into self-isolation.

Nothing could isolate the universities from the pandemic. In Australia as overseas, campuses were closed as lockdowns of regions and cities began. University staff worked very hard to shift courses online, and that intricate work is still under way nearly two years later. Students too had to change their routines and

34

methods, learning to work from home, learning to study in isolation and needing their own access to the internet.

These changes happened worldwide, but the crash was particularly brutal in Australia. The national government, so slow to organise a vaccination program, rushed to close the borders – that was its primary response to the pandemic, eerily matching its response to asylum seekers.

Border closures suddenly cut off the flow of overseas students, who before 2020 had been paying about half the total fee income received by Australian universities. This plunged many institutions into financial trauma – one reason for their heavy job losses, now estimated at 40,000 across the higher education sector.

No sympathy or support from government I doubt that the Morrison Government worried about this effect. When the JobKeeper scheme was introduced in the first half of 2020, subsidising businesses to keep their workers employed during the pandemic, the Government carefully excluded universities.

In June the same year it revealed its ideas about higher education in a document called the Job-ready Graduates Package.

It’s the most miserable excuse for a higher education policy in the 80 years that such documents have been written in Australia. In the name of vague 'national priorities', the Job-ready Graduates Package arbitrarily doubled fees for arts and humanities degrees, cut overall support for areas (such as nursing and education) that it claimed to encourage, introduced perverse trade-offs likely to reduce support for research and, in the background, cut government support for the whole sector.

What is going on here? In general terms, both the Coalition and Labor have been reducing the capacities of the public sector for a generation; this is another step in the same direction.

More specifically, there is a culture-wars agenda. The reactionary wing of the Co-

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

alition, in step with the Murdoch media, doesn’t like humanities and social sciences, basically because they encourage critical thinking (called 'cultural Marxism' in recent right-wing rhetoric). Accordingly, the policy makes humanities and social sciences more difficult to access and burdens those who do with heavier debt.

Perhaps most importantly there’s an attitude that flows from overall economic strategy. When the Menzies Government expanded higher education, the new funding made sense within the state-guided industrial development strategy of the time. That development strategy was abandoned in the neoliberal wave of the 1980s in favour of deregulation, 'opening' of the Australian economy and a search for comparative advantage in global markets.

The industries with big comparative advantages in the short term were mining coal, mining iron ore, mining other kinds of rocks, running sheep and cattle, and growing wheat. These are industries with low demand for highly educated workers and little demand for a research capacity in Australia, since their technology is imported. In the logic of free-market fundamentalism, Australia hardly needs universities at all.

It might be politically embarrassing to close them down, but it’s easy to see why in 2020 the Coalition Government would refuse JobKeeper subsidies and leave universities and university workers to sink or swim in the pandemic. It’s not clear that the Labor leadership would have done anything very different.

Public still believes in the public university Yet there is considerable popular support for higher education. Before the COVID19 pandemic, universities and colleges around the world were teaching 200 million students, representing a vast increase in recent decades. Domestic demand for university places has held up in Australia, despite the pandemic.

Managers and governments might treat universities as competitive firms, but the public still tends to see them as a public

FUTURE OF UNIVERSITIES ◆

sidelines of catastrophe service. Universities do well in surveys of public trust in various institutions.

The good university isn’t a lost cause

Universities could have a more secure position in the economy, the culture and public policy. To reach this new position would take more than a public-relations effort. It would need a serious reconstruction of the way universities work as organisations and the way they serve their public.

There has been 'crisis' talk about universities for a generation. I was sceptical of it, but I have to say that the language of crisis makes more sense now. The riotous growth of managerial power, the level of distrust between management and the workforce, the stresses on university workers, their increasingly precarious employment, government hostility or indifference, plus the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic – that’s a more toxic combination than I have ever seen before.

It’s highly unlikely that Universities Australia, the organisation that claims to be 'the voice of Australia’s universities', would support reconstruction: it represents the managers who benefit from the current regime. But managers aren’t the only people on campus. There are multiple groups and different interests.

The National Tertiary Education Union, which represents the bulk of university staff, has been discussing alternatives for the sector and paying more attention to casualisation. Student organisations, too, could support a different future.

Let’s consider just one aspect of the work done in universities. The commonest image of university teaching is a lecture.

Holding forth to students sitting in neat rows is what professors and lecturers are supposed to do, even if the podium is replaced with a screen. But that’s not the heart of higher education.

University teaching builds a relationship between groups of students who have adult intellectual capacities, and the complex structure of research-based knowledge. It does not simply train young people for current jobs; it educates graduates who can think for themselves from a base of solid knowledge and relevant method.

The process needs co-operation across the university workforce, a supportive environment and an intricate, two-way learning process between teachers and students. That can’t be commanded from above nor automated from outside. Universities work from below, and that is their strength. There is democratic potential in the nature of the work itself.

But, classically, a 'crisis' is not just a threatening situation. It’s a turning point, which may be for the worse or for the better.

For the better – how? There’s a need for imagination, creating new models of university life and work. There’s a need for internal reform, for industrial democracy.

There’s a need for policy work, for more stable funding and more secure jobs.

There’s certainly a need for more rational co-operation among universities. There’s a need for more effective support from universities’ multiple constituencies. And underlying all of these, there’s a need to organise – among university workers, among students and their families, and beyond.

Coming back to the questions I raised at the start, yes, there is reason to grieve for what’s been done to institutions that were flourishing, though flawed. And there’s reason for anger at what’s been done to a whole generation of university workers. This wasn’t necessary, and it isn’t necessary now.

It won’t be easy to turn the situation around, but it can happen. Good universities are possible, if we are determined to make them. ◆ Raewyn Connell is Professor Emerita in Social Science, University of Sydney, and an NTEU Life Member This article is republished with permission from Griffith Review 75: Learning Curves, edited by Ashley Hay. It is an edited extract published in The Conversation, 4 February 2022.

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

35

◆ INTERNATIONAL Image: Hong Kong anti-extradition rally, June 2019 Etan Liam

Exodus hits Hong Kong universities as professors and students leave The number of students who quit their studies at Hong Kong’s eight government-funded universities in the last academic year jumped by a record 24% over the year before, official figures show, while separate figures showed around 290 academic staff left the eight public universities in the past year. This is far higher than the numbers reaching retirement age.

Hong Kong’s University Grants Committee (UGC), which distributes government money to public higher education institutions, this month revealed the latest figures for the number of students who discontinued their studies in the 2020-21 academic year. A total of 2,212 students, or 2.6% of about 85,000 full-time undergraduates, left university midway through their degree program, up sharply from the 1,779, or 2.1% of the total, recorded the year before.

36

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

The number of departures from universities is the highest since 2003 – the earliest year for which the figures are available.

The dropout rate has increased since the introduction of the National Security Law imposed on Hong Kong in July 2020, but large numbers also dropped out due to the coronavirus pandemic when universities closed and classes were shifted online.

INTERNATIONAL ◆

Hong Kong has seen a major exodus, mainly of professionals following the anti-extradition bill protests in 2019 and the introduction of the National Security Law in July 2020, which has led to a particularly high dropout rate from schools as families emigrate.

But academics noted that it was more unusual for university undergraduates to give up a degree course after a year or more of study.

The Hong Kong Government revealed that more than 89,000 residents had left Hong Kong, which has a population of 7.4 million, in the 12 months since the imposition of the security law – a 60-year high.

Some of the first to leave Hong Kong as part of the latest exodus in 2020 and 2021 were pro-democracy student activists, student union leaders and lawmakers fleeing persecution.

In one case Hong Kong prosecutors asked a court to proceed with the trial of student Wong Ting Tao in her absence, after she jumped bail and fled the city following her arrest during a November 2019 anti-government protest at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), but trial in absentia has so far been denied by the courts.

Leaving to take advantage of new visa policies But for many students, university closures in 2019 due to large-scale street protests, and then closures in 2020 and 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic, meant it was easier to start degrees afresh overseas.

Special visa policies for Hong Kong people brought in by the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and Australia, in the past two years, also meant leaving for an overseas degree in order to benefit from new ‘stay-on’ lifeboat policies for Hong Kongers made it worthwhile for students to give up on already-started degrees, explained one academic at CUHK, on condition of anonymity.

'Some students and their families feared the generous policies announced by some Western countries might be temporary and it would be better to leave before the doors shut,' he said.

A record number of Hong Kong people chose to study in Canada in 2021 – a three-fold jump from 2020. Some 4,915 Hong Kong people obtained study permits from Canada between January and September 2021 after Canada announced new immigration pathways in February 2021 for those who complete post-sec-

ondary education at designated Canadian institutions, with the offer remaining in effect until August 2026.

'Canada has said the policy could be revoked at any time, which helps to explain the rush by Hong Kongers to start their studies now,' according to one immigration consultant, particularly as Canada’s borders remained open during the pandemic.

Of those who dropped out from Hong Kong’s universities, many were from its most prestigious institutions. Hong Kong University (HKU), one of the top-ranked universities in Asia, lost the most students – 445 (2.6%) dropped out – a 30% increase compared with 343 discontinuing their studies in 2019-20. CUHK, another highly ranked university, saw 398 students (2.3%) leave, up from 305 (1.7%) the year before.

The figure at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, along with CUHK, the scene of some of the fiercest campus clashes in 2019, which led to many of its students facing police charges, was 2.3% or a loss of 346 students, up from 2.2% – 329 dropouts the year before.

An HKU spokesperson said students left for a variety of reasons including failing to attain satisfactory academic results and said the percentage of students leaving HKU is about the same as other universities. HKU will provide assistance for students with learning difficulties.

But HKU also lost 31 academic staff during 2020-21, up 25% from 2019-20, according to separate UGC figures released in January.

The pandemic drives student dropout rate in Asia These latest student dropout figures follow a previous high rate for the 2019-20 academic year which saw a 15% dropout rate compared with the year before that, and despite schemes launched by some of Hong Kong’s top universities to assist students facing hardship due to the pandemic.

Other countries in East Asia have seen university dropout numbers rise but some, like Singapore, saw fewer leave mid-degree, and even recorded extra numbers as some universities increased places to absorb large numbers of Singaporean students unable to travel abroad to take up exchanges or other places in overseas universities.

Japan recorded 11,852 dropouts from universities and colleges between April and August 2021, and 12,322 in 2020

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

overall, according to official figures. But this is a tiny proportion of the 2.92 million students enrolled in Japanese universities overall – less than 0.4% compared to Hong Kong universities losing 2.5% of undergraduates before they completed their degrees.

South Korea saw mainly temporary deferrals due to discontent over the quality of online teaching, as well as dropouts due to economic hardship brought on by the pandemic.

Combating the dropout rate Overall emigration from Hong Kong has impacted all sectors. Nearly 2,000 civil servants quit working for the Hong Kong Government in 2020-21, according to the latest figures, the highest in at least 15 years. Around 1,000 high school teachers left in 2021, almost double the previous two years combined, according to the Hong Kong Association of Heads of Secondary Schools.

But it is most noticeable in the education sector where 19,300 pupils withdrew from Hong Kong schools in 2020-21, according to figures from the Hong Kong Education Bureau, with some classes having to merge.

'Hong Kong is a free society,' said Hong Kong’s Education Secretary Kevin Yeung in July last year.

'Of course there are people leaving Hong Kong. They are free to make these choices. In terms of the changes in the number of students, we’ve been staying in contact with schools. If the changes are long-term and structural, we will think of long-term solutions.'

Concerned about the impact on schools including the most sought after and academic schools in Hong Kong which feed into its best universities, HKU last year announced generous scholarships for its October 2021 intake, worth at least HK$50,000 (A$8,900) to each student achieving a score in their school leaving exam within the top 1% of the cohort, and with no cap on the number of scholarships available.

HKU’s business faculty announced that students who attain the top grade in six subjects could receive a scholarship worth HK$250,000 (A$44,515). ◆ Mimi Leung, University World News This article first published in University World News, 28 January 2022.

UWN Asia Editor Yojana Sharma contributed to this article.

37

◆ INTERNATIONAL Image: Striking teachers rally in Iran. Iranworkers/Twitter

Massive teacher strikes rock Iranian dictatorship On Saturday 19 February 2022, the first day of the working week in Iran, thousands of Iranian teachers staged their eighth round of nationwide protests since October 2021, in more than 100 cities and towns.

Their rallies and protests continued for the rest of the week. In January this year the Australian Education Union published a solidarity message for the striking teachers on its website.

Peter Murphy, Australian Supporters of Democracy in Iran

38

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

INTERNATIONAL ◆

The teachers told the Government that the strike movement will expand unless the new classification system for wages is changed, pensions are increased for inflation, the state plunder of the Teacher’s Reserve Fund stops, imprisoned teachers are released and charges dropped, and expulsion of teacher activists stops.

Security forces blocked the roads to the protest venues in many cities, trying to prevent people and students from rallying, arrested many and confiscated their phones, including in Tehran and Karaj.

At least 15 teachers were beaten and arrested in Karaj. In Rasht, protesters were taken inside the Education Department.

Some of the teachers’ slogans are 'Raisi (the current President), Qalibaf (Speaker of Parliament), this is the final message, teachers’ movement is ready for an uprising,' 'Political prisoner must be freed,' 'Imprisoned teachers must be freed,' 'From Tehran to Khorasan, teachers are jailed,' 'Teachers will die but will not accept humiliation,' 'Teachers are vigilant, they hate discrimination', 'The courageous teachers will never submit to humiliation.'

Teachers in Iran are calling on the international community and teacher unions and federations around the world to stand with them in their fight for justice and equality.

The dire situation of the Iranian school system In Iran, all children aged six to 12 have compulsory primary school, and attend high school from ages 12 to 18. In 2019, there were 15 million school students.

The profound poverty in Iran is nowhere more evident than in the country’s education system. Teachers, parents and students are worn down with 80 per cent of the people living under the poverty line. Iran is failing to provide free and

mandatory education, and there is no guarantee that young people can continue their education.

Presently, one in four students drops out of school. According to official data, 53 per cent of the dropouts are because of economic and financial problems as well as a shortage of educational spaces.

The Government has also been gradually expanding its demands for tuition fees from students and their families, further contributing to school dropouts. More and more universities have also been demanding tuitions fees from students.

According to experts, many of the estimated seven million children deprived of education end up in child labor. Based on unofficial estimates, there are between two and 7 million child workers in Iran who are not only deprived of a normal childhood experience but also exposed to violence and other types of abuse.

The head of the Association of Skills Training Schools announced that 37 per cent of Iranian students drop out of school before getting their diploma, and that only 7 per cent of high school graduates are admitted to universities.

An adviser to the Minister of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare, has acknowledged that 'more than nine per cent of Iranian families have to sell their furniture and home appliances due to the fact that they cannot pay for education with their normal income.'

Most teachers live under the poverty line The minimum monthly expenses for a family of four in April 2019 was 8 million tomans (A$970).

The amount they had to spend for their food and only for 18 essential goods at the average price in the cities, was 2.2 million tomans (A$268) in April 2019,

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

while the minimum wage is 1.5 million tomans (A$184).

Meanwhile, a teacher’s average monthly salary is 3.25 million tomans (A$392) and a retired teacher receives 1.5 million tomans (A$181). But most teachers have temporary contracts which brings down their wages to under one million tomans (A$120).

According to Mohammad Bathaei, a former Education Minister, 'Teachers have always had to have a second job to earn their living. Without any exaggerations if a teacher wants to earn his/her living just by teaching, they cannot have an average life.'

Repression of education in Iran Institutionalised and incessant suppression of criticism and protest in universities and schools has devastated the education system. The regime answers every protest with imprisonment and torture.

A former official of the Education Ministry has admitted that there are clubs in the basement of the Ministry ready for dealing with teachers who stage protest gatherings in front of the ministry’s building.

The teachers are taken to the basement and beaten up using those clubs.

The protests and bold expressions of opposition by teachers and spokespersons of the Teachers’ Trade Unions were also answered with long term prison sentences. ◆ Peter Murphy is Co-Secretary of Australian Supporters of Democracy in Iran, founded in 2004, and a member of the Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance Find out more at www.ncr-iran.org/en

39

◆ INTERNATIONAL Image: UCU picket line at Kingston University London, 22 Feb 2022. Twitter @benniprofane

UK universities at breaking point University leaders have 'failed staff and students', the University & Colleges Union (UCU) declared as up to ten days of strike action began at universities across the UK over devastating cuts to pensions and deteriorating pay & working conditions.

4F_A2_placard_Nov21.qxp 18/11/2021 10:35 Page 1

WE’RE AT POINT SUPPORT THE FOUR FIGHTS STRIKES https://www.ucu.org.uk/hedisputes https://www.ucu.org.uk/hedisputes

Staff at 44 universities walked out on 22 February after university employers refused to withdraw cuts to the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) or accept UCU's compromise proposals which would have seen staff and employers pay slightly more to protect benefits and resolve the pension dispute.

In mid-February, the pension scheme trustee USS, which runs the scheme, confirmed UCU's proposals are viable and implementable.

Universities UK's proposals, which will see 35% cut from the guaranteed retirement income of members, were formalised on 22 February.

On Monday 21 February, strike action over pay and working conditions also started with 24 further universities joining the action, bringing the overall total to 68 universities.

This dispute is over a 20% real terms pay cut over the past 12 years, unmanageable

40

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

workloads, pay inequality and the use of exploitative and insecure contracts, which are rife across the sector. Altogether, more than 50,000 staff are expected to walk out, with well over a million students set to be impacted.

The full strike dates, with numbers of institutions involved, are: • Week 1 (USS pension dispute only, 44 institutions): 5 days; Monday 14 to Friday 18 February.

• Week 2 (both the pension and the pay & working conditions dispute, 68 institutions): 2 days; Monday 21 and Tuesday 22 February.

• Week 3 (pay & working conditions dispute only, 63 institutions): 3 days; Monday 28 February, Tuesday 1 and Wednesday 2 March.

The final day of strike action in week three has been called to coincide with the student strike on Wednesday 2 March, organised by the National Union

USS_strike_flyer_Nov21.qxp_Layout 1 18/11/2021 10:28 Page 1

INTERNATIONAL ◆

A

ROTTEN

?

RETIREMENT of Students (NUS). The NUS is supporting UCU's industrial action and is calling for better working conditions, pay and pensions for staff.

Staff are also engaged in action short of a strike (ASOS) which involves working strictly to contract, not covering for absent colleagues, not rescheduling lectures or classes cancelled due to strike action, or undertaking any voluntary activities.

In retaliation, employer representatives have authorised bosses to withhold the pay of staff taking ASOS. Six universities are claiming they will deduct 100%. UCU has warned that this may lead to even more strikes being called.

To resolve the pension dispute UCU is demanding employers revoke the cuts to staff pensions and formally accept the Union's compromise proposals. To resolve the pay & working conditions dispute UCU is demanding a £2,500 (A$4672) pay increase for all staff, as well as action to tackle unmanageable workloads, pay inequality and the use of insecure and exploitative contracts.

In December 2021, staff at 58 universities took three days of strike action. Following a successful re-ballot over Christmas, staff at ten more universities will join this latest wave of strikes.

The Union said universities can more than afford to meet the demands of staff.

University finance figures, from 2019/20, show total income across the sector was £41.9 billion (A$78.3 billion) with reserves of £46.8 billion (A$87.5 billion).

UCU General Secretary, Jo Grady said: 'The action that begins today and will eventually hit 68 universities is down to Vice-Chancellors who have failed staff and students. They have pushed through brutal pension cuts and done nothing to address falling pay, pay inequality, the rampant use of insecure contracts and unmanageable workloads.

DIGNITY AT WORK DIGNITY IN RETIREMENT PLEASE SUPPORT THE STRIKES https://www.ucu.org.uk/hedisputes

'It is outrageous that when they should be trying to resolve this dispute, employer representatives have instead been finding new ways to deduct pay from university workers. Rather than punishing their workforce, these so-called leaders need to look in the mirror and ask why students support staff taking strike action and why their own workforce is so demoralised.

'Throughout these disputes, our union has offered simple solutions that would avert industrial action and benefit the sector in the long-term, but time and again employers have chosen to continue pushing staff to breaking point, while the sector continues to bring in tens of billions of pounds each year.

action over worsening pay & working conditions. That they didn't is an abject failure of their leadership.

'Students are standing by our members because they know university staff are overworked and underpaid. And they know that this sector, which is awash with money, can afford to treat its workers with dignity. As ten days of action begins today Vice-Chancellors urgently need to get around the table and help UCU resolve these disputes.' ◆ Find out more at: www.ucu.org.uk/hedisputes

To avoid this period of industrial action all Vice-Chancellors had to do was accept UCU's viable pension proposals and take

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

41

◆ MY UNION

Obituary

Professor Pat Ryan 1946–2021 Professor Pat Ryan was an outstanding academic – teacher, researcher, administrator, mentor for many academic staff, students and general staff at Macquarie University, especially those in the School of Economic and Financial Studies, but not exclusively.

Pat was an Environmental Lawyer, one of the first in Australia. She was learned but not dry, very intelligent but not over-analytical, tolerant and yet highly principled, uncommonly courageous, often speaking up when others were silent, perseverant but not obsessive, she could laugh at herself but never at another, as playful as a young child which made her games with grandchildren such fun, she could get angry but forgave quickly and easily, a wonderful teacher and mentor who, she confessed, often felt that she learnt more from her students than they did from her.

She was appointed Professor of Business Law in February 1989 and then was elected by the staff to be the Head of School of Economic and Financial Studies from 1997 to 2001.

The last of the 'Heads' to be elected by the staff, thereafter management chose the Head. She continued in the Department of Business until 2003, and was an Honorary Adjunct Professor from 2003 to 2011 in the Graduate School of Environment.

Environmental law Patricia’s work in environmental law was ground breaking.

In 1971, together with the UNSW Foundation Law Professor, George (Curt) Garbesi, she co-developed and taught one of the first environmental law courses in Australia, a course she continued to teach until 1981.

In 1972, Pat co-convened (with Peter McGonigal from Sydney Law School) the first Australian Environmental Law conference, 'The Lawyer in the Environment'. In 1974 she developed and taught the first Environmental Law course in what became the Graduate School of Environment at Macquarie.

Pat continued teaching in the GSE until 2003.

From 1981 until 1990, she was foundation editor of Land and Environment Notes in Butterworths’ Local Government, Planning and Environment Service. In 1981-82, member of the founding executive for NSW Environmental Law Association. 1991-1996, Inaugural Board member of Environment Protection Authority of NSW. Pat continued her editorial and committee work long after she retired from Macquarie in 2003.

A strong trade unionist and social activist Pat first became a member of the UNSW Staff Association when she was a Tutor in the Faculty of Law in 1972 and 1973.

In 1973 Pat appeared as a witness testifying about the dreadful conditions and salaries of tutors at the Commonwealth Government Inquiry into academic salaries.

42

Pat was a Life Member of the NTEU. She had a long history of actively campaigning for higher education workers’ rights and conditions, especially for women’s employment rights, and against the exploitation of casual teaching staff. Pat Ryan was an early organiser of political action on casual academics’ working conditions, and one of the few who, from very early on, expressed and facilitated solidarity between continuing and casual staff.

Her social activism included participating in the first Women’s Day March in Sydney; volunteering at the Drug Referral Centre, Kings Cross (1970-1971), and the Redfern Legal Centre (1971-1973); being a member and convenor of Research Committee of Women Lawyers Association of NSW (1971-1974). Pat and her partner John were regular attendees at the May Day, Hiroshima Day and other union and anti-war rallies and marches until their illnesses prevented it.

Pat’s childhood Pat often said that she was just a simple country girl from West Gosford, who loved learning.

From all accounts, Pat had a childhood full of delights. She was immersed in nature; from her mother she learnt the joys of gardening, especially growing flowers; from her father she learnt about the Australian bush, with weekly excursions and camping every year. The family had a menagerie of pets:, dogs, cats, and birds, mostly rescued. She cycled, swam, climbed trees and rocks with her younger brother Terry, fished, played tennis and basketball and explored the local environment. She loved her country primary school,

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

MY UNION ◆

Obituary: Prof Pat Ryan continued... was School captain at High School, and won a scholarship to Marist Sisters College at Woolwich for a wonderful final 2 years of high school. She was awarded a Commonwealth Scholarship in 1964, enrolled in Pharmacy at Sydney, missed a final exam when a train from Gosford was delayed. In 1965 did bookkeeping for a store in Gosford while studying accountancy at Gosford Tech night classes.

Pat’s mentors In 1966, Pat enrolled in a LLB at University of Sydney. Prof Julius Stone lectured on Jurisprudence, his fascination with concepts of justice and reasoning infected her and nurtured her earlier schoolgirl wish to study law.

Her 1970 Master Solicitor, Morry Isaacs believed in civil rights and unions and was a powerful mentor who encouraged her to pursue an academic career.

In 1971-1973, her UNSW Foundation Law Professor, George (Curt) Garbesi, was an intellectual who inspired and guided her to think thematically, explore conceptual and factual relationships across subject matter and disciplines, relentlessly pursue an idea or documentary source, and to stimulate analytical rigour in students.

For the first half of 1974, Pat was a research associate with Mr Justice Martin Hardie in the NSW Court of Appeal; she sat behind the Judge in court and listened to the arguments and saw the final writing-up of judgments. This was invaluable experience for a young lawyer, in both practical and intellectual senses. Sadly, Justice Hardie died unexpectedly midway through the year.

At the end 1974, after discussion with Associate Professor Basil Shtein, Head of the Business Law at Macquarie, she obtained a Senior Tutorship in Business Law, on the understanding that she would continue to contribute to the emerging Centre for the Environment. Consequently, she became enthused about teaching law to students who didn’t intend to practise, and embarked upon a career-long love of researching and teaching environmental issues in a multidisciplinary context.

Pat never undertook a PhD, despite supervising and examining higher degree candidates throughout her academic life, including Supervisor of the Year Award 2004, Macquarie University Postgraduate Representative Association. However, the scope and size of her research-work LLM was considered as equivalent to a PhD. She obtained an LLM by thesis from UNSW under the supervision of Professor Harry Whitmore. on Compulsory Acquisition of Land, attempting to integrate black letter law with historical and jurisprudential elements of salient policy issues about confiscating property and compensation concepts.

Pat’s influential role in the life of Macquarie University can be seen through her active participation on so many of its boards and committees,active participation in over 20 University committees, including membership of Academic Senate. To recognise her contributions the University held a Memorial Service for Emeritus Professor Patricia Frances Ryan at the Arts Precinct Function Centre on 3rd June. It was organised by the Macquarie Business School. There were 10 speakers from different areas of Pat’s activities and more than 100 guests

reminisced and remembered her contributions to their lives. It closed when a memorial tree for Pat was planted on University grounds in an area where she often walked at lunchtimes.

Some words from Pat's Memorial Service Pat was a marvellous advocate. Her highly principled statements were usually flawless – typically presented clearly and logically. Sometimes (indeed quite often) they were contrary to the University corporate policy. However, they were authoritative and constructive, always pointing out what was ethically correct and realistic. When Pat was speaking, everybody sat up and listened. She is sorely missed.

Emeritus Professor Brian Orr (Molecular and Optical Physics) The Enterprise Agreement which she and her partner John led and had a large share in shaping is still a very bright spot in Macquarie University’s history. People have strong memories of Pat's graceful comments on Col Cashman’s contribution to obtaining an equitable agreement. She always had her eye on getting good things to happen and was more than happy to forego the credit in order to achieve it. Such leadership is so rare. Professor Deb Kane (Physics and Astronomy) In the Macquarie Branch, we often refer to Pat and her partner John, both NTEU Life Members, as 'St Pat and St John', in recognition of their huge contributions to the Union over the years. John (as Branch President) and Pat were members of the Branch’s first ever Enterprise Bargaining Team in the mid-1990s. Their negotiations yielded a strong first Enterprise Agreement for us to build on in subsequent rounds, when its provisions were extended to General Staff. They also established a strong bargaining and campaigning culture within the Branch, that stood us in good stead over subsequent rounds.

This is an enduring aspect of Pat’s legacy.

Cathy Rytmeister, Learning Analytics Manager, Macquarie Uni Pat Ryan was seen by union members and management alike to be strong, fair and reasonable, whether as a manager or an advocate. Across the University, her integrity and common sense were both valued and respected.

Michael Thomson, former NTEU NSW Division Secretary Pat was a modest and sensitive person. She credited the people around her for helping her in many ways, she thought herself lucky to have had such helpful work colleagues. E.M. Forster’s words fit Pat, ' She was sensitive for others as well as for herself, she was considerate without being fussy, her pluck was not swankiness but the power to endure, and she could take a joke.' As a travel companion Pat was intelligent, imaginative and open to new experiences. Pat and John explored, usually on foot, with open minds and had fascinating and unexpected adventures everywhere they went.

Pat was a strong woman whose being was diffused with love; love of life, love of learning, love of justice, love of nature as well as love for people. If it is true that that which survives of us is love then much of Pat’s love will survive through her daughter Danielle, her granddaughter Coralie, friends, colleagues, students, her almost grandchildren and her partner, John. She was calm and wise even in the face of her illnesses. She had a wicked sense of humour and we will continue to miss her laugh, her sparkling eyes, her quick wit and her patient wisdom. Dr John Corbett, Mathematical Physicist and Pat’s partner. ◆ John Corbett

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

43

◆ MY UNION

Staff appointments & movements

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

Long time Southern Cross University Division Organiser, Lisa Roberts has resigned from her role, effective 25 February.

Terri MacDonald Kieran McCarron

Roberta Stewart (VIC Division Organiser) will transfer to a fixed-term Division Organiser role at the University of Sydney from February to October 2022.

Director (Policy & Research) Policy & Research Officers

Josh Andrews has temporarily moved to the NSW Division.

Director (Campaigning & Organising) Dom Rowe National Organiser (Media & Engagement) Michael Evans National Organiser (Publications) Paul Clifton Education & Training Organiser Helena Spyrou

National A&TSI Director National A&TSI Organiser

Simon Linskill moved to La Trobe Branch on 29 November 2021 as a Branch Industrial Organiser. ◆

nial

o Member Testim

Catherine

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

Adam Frogley Celeste Liddle

Acting Finance Manager Glenn Osmand Senior Finance Officer Gracia Ho Finance Officers Alex Ghvaladze, Daphne Zhang, Tamara Labadze, Jay Premkumar

Without the NTEU, the university workplace academic and professional staff would be unprotected by the university management. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the NTEU to all new and existing staff.

I have drawn on the NTEU services multiple times, and have never regretted paying my union fees as the service the NTEU provide for all staff is a life-saver in a university setting that has been increasingly corporatised and compromised by government legislation and lack of funding.

The NTEU is an exceptional union. I was advised and supported on numerous occasions throughout my 13.5 years at the University. I received excellent advice, support and care while dealing with recurring discriminatory behaviour, workplace mismanagement and a targeted change management process.

The NTEU's Industrial Officers and representatives work tirelessly, are excellent advocates, understand industrial law and workplace polities, provide rational, consistent and fair support for members, and are highly effective at ensuring management takes responsibility for the fair interpretation of the enterprise agreement, as the foundation of our workplace rights.

VIEW MORE MESSAGES AT NTEU.ORG.AU/JOIN/TESTIMONIALS

Please update your NTEU membership details if:

OR

Your work address details change.

OR

Your Department or School changes its name or merges with another.

Office, building, campus etc.

OR

You move house.

Required if your home is your nominated contact address.

You change your name.

Update online at

You are leaving university employment.

Send an email to

nteu.org.au /members

Please email the National Office if:

OR

OR

You move to another institution.

Your employment details change.

Transfer of membership between institutions is not automatic.

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

Your credit card or direct debit account details change.

OR

Deductions will not stop automatically.

national @nteu.org.au

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

44

ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022

Amazing Rewards Everyday Get more with your NTEU members platform Your benefits platform unlocks thousands of savings and exclusive benefits, just for members. Get the best deals while you’re doing the weekly shop, booking a holiday, updating your living space, looking after your health, and everything in between! Available online, 24/7. That’s your Member Advantage.

All your shopping needs including real-time and fast access to discounted e-gift cards, whitegoods, and electronic accessories.

Everything for your vehicle needs, including new cars, insurance and fuel egift cards.

Dedicated brokers for insurance needs, from house & contents to income protection.

Accommodation, tours, airline lounges and more travel benefits as business travel returns.

Great offers on international money transfers, financial planning and credit cards.

nteu.memberadvantage.com.au For more information e: customercare@memberadvantage.com.au | ph: 1300 853 352.