Defend and support of higher education

Alison Barnes, NTEU National President

Welcome to the first edition of Connect for 2021. This year sees the commencement of bargaining at many of our universities and the prospect of a Federal Election. Now is the time to stand together to demonstrate to both university management and the Federal Government that they must take action and resolve the shocking level of casualisation and precarity that characterise higher education.

IR ‘Omnibus’ Bill

When COVID first struck in 2020, the Morrison Government convened a series of roundtable discussions involving government, business and union representatives to look at possible changes to Australia’s industrial relations system, that might make it better cope with the difficulties arising from the pandemic.

That whole disappointing process came to an ignominious end on 18 March 2021 when the Senate passed a much watered-down version of the ‘Omnibus’ Bill, first revealed in December 2020.

As ACTU Secretary Sally McManus said at the time the Bill first became public, it blindsided unions as it contained provisions that hadn’t even be discussed with them, let alone agreed to. The ACTU and unions agreed to oppose the Bill in its entirety from the moment it was first released.

In the end, four of the five provisions in the Bill were ditched by the Government after its attempts to get at least three crossbench Senators to vote for all aspects of it failed.

This included provisions aimed at reducing wage theft, which would have increased penalties for employers committing wage theft and made it easier for workers to claim stolen wages back.

It was the only part of the Bill that was agreed by unions and employers. The provisions would have been passed by the Senate if the Government hadn’t withdrawn them in a temper tantrum, almost out of spite because it couldn’t get support for the rest of the Bill.

Casual employment entrenched

The only part of the Bill that survived was the provisions around casual employment. These include:

• Inserting into the legislation, for the first time, a legal definition of casual work.

• A casual conversion ‘entitlement’ to be inserted into the National Employment Standards in the Fair Work Act.

• A provision that enable courts to offset any casual loading paid to an employee against any amount being claimed as permanent employment entitlements, where a court deems that an employee has been wrongly classified as casual.

These new laws will only entrench the use of casual employment, not reduce it. While there is now a definition of casual work, the legislation says that a worker can simply be deemed a casual by the employer regardless of the nature of the work.

The so-called conversion ‘entitlement’ offers no real relief, as any request for conversion can be refused on ‘reasonable grounds’, making the commitment probably unenforceable.

We need to defend and support higher education

The Government’s failure to deal with the scourge of insecure work across our economy points to the need to organise at our Branches in preparation for bargaining. We need to work with those in Parliament prepared to defend and support higher education and casual employees more broadly.

To kick off our campaign to ensure that the voices of casuals from our sector are heard, we held a successful online seminar ‘Where’s the Vaccine for Insecure Work?’ on 19 March. Over 170 participants heard from ALP Senator Tony Sheldon and Greens MP Adam Bandt about the current Senate Inquiry into Insecure Work and, most importantly, how NTEU members are telling their compelling stories of the injustices and inequality of insecure work (see report, p. 2).

I hope you enjoy reading this issue of Connect!