Tasmanian Division www.nteu.org.au/tas Division Officers Tas Division Secretary: Kelvin Michael Division President: Darren Turner Division Vice-Presidents: Natalia Nikolova (Academic), Rob Anders (General)
Division Staff Division Industrial Officer: Emma Gill Division Organiser: Shannon Harwood (to July 2020) Branch Organiser: Janine Bryan (from Feb 2020)
The Tasmanian Division represents over 750 members at the University of Tasmania (UTAS).
very rapid pace, and the proposed Variation was approved by National Executive, and by members at UTAS. The Variation entered into force in July 2020.
Like every other Division, the last year has been dominated by the impact of COVID-19 on international student arrivals. Our members at UTAS have been bent, but not broken, by the demands of rapid shifts to online delivery and working from home, while at the same time coping with changes to both academic and professional structures.
Since that time, weekly meetings of the COVID-19 Temporary Measures Committee (CTMC) have been convened to provide oversight of the Variation. The greatest impact thus far has been the removal of a 2% pay rise scheduled for July 2020 and a round of voluntary redundancies which will see an expected 150 staff depart from the university’s employment before the end of 2020.
The industrial focus remained on implementation of the UTAS Staff Agreement, culminating in the negotiation of a variation to the Staff Agreement. The organising activities were centred around member training and delegate recruitment. In February 2020, Matt McGowan visited the Tasmanian Division and partook in the annual Division Council planning process. He spoke to the Division Council about the National leadership’s plans for the direction of the Union. Later in the same month, Division staff met over 2 days to draw up the 2020 work plan based on the priorities expressed by the Division Council. Division leadership continued to hold some meetings with various levels of UTAS management to discuss global or localised issues. Bargaining & Enforcement
Image (this page): UTAS members at a Fund Uni Fairly Zoom meeting, 24 Sept 2020.
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In June 2020, UTAS management approached the Tasmanian Division seeking a possible variation of the UTAS Staff Agreement to manage the financial challenges posed by COVID-19. Negotiations were conducted at a
On a different note, bargaining for the TUU Staff Agreement, which affects a small number of members employed by the Tasmanian University Union, was concluded after an extremely drawn-out process. The finalisation of the Agreement overlapped with change management applied by TUU management, in response to reduced funding from UTAS to the TUU. Academic workload remains a perennial source of discontent at UTAS. The Tasmanian Division continues to promote the creation and revision of academic workload models across all colleges of UTAS, however the overall sentiment among our academic members is discontentment – which can be traced to dissatisfaction with an existing model and/or frustration re lack of progress towards a new model and/or lack of confidence in the application of any model by line management. In this vein, the Tasmanian Division was successful in re-convening the Academic Workload Consultative Committee, which is
NTEU ANNUAL REPORT 2020 ◆ Tasmanian Division
