NTEU sets week six strike dates

Luke Cass

The University of Sydney Branch of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) has confirmed that they will take strike action on March 29 and 31; Wednesday and Friday of week six.

The dates were announced after the decision was made by the Union’s USyd Branch Committee. Members of the branch previously voted for a 48-hour strike in week six, as part of a broader suite of industrial action across Semester One.

The Union’s decision to take renewed strike action comes following the failure of University of Sydney management to meet the Union’s demands. Those include maintaining the 40:40:20 model of academic work, a pay rise above inflation, the casualisation of the University’s workforce and the University adopting targets for Indigenous population parity within the University’s workforce.

The University and the NTEU are now into the 20th month of negotiations for a new Enterprise Agreement. The last Agreement expired in 2021. This means the bargaining period is now the longest in USyd’s history.

The NTEU previously took six days of strike action in 2022. Staff took further strike action in week three of this semester.

When announcing the Union’s plans for strike action in February, USyd Branch President of the NTEU, Nick Riemer, said “we’d really hoped that after 19 months of negotiations we’d be able to come to this meeting with the news that we were on the path to settlement. But since December management has doubled down on a series of what we can only describe as highly hostile positions.”

“We don’t want to strike or take other industrial action any more than we absolutely have to.

“But, our jobs, our salary, our rights at work and the nature of our institution are under attack from managers who never fail to show their disrespect for us. If we don’t fight back, those attacks will be locked in as the new normal to the detriment of every single person here.”