By Andy Blunden
I object to the level to which GLW has sunk in its support for the International Socialist Organisation's provocation at Melbourne University last month.
The April 16 article by Jo Williams and Ben Reid says that the enterprise bargaining agreement at MU "puts in jeopardy attempts to build unity between staff and students against the Howard governments attacks on higher education".
With the change of leadership in the MU Students Union early this year, active cooperation between students and staff unions was at an all time low. The NTEU branch worked hard to re-establish cooperation, succeeding in early April in setting up fortnightly meetings between the two organisations. As education officer for the MU Students Union, Jo knows that the union branch has actively promoted the students' May 8 day of action and is calling a stop-work meeting and joining the march.
Jo and Ben state that, "A pay rise of 12.5% ... is linked to union cooperation in achieving the universitys revenue targets, outlined in its operational plan." The proposed agreement places absolutely no obligation on the union to cooperate in achieving revenue targets in the operational plan. Further, unlike the Students Union, the NTEU has no seat on the MU council and therefore had no part in drafting the plan.
The only obligation falling on the NTEU branch is to re-negotiate the pay rise on the basis of no jobs loss if the anticipated $25m in revenue is not achieved.
Jo and Ben say: "These targets include the introduction of full up-front fees for 20% of undergraduate places from 1998 ... and cuts to various departments."
First, no departments or anything like departments are mentioned in the targets. Further, the Operational Plan may not include any fee-paying undergraduate Australian students. Two hundred and fifty of the planned 3750 places are possibly to be offered via private-industry sponsored scholarship as free places in order to release 250 more government subsidised HECS places, on top of the target of 1000 to be filled by over-enrolment. The remaining fee-paying undergraduate places are for international students, a proportional intake less than most comparable institutions.
Whether such a marginal privatisation of higher education funding is a greater or a lesser evil than, for example, Monash Universitys plan to under-enrol HECS students in order to enrol 7000 full-fee-paying Australian undergraduates, or Sydney Universitys "elite degrees", or the mooted theft from other Universities via "lateral entry" is open to question. Only the bottom line of $25m is relevant to the pay-deal. The union is not party to the planning of how revenue is to be raised and does not know the plan in respect of fee-paying undergraduates.
Jo and Ben state: "In addition, the agreement drastically changes the redundancy process ... and allows for the introduction of Australian Workplace Agreements in certain parts of the university."
The changes to the redundancy process were achieved under conditions when the award rights will disappear under the Workplace Relations Act. Despite this imbalanced negotiating position, the branch achieved an improvement in the process: allowing staff an appeal (formerly unavailable) and a cash-out of up to three years pay plus entitlements, rather than having to work the time out as a "lame duck".
The agreement does not allow for AWAs, despite the universitys aim in negotiations. It does allow for performance-based contracts for staff earning in excess of $90,000 per annum, but even then preserves award rights for these privileged employees.
The MU unions have been committed to the fight against student fees since the attempted boycott of HECS in 1988. It is a bit rich to now heap the blame for the entire right-wing agenda on to the back of this one union branch.