[Muanet] Bit of a win in Ballarat Uni

[Dion Giles]

With the local management ducking and weaving to avoid industrial 
negotiations with staff, I wonder if everyone caught the following 
from The Australian. The growth of use and dump employment remains a 
worry though the union has won a marginal concession in that area. 
Anyone have any stories to tell about conditions for casual staff at 
Murdoch Uni?

Dion Giles

Ballarat catches up with above-inflation pay rise

The Australian, August 27 2008

THE academic union has won pay increases above inflation but failed 
to secure a cap on casual employment in the first university deal of 
its national campaign.

Ballarat University has agreed to a 10.9 per cent compound pay 
increase in four instalments over 16 months. Under a national log of 
claims, the NTEU has been seeking 27 per cent over three years 
delivered through two 18-month agreements.

In June, general secretary Grahame McCulloch said the union would 
seek to reverse a Howard-era trend by capping the proportion of 
casual teaching staff.

The NTEU failed to secure a cap at Ballarat but won increases in the 
base rate for casuals, a separate rate for marking and a small number 
of fixed term early career development fellowships to move staff from 
casual to continuing employment.

``If we hadn't got those (fellowships) we probably would have been 
pushing harder for things like caps,'' said Matthew McGowan, 
secretary of the NTEU's Victorian division.

Ballarat vice-chancellor David Battersby said the pay increase was 
``at the upper end of what we could have afforded''.

Both sides agreed there were special factors at Ballarat, where 
conflict under the previous vice-chancellor Kerry Cox and the old 
Coalition labour law led to a delayed 2006 agreement with lower pay 
rises than elsewhere.

Asked whether Ballarat had lost staff because of the 2005 conflict, 
Professor Battersby said: ``What we lost was a sense of loyalty of 
some of the staff to the institution. The challenge for regional 
universities is one of both recruitment and retention.''

Ian Argall, executive director of the Australian Higher Education 
Industrial Association, believed that all of Ballarat's pay increase, 
apart from the final 4 per cent to be paid in January 2010, was ``catch up''.

Both Ballarat and the union said the new agreement was significant as 
the first under a new balance of power in labour law.

The agreement restored rules limiting contract and fixed-term 
employment; these had been prohibited under Coalition changes to 
regulation of labour markets.

As part of its campaign the NTEU plans to revisit pay rates in early 
2010 in the expectation that increases in university funding may flow 
from the Bradley review. Asked about this, Professor Cox, now 
vice-chancellor of Edith Cowan University, said: ``I have had no 
indications that post-Bradley there will be a significant increase in 
base funding.''

Mr Argall predicted some universities would resist the NTEU request 
for a pre-Bradley agreement on the basis that there was no point 
until funding was clearer.

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