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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?<br><br>
Dion Giles<br><br>
<b>Ballarat catches up with above-inflation pay rise<br><br>
</b>The Australian, August 27 2008<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
``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.<br><br>
Ballarat vice-chancellor David Battersby said the pay increase was ``at
the upper end of what we could have afforded''.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.''<br><br>
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''.<br><br>
Both Ballarat and the union said the new agreement was significant as the
first under a new balance of power in labour law.<br><br>
The agreement restored rules limiting contract and fixed-term employment;
these had been prohibited under Coalition changes to regulation of labour
markets.<br><br>
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.''<br><br>
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.<br>
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