[Muanet] The Australian on staff class action at University of Ballarat

[Chris Latham]

Staff sue uni over AWAs
Lisa Macnamara
15feb06
The Australian

VICTORIAN academics will today launch a multimillion-dollar class action against the University of Ballarat for allegedly misleading staff to encourage them to sign individual contracts.

Law firm Maurice Blackburn Cashman is acting for up to 700 academics and general staff at Ballarat, who will be seeking $7million in damages when they lodge the action in the Federal Court in Victoria. 

They accuse the university of breaching the Workplace Relations Act by supplying false and misleading information late last year as an inducement to staff to take up Australian Workplace Agreements. 

Lawyer Josh Bornstein was also expected to seek an injunction to stop the university from continuing to enter into AWAs. "This is not the sort of conduct you'd expect from a university because universities have a particular role in our culture," Mr Bornstein told the HES. 

"They have a key function to perform in our community, which involves robust debate and exchange of information. 

"Here the university, I think, has decided to get its hands dirty and engage in some good old-fashioned propaganda, which is not being frank with its staff about what they're going to lose if they sign an AWA," he said. 

At issue was the university's insistence to staff that key employment conditions would be safeguarded if they moved on to individual contracts. 

But according to the National Tertiary Education Union and the legal team, staff would lose entitlements including the right of access to the Industrial Relations Commission for arbitration and protection against disciplinary action or termination. They would also be subject to inferior redundancy entitlements. 

"They [the university] are withholding from staff proper information about what they will lose if they sign one of those individual contracts," MrBornstein said. 

Ballarat's outgoing vice-chancellor Kerry Cox yesterday issued a statement saying staff were "delighted that the first batches of AWAs had been signed off by the Office of the Employment Advocate". 

"The university is now able to pass on the much-deserved sustainable pay rises, with back pay, to staff," he said. 

Today's action follows a tussle between the NTEU and Ballarat over the Government's higher education workplace relations requirements. 

Ballarat's NTEU branch president Jeremy Smith, who is the legal action's primary applicant, described it as being a long time coming. 

"Despite the union being quite willing to compromise on a number of key issues, the university wouldn't settle an agreement with us. 

"Now we find ourselves in a situation where the university will only offer AWAs to deliver pay rises to staff - and in return for signing an AWA, it's our belief that they are giving away key employment conditions," Dr Smith said. 

Other universities have settled or are negotiating enterprise agreements, but Ballarat has so far failed. 

The union has pointed the finger at Professor Cox, linking his hardline position with his role as president of the Australian Higher Education Industrial Association. "We think that's probably the single most important difference between Ballarat and elsewhere," Dr Smith said. 

But AHEIA executive director Ian Argall said there was no connection between his organisation and Ballarat's position. "The AHEIA has no position [on AWAs], and there's no suggestion that Kerry's attempting to persuade other universities to do what he's doing," Mr Argall said. 

Mr Bornstein has described the matter as a test case.


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