[Muanet] Article on AWAs at UNSW

[Chris Latham]

Anger as student body agrees to university workplace deal

Harriet Alexander
Higher Education Reporter
Sydney Morning Herald
November 15, 2006

A ROW has broken out at the University of NSW over moves by the new
student representative body to force up to 90 staff onto the
Australian workplace agreements favoured by the Federal Government.

Staff on salaries of more than $40,000 will need to sign workplace
agreements, and those on smaller salaries will be part of a new
agreement that forbids unions from brokering any deals over pay and
conditions.

But there has been a vicious backlash, and one student politician has
received hate mail since he was named as an architect of the new
regime on a workers' rights website.

Susan Price, a branch president of the National Tertiary Education
Union, said it was hypocritical for a group that only recently
campaigned to preserve compulsory unionism to force its staff onto
workplace agreements - the anathema of the union movement.

"We just think it's a real slap in the face for this organisation to
be then turning around and making this agreement with its staff.".

The agreements will come into force next year, when the four student
organisations that presently exist at the university are dissolved
and replaced by a single entity, with 80 to 90 advertised positions.
The 300 current staff will be paid out and eligible to apply for the
new jobs.

The new student organisation's interim board voted to adopt the
arrangement last month. Details were announced to staff two weeks ago.

One disgruntled staff member then posted a message on a website
blaming the president of the student representative body, Xavier
O'Halloran, who sits on the board that voted for the changes, saying
he was a proponent of the Government's industrial laws and Australian
workplace agreements.

Mr O'Halloran has since been bombarded by insulting emails, but he
denies having voted for the agreements, saying he is ideologically
opposed to them.

"I didn't actually support them at any stage," he said.

The chairwoman of the board, Kate Bartlett, said there was no
hypocrisy in supporting compulsory unionism and introducing
Australian workplace agreements. They were different issues.
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