BHP is giving $10m over five years for research on “decarbonising steelmaking”

Steel production is responsible for 7 per cent to 10 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and the partnership will focus on adding hydrogen to conventional blast furnaces and “emerging alternative low carbon technologies.”

Good-o, but will this be green enough for those in the Uni Newcastle community who successfully opposed former deputy PM Mark Vaile becoming chancellor because he chaired a coal miner (CMM June 11 2021)?.

In Features this morning

Rowena Harper, Katrina Strampel, and Ratna Selvaratnam on how Edith Cowan U used an institution-wide approach in professional learning to meet the COVID-19 teaching challenge. This week’s selection by Commissioning Editor Sally Kift for her series, Needed now in teaching and learning.

plus, Merlin Crossley (UNSW) on finding the excellent teachers universities need.

The university is recruiting a chief operating officer with Rick Wilmott leaving last month

As of this morning IT head Rick Vosila is acting. Mr Willmott was appointed COO in July 2020, adding finance, IT and facilities to his previous portfolio of planning and people and culture. His role expanded again last April when the DVC Students position was abolished and he picked up the portfolio’s administrative, marketing and safety functions.

There are RATs, masks and a commitment to consult

Monash U’s “intent” is to provide rapid antigen tests and surgical grade N95 face masks to staff in “community-facing areas” which “will likely include teaching staff.” COO Peter Marshall announced the pandemic response first thing Friday.

The announcement met key demands from the campus branch of the National Tertiary Education Union (CMM January 27, 28). But it may not have gone far enough on calls for consultation.

Which could be why late Friday Phil Vaughan, the university’s human resources head announced “further consultation” with health and safety reps and staff before the “COVID Safe plan is complete.”

Uni Tas says penalty rates and minimum hours payments have not always been “correctly applied” and how much staff are owed is being worked out (CMM Friday)

But there’s another category that universities around the country have got wrong – marking payments to casual academics. CMM asked the U Tas if marking rates were also being investigated and the university replied, “we will be looking at all aspects of how our casuals are paid.”

What can happen is that people are paid the (lower) rate for routine work, scoring tests and the like, when they should be paid for, “marking requiring a significant exercise of academic judgment.”  In November RMIT offered $10m to cover cases of casuals underpaid for marking (CMM November 26).

The U Tas enterprise agreement specifies the rate for simple marking ranges from $43.85 to $51.96 an hour and high-skill pay is $60.49, so if people were incorrectly paid the lower rate it could add up.

The best way of finding out if this has been occurring, is to ask casual academics what they received.

It’s a JV, the Max Planck Queensland Centre for the Materials Science of Extracellular Matrices

This is the first Max Planck Society venture in Australia and will study “study biological materials that are inanimate but which can still sense and adapt to their environment.”

Co-directors are Peter Fratzl (Max Planck Institute) and Dietmar Hutmacher (QUT) and. The centre starts with seven projects over five years.

Centres “are often the next step towards more institutionalised collaboration by establishing early career researchers and partner groups,” Max Planck Gesellschaft states.

The university will start face to face “safe to do so” classes today, however management acknowledges, “that not all staff may be comfortable with returning to campus”

“If this is you, I encourage you to have a conversation with your manager and develop a plan,” Chief People Officer Wendy Flint emailed staff Friday.

This follows National Tertiary Education Union concerns with management preparation, given Omicron “has dramatically changed the public health situation” (CMM January 31).

Late Friday the union’s ACT secretary Lachlan Clohesy welcomed staff being able to work from home as “a step in the right direction,” but advised members, “any working from home arrangements should not delay Semester One. For example, classes should be moved online – not cancelled or deferred.”

Managements may not want to but it will look bad if they don’t

There are two problems with existing arrangements.

One is the way managements at institutions across the country have variously been caught and/or confessed to cases of underpaying casuals for years.

Another could be way worse for managements.

Universities can correctly argue that flexible and part-time employment suits many casual staff. But for those that it does not changes to the Fair Work Act established a pathway for casuals to convert to continuing employment. They must have worked a regular pattern of hours for at least the last six months and be able to work as a permanent staff member without “significant changes to the current employment arrangement.”

Universities responded as required by checking how many people qualified – but their interpretation of the service test is such that in large institutions just dozens of casual staff, out of thousands – many doing the same work for years – qualified.

Even if universities are correctly reading the act, it can easily appear as if  they are keen to keep staff costs down by denying casuals access to the conditions that come with a regular job, sick leave and a sense of security, for example.

And there are arguments that the work test unis apply is not what the law intends which is the same work regularly done over time, but not necessarily on every working day.

Sticking to their take on the letter of the law could become harder for universities, because a test case could be coming.

Flinders U casual academic Toby Priest, supported by the National Tertiary Education Union, will be in arbitration with the university this month, before the Fair Work Commission.

Mr Priest has taught physical education at Flinders for 15 years, in a “predictable and on-going fashion” for two semesters across the last eleven.  However he did not meet the university’s requirement for conversion.

This could be a lose-lose for managements.

If Mr Priest comes out of arbitration with a continuing job, other workers will follow his lead and not just at Flinders U.

And if arbitration fails and the case continues in the FWC, it will generate a whole lot of attention for the circumstances of thousands of casuals across the country who are in similar situations to Mr Priest.

Whatever occurs will not be great for university managements. If the interpretations of the work test they have used ultimately fails they will have to pay (not much) more for the low cost labour many rely on, but they will lose flexibility in staff budgeting.

But if university management interpretations of the hours test is were upheld it will look as if they are using the letter of the law to deny casuals the chance of regular jobs.

Christopher Klopper will join the Australian College of Applied Professions as dean, next month. He moves from Griffith U pathway provider Griffith College. Both colleges are Navitas organisations.

RMIT announces new, confirmed and continuing directors of Enabling Capability Platforms (apparently they “connect researchers from across disciplines”). They include,

Matt Duckham (Information and Systems), Lisa Given (Social Change), Gary Rosengarten (Advanced Manufacturing and Fabrication) and Naomi Stead (Design), are new. Anne-Laure Mention (Global Business Innovation), Magdalena Plebanski (Biomedical) continue and Lauren Rickards (Urban Futures) is confirmed.