Management announces agreement with the CPSU

DVC Kent Anderson tells staff that members of the Community and Public Sector Union have agreed on terms with management for a new professional staff enterprise agreement.

But a meeting of the larger and way more militant National Tertiary Education Union, which represents professional and academic staff rejected management.

NTEU members have been undertaking protected industrial action this month. Last week the union stated, “we have made some good progress for professional staff conditions, but academic workloads and decasualisation remain outstanding.”

This is win, of sorts, for the university, an improvement on December when members of both unions decisively rejected an offer from management that their negotiators opposed.

As to what happens next, there are separate UoN agreements for professional and academic staff and management will likely now be considering if it wants to try taking an offer to staff without overall union support. Offers from universities almost always fail when union members oppose them, but they have a better chance when there is no united front. “We will need to talk further with the unions next week and consider our options in seeking to finalise our new professional staff agreement,” Professor Anderson states.