Management and union both get a result

At Flinders, management and union have reached agreement in the Fair Work Commission on vexed question (where isn’t it?) of teaching-specialist positions.

Back in June the National Tertiary Education Union said management wanted to replace “teaching focused” jobs, which retain a research component with teaching-specialist ones. “It is true that there will be some who will welcome the new positions, but our fear is that many will simply have no other choice. When faced with an inevitable redundancy, many staff will simply have to take what they can get, not what they have earned,” he said. This was a real problem during the (continuing) academic restructure of the whole university.

Management replied that no one would be dragooned into teaching only and that the union had been part of the consultation on their creation (CMM June 6).

However, the two sides ended up in the Fair Work Commission, where they struck a deal. In essence, management agrees that teaching-specialist positions now filled are fixed term until 2018 and that none will be externally advertised unless no Flinders staffer wants it. For its part the union accepts teaching-specialist positions comply with the existing enterprise agreement, and once the restructure is in place they can be continuing positions, filled under normal recruitment rules.

At Flinders management and union talk, a lot – it shows in this solution which could have been a big brawl.