Flinders U members of the National Tertiary Education Union have voted unanimously to back the enterprise agreement jointly proposed by its officials and management

The proposed deal was negotiated for staff by the NTEU plus the other two campus unions, the AMWU and CPSU, plus a bargaining agent/

The pay-rise is in-line with the rest of the sector, a $2100 increase to base, plus four annual increase for 2018-2022 ranging from 1.7 per cent to 1.9 per cent. And there are Flinders-specific improvements to employment security, notably for fixed term and casuals.

NTEU branch president Andrew Miller describes the two years of bargaining as “lively and contested.”

Management agrees, HR head Steve Barrett points to the “professional approach taken by the unions and bargaining agent during this process to achieve an outcome that is supported by all parties involved.”

This seems a contrast to the bitter disputes over academic and administrative change and restructuring of the academic workforce, much of which occurred while enterprise bargain was underway.

As F Scott Fitzgerald would have written if interested in industrial relations, “the test of a first-rate negotiator is the ability to hold two opposed negotiating strategies in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”

But what’s with the bargaining agent? Apparently three staff were represented by one of the trio, “as is their right,” the university says.