It’s enterprise bargaining time, which means unions signalling displeasure at management through protected industrial action

This starts with union members asking the Fair Work Commission for permission to vote on a slow or stop work. Last week the campus branch of the National Tertiary Education Union at Uni Queensland did just that but uni management, as is its right, objected.

Management was not happy, telling the FWC it wanted to know where, when and for how long work bans on the university’s on-line systems would occur if union members voted to impose them.

The union responded by committing to giving management three days’ notice of any action, so Uni Queensland withdrew its an objection and the vote will go ahead.

“Like asking Parisians in 1848 to apply for a DA to build a barricade” an observer who remembers strikes of the 1970s suggests.