Murdoch University management says it is responding to staff feedback and addressing their concerns in changes to its enterprise bargaining position, announced late yesterday. Provost Andrew Taggart says management, “has made significant adjustments to our proposals,” including:

# dropping its plan to make misconduct that could lead to disciplinary action or termination a matter of university policy and leaving it in the enterprise agreement

# guaranteeing all academic staff have a minimum of 10 per cent of workload for research, leadership, administration and/or service. “This recognises that academic staff contribute to the life of the university in a range of ways beyond teaching”

“ committing to notifying staff of forecasted teaching workloads no later than 30 days before the start of next session

Professor Taggart says the next meeting with the National Tertiary Education Union is on Friday and that “this step takes us one step closer to concluding an agreement that works for our staff and that secures our university’s future.”