As it stands the government’s proposed enterprise bargaining changes give university managements conniptions -here’s what could calm them

The government’s bill now to go the Senate connipes VCs on two grounds:

* the requirement that fixed term staff can convert to continuing after two contracts worries managements focused on research. While it would be good for researchers who want job security observers suggest it would stop universities funding high-risk high-reward work, lest they end up having to employ people permanently who were working on discoverer projects that did not deliver.

* managements are less unhappy than apoplectic with the requirement in the bill that enterprise agreement offers can only be put to staff if negotiating union(s) sign off.

But there is one controversial clause that some managements may be willing to live with: that’s the bargaining “common interest test” whereby universities deemed by the Fair Work commission to be similar could be required to negotiate a deal with unions that applies to all institutions.

Whose listening?: observers suggest that representatives of groups of universities had good access to independent MPs and senators last week and that ministers’ officers heard their concerns. In the upper house newly elected independent senator David Pocock is said to be across the detail of universities issues and word is their concerns are heard in the offices of Tasmanian senators Jacqui Lambie and Tammy Tyrrell.

So what happens now

on fixed term conversion: while a carve out for research would suit research university managements, their best hope might be for a three-year delay

on union approval of management wage and condition offers: dropping this might be too much of an ask for the government so pragmatists might ask for employers to be allowed to put a final offer direct to staff, when negotiations are stalled and be approved if a majority of employees vote for it. If they don’t the Fair Work Commission would arbitrate.

but university reps divide over “common interest” bargaining, where unions could require similar enterprises to negotiate wages and conditions that apply to all involved.

The Regional Universities Network is agin it, warning its members could be lumped in with larger metros and thus caught in big-city industrial disputes. “The bill being considered potentially enables universities that are fundamentally different to be treated as if there were no differences,” RUN submits to a Senate committee inquiry.

And “common interest” as presented in the bill, could mean whatever a union looking for a multi-enterprise agreement convinced Fair Work Australia it meant; “geographical location; regulatory regime; the nature of the enterprises to which the agreement relates, and the terms and conditions of employment in those enterprises.”

For “common interest” to work in HE, observers suggest the test for common characteristics would need to include, student and staff numbers, financial resources and capacity to pay and maybe even existing affiliations.

This last would be harder than it looks – what the big five members of the Group of Eight could pay, (Uni Queensland, Uni Sydney, UNSW, Monash U and Uni Melbourne), may be beyond ANU Uni Adelaide and UWA.

However there might be cases where universities were willing to bargain together – industrial folklore hath it there was once consideration of the three SA public universities having a common enterprise agreement

Managements might even prefer common interest bargains if they were negotiated by state and national union officials, rather than campus activists.