The university put an enterprise agreement offer to its VET teaching staff which the workforce knocked back

Management is not revealing if it went down in a heap, or a screaming heap – CMM asked but there was no number in the university’s reply.  Whatever, a loss is a loss on a vital vote.

Apparent reasons for the defeat are, staff did not like the offer, notably a 2 per cent pa for the three year agreement and no increase to teacher super to bring them into line with the 17 per cent paid to university division employees. Plus union opposition – the National Tertiary Education Union was certainly opposed.

There are two lessons for VCs negotiating new agreements. One is proposed pay rises planned in COVID restrained times are a hard sell now the fourth rider of the apocalypse – inflation, is back. The other is managements who put offers to staff without union agreement generally lose.

Wins do happen – the last ones CMM remembers were Charles Sturt U, which had an agreement approved over NTEU opposition in 2013 (CMM September 22 2013) . CSU has just done it again last year – winning a vote to extend the existing EA (CMM January 17).

But management-only offers often fail. There’s a reason for that, while unions rarely represent half of a university’s staff,  on industrial conditions other workers assume the comrades know their stuff and trust them more than management.

As to what happens for Swinburne VET workers now, the university states, it “will keep staff informed of our position”  and “we will continue the work we are doing to ensure operations remain financially sustainable and responsible, particularly in light of lower than expected enrolments for this time of year.”

Management could try again with a new offer campus unions don’t back. But across town dual sector provider Victoria U tried that – and went down in a screaming heap and then just a heap as staff knocked back union opposed proposals  twice (CMM February 20 2019).