James Cook U was spruiking a “battle for bragging rights” yesterday – but it wasn’t describing the contest between management and union in the staff vote on the university’s pay-rise proposal, which closes today.

Union and management have played the ballot hard. In a carefully worded message to staff VC Sandra Harding has justified the university’s proposed 6.6 per cent pay rise through to 2012, set out examples of top management not collecting bonuses and receiving salary increases in-line with indexation of Commonwealth funding. “Like you, senior managers have contributed and are playing an active part in responding to the challenges we face,” she stated.

To which the National Tertiary Education Union responded that this is easy to argue on the VC’s salary. The union has produced a detailed rebuttal of Professor Harding’s statement, demonstrating the depth of the dispute with management. It also says the university is emailing vote yes messages to staff addresses.

The ‘bragging rights” the university is interested in this morning are a series of sporting contents between JCU and the Army garrison in Townsville but if management wins the pay-rise vote you can bet they will loudly tell us about it too.