University of New England management is giving staff a 1.5 per cent pay-rise, an advance on a new enterprise agreement, in which UNE is expected to want significant changes to conditions (CMM, Monday).

But the campus branch of the National Tertiary Education Union is way less than impressed. For a start, the union argues, the increase is 35 per cent behind the average for public sector payrise. And management needs to pick up the pace on talks’ “by dropping claims around workplace change, redundancy review, and misconduct and unsatisfactory performance procedures.”

Union vice president Kelvin McQueen says management must start addressing union claims for improved superannuation, job opportunities for casual and fixed term staff, workload regulation, redundancy rights for professional staff, “and a salary increase that isn’t laughable.”

The union also demands management drop proposals for workplace change.