Union members at the University of Melbourne will vote on taking protected industrial action following the Fair Work Commission’s approving a ballot. According to the campus branch of the National Tertiary Education Union this has taken longer than necessary – due to university management going slow on accepting the comrades’ choice of provider to run the process.

After a year-plus of negotiations NTEU campus president Steve Adams and colleagues point to stand-out enterprise bargaining issues, notably the university’s push for separate agreements for professional and academic staff and to remove any commitment to academic freedom – a claim the university consistently denies.

Mr Adams urges members to vote, saying “we know that senior management is paying attention to what we are doing and it is having an impact on their bargaining position.”