Monash U management’s plan to make night lecturing compulsory when there are classes at Clayton is on hold, but not for long. The campus branch of the National Tertiary Education Union took the university to the Fair Work Commission, complaining that the plan was being imposed on staff without consultation, (CMM April 19).

A new teaching timetable is now postponed for a fortnight and management will write to staff providing information and inviting comment as the dimension of the proposed lecturing change is revealed. This could provide the union with enough information to dispute the move as a workload issue.

As widely anticipated (CMM April 30) NTEU members at the University of Melbourne have voted to strike next Wednesday. Unionists will  go out for four hours. The union says industrial action is due to “the intransigence of the university in continuing to push claims entirely unacceptable to members.” These include, separate enterprise agreements for professional and academic staff and “removal of existing commitments to intellectual freedom,” (which the union flatly rejects).