ANU staff keep up the fight
By David Gosling
CANBERRA -- National Tertiary Education and Industry Union members in the Faculty of Arts at the Australian National University held a stop-work meeting on October 8 and voted unanimously to impose a ban on the transmission of course results. The ban is in response to the administration's refusal to back down from its restructuring plan, which includes 32 sackings.
The meeting also resolved to meet again on October 17 to consider further action, including a ban on teaching. A decision on a motion calling on the university to renew all contracts terminating at the end of 1998 (in order to deal with the atmosphere of insecurity and the possibility of the administration arbitrarily not renewing contracts), was deferred to the October 17 meeting.
At the meeting, Doug Kelly, president of the ANU branch of the union, said that the union was using freedom of information legislation to uncover details of a pay-out the university had received from its superannuation scheme. While the arts faculty is still being told it must solve its artificial debt to the rest of the university, it appears the money received from the super scheme could pay the salaries of the 32 staff to be sacked for a number of years.
As part of a NUS national week of action in defence of higher education and Abstudy, students and staff are organising a speak-out on October 16 and organising an ANU contingent for a proposed city-wide rally.
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