BY CHRISTOPHER PERKINS
WOLLONGONG — TAFE teachers set up a picket line outside Shellharbour TAFE College on February 15 to protest management's decision to close the innovative Engineering Flexible Training Centre. The teachers have vowed it will remain in place until the issue is resolved.
The South Coast Labor Council has backed the teachers' action, placing a ban on the removal of equipment from the training centre. Labor Council president Peter Wilson officially inaugurated the picket line at a February 15 rally.
According to TAFE teachers' union spokesperson Russell Hannah, the centre has been closed since the start of the year on the orders of Illawarra Institute of Technology management and state education minister John Aquilina.
Teachers will attend a stop-work meeting on February 20 to consider further industrial action if no progress is reached in negotiations with management.
Meanwhile, the institute's library staff have won a small victory in their battle to win reinstatement for five fellow workers whose jobs had been cut and prevent a round of cuts to funding and services.
The Industrial Relations Commission, meeting in Wollongong on February 7, ruled that management could not insist staff agree to a 6% across the board funding cut as a precondition for further negotiations.
It also ruled that the five terminated staff members had to be re-employed until March 7, when a further hearing was set down to review progress in discussions between PSA representatives and management.
The library staff, members of the NSW Public Service Association, had placed bans on various services across all 12 institute libraries, which stretch from Wollongong to Cooma in the Snowy Mountains.
Staff have lifted all their industrial bans until March 7, but are determined to reimpose them if negotiations do not proceed to their satisfaction.