By Jeremy Smith
The federal Coalition government has set its sights on the National Tertiary Education Industry Union as part of its anti-union offensive. The NTEU has suspected for some time that the government will come after it. Industrial relations minister Peter Reith's address to the "group of eight" elite universities on October 20 and education minister David Kemp's release of the "Workplace Reform Program" have confirmed these suspicions.
At the October 20 dinner, Reith praised the elite universities for setting "a courageous example in the face of the pattern bargaining strategy" adopted by NTEU. The universities of NSW and Queensland were singled out for their efforts to strike non-union agreements (although both were resoundingly rejected after NTEU campaigning).
Reith encouraged universities to make further efforts to sideline the union.
Using the euphemistic language of "flexibility", he outlined a "few features which may be relevant to management of workplace relations in the higher education sector, where, it seems, nothing happens in enterprise bargaining without the say-so of NTEU's national executive".
These features include Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs), linking pay rises to growth in private sector income and productivity, "simplification" of redundancy provisions and changes to university governance that imply reduced autonomy for departments and branches.
Reith also signalled that the government would establish a framework for changes to superannuation, performance guidelines, promotion and general staff classification.
Reith's message is backed by Kemp's plan for additional university funding to be contingent on workplace "reforms". This is what remains of the full package of attacks on education that Kemp withdrew last month after widespread student opposition.
The plan promises $259 million in salary supplementation (a 2% increase in public funding) if institutions can meet certain draconian conditions in two phases.
The first phase requires universities to establish AWAs, non-union involvement in bargaining, reduced award conditions, variation of work conditions for comparable jobs and reduced redundancy provisions.
In the second phase, universities would have to demonstrate that they had sought a more cumbersome mechanism for deduction of union dues, done more award stripping, introduced three-semester years and ended merit-based promotion.
The development of such a plan is an admission that universities need public money to fund salary increases. However, the government will use this as a tool to gain greater control over universities. The scheme is scheduled to start at the beginning of 2000.
The response of the vice-chancellors has been lukewarm. Given the Vice-Chancellors' Committee's record in the face of government cuts, it is unlikely that it will present much opposition. The NTEU has signalled that it will fight the plan using industrial action to win more agreements in round three of enterprise bargaining.