BY BRONWYN POWELL
SYDNEY — In protest against federal government intervention into their enterprise bargaining agreement (EBA), Sydney University staff held a 24-hour strike on October 7. Four-hundred people picketed the entrances to the campus in the morning.
University staff, wearing purple National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) T-shirts or waving NSW Public Service Association flags, were joined on the picket lines by students from Sydney University and the the University of Technology, as well as members of the Socialist Alliance. Most lectures were cancelled and the main university library was closed.
On September 22, shortly before the EBA was to be signed after year-long negotiations between the university administration, NTEU representatives and the Community and Public Sector Union, the Howard government stated that universities would not get extra funding unless they offered all employees individual contracts, set no limits on the number of staff employed as casuals and removed union representatives from university administrative bodies.
In the wake of the government threat, the Sydney University administration refused to sign the EBA.
Michael Thomson, acting president of the Sydney University NTEU branch, explained to Green Left Weekly: "Staff are very angry that management is using [education minister] Brendan Nelson's industrial relations laws to avoid their responsibility of ensuring high quality academic services to society and good conditions for the people who work there."
Currently, Sydney University staff have the option of being employed on individual contracts which have as their minimum standards the conditions set out in collectively bargained agreements.
Luisa Ara, a Sydney University student and member of the socialist youth organisation Resistance, which played a key role in mobilising student support for the October 7 strike, told GLW: "The university industrial relations reforms are basically a part of the Nelson Review for higher education, which will see things like 30% increases in HECS and many more courses hit with up-front fees. If we can unite with staff to stop the government's attacks then we can more easily stop the rest of the Nelson Review."
All universities in the country except the University of NSW are still negotiating their EBAs.
For the planned October 16 national NTEU strike against the Nelson Review's worplace relations reform, Sydney University staff and students will picket entrances to the university in the morning, then gather on the front lawns at 12 noon and march to UTS to meet up with contingents from other universities. The march will end with a rally in Belmore Park.
From Green Left Weekly, October 15, 2003.
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