BY FEDERICO FUENTES
SYDNEY — Students and staff at the University of Western Sydney rallied outside a board of trustees meeting on October 18 to protest against the UWS administration's refusal to guarantee that the amalgamation of the university's campuses will not lead to the forced retrenchment, relocation and downgrading of staff.
Protesters, from the National Tertiary Education Industry Union, the Community and Public Sector Union and the student unions of the Bankstown and Nepean campuses, wore T-shirts saying, "Your UWS Restructure: Democracy not Bureaucracy".
Robyn Moroney, NTEU branch president, reported that her union had decided to strike for half a day on November 1 and for a full day on November 7, and to impose bans on the filling of heads of schools positions and the release of exam results. CPSU industrial officer Andrew Holland said his union was hoping to follow the NTEU into action.
Andrew Villar, president of the Bankstown Student Association, backed the unions' action, saying, "Our fight is your fight and your fight is our fight, and so you can rely on the Bankstown Student Association for support and we will be trying to build solidarity among the students."
Moroney told Green Left Weekly that the one-year deadline for the merger is "an unrealistic time line". She said the union is most concerned about the homogenisation of subjects (any two subjects that have 30% of the same content will be amalgamated into one) and job security. Staff have been assured of jobs only until the end of the year, she said, adding, "We have been told only that up to 30% of jobs may go".
Both unions are encouraging all staff and students to join the November 1 picket. "This action was only the beginning of the campaign", Moroney stated emphatically.