9 August 2023

Last night, the branch sent correspondence to Vice Chancellor Duncan Maskell and Provost Nicola Phillips signalling our desire to hold them to account for the lack of movement at the bargaining table, here’s an excerpt from our letter:

Whilst progress has been made in recent months on a number of important matters, the pace of bargaining remains far too slow. In spite of representatives for the NTEU and the University participating in over 20 bargaining meetings, no substantial progress has been made to reach agreement on the majority of priority claims that are widely and deeply felt amongst staff and our members (including those relating to job security, unmanageable workloads, access to working-from-home arrangements for professional staff, a proper pay increase and restrictions on rolling restructures). 

The University’s failure to agree to the NTEU’s job security claims – particularly the claim for an 80% continuing employment target – is all the more unsatisfactory given the University’s public commitments to overhaul its insecure workforce model, including those made to the Senate Select Committee on Job Security dating back more than 18 months. 

Vote to take Action on the University’s Open Day 

In light of the unsatisfactory state of bargaining, NTEU members voted last week to take action at Open Day unless substantial progress is made towards agreement in the coming 12 days. 

Heads of agreement proposal 

In order to maximise the chance that agreement can be reached in the coming weeks – which would obviate the need for members to take action on 20 August – we have prepared a heads of agreement proposal for the University’s consideration, which is attached to this letter

This proposal comprises a more focused set of bargaining claims we hope to reach agreement on in the coming weeks, which our members overwhelmingly endorsed at this afternoon’s meeting. 

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