NTEU Motions Ensure an Active End to 2010!
NTEU Members passed the following motions at yesterday's General Meeting, attended by over 100 members:
Resolution 1
This General Meeting of the NTEU Macquarie Branch is dismayed at the University management’s continued refusal to negotiate improved job security for staff, especially in the context of the Vice-Chancellor’s public promotion of the excellent financial standing of Macquarie University, its strong credit rating and its $61m surplus. We demand that the University Management give due respect to the staff whose hard work and dedication has built not only the University’s strong financial position but also its reputation for excellence in research and teaching.
In pursuit of the NTEU’s claims on job security, regulation of casual and fixed term employment and restoration of union representational rights, we determine that the following bans will take effect from Friday, 19th November.
- transmission of student results to the University,
- attendance at University, Faculty and Department committee meetings and working parties, and
- attendance at and participation in PDR interviews.
We remind the University Management that until such time as an agreement covering the working conditions of Professional/General staff is approved by Fair Work Australia, both academic and general staff members of the NTEU are entitled to take protected industrial action.
Noting that a bargaining meeting is scheduled for Wednesday 17 November, we will come together again in a General Meeting on Thursday, 18 November to receive the NTEU team’s report on progress made in bargaining towards a satisfactory agreement on job security provisions. The determination of industrial action may be reviewed in the light of this report.
Resolution 2
NTEU Macquarie Branch unreservedly endorses the following claims for the 2009-12 round of Enterprise Bargaining:
a) The University will not issue any retrenchment notices until June 2011.
b) Retrenchments on financial grounds may only be made in the circumstance of a real financial crisis at the institutional level.
Resolution 3
NTEU members condemn and deplore the University Management’s underfunding of the Faculty of Science at a time when the Vice-Chancellor, Stephen Schwartz, has touted a $61 million dollar surplus, a double A credit rating from Moody’s credit agency and the general financial health of Macquarie University.
Continued under-funding has resulted in increases of student:staff ratios and Academic and General Staff workloads, threatening the quality of education provided by all Faculties of the University.
The University Executive’s CoRE initiative, while attracting excellent new staff to Macquarie, has been a direct cause of increased costs to Departments which the University Management is now refusing to fully fund.
We demand accountability and transparent access to information about how the Faculty Funding Model is calculated and why the return to Faculties and Departments has diminished over time.
We reject the cuts to Faculty and Department budgets. We reject the proposition that staff and students should have to pay for central accounting decisions by the loss of jobs, conditions or educational opportunities.
We call for the reconfiguration of the Faculty Funding Model to ensure that Faculties are provided with sufficient funds to cover pay rises, infrastructure costs and a full staffing complement, and to ensure that any appointments imposed on the Faculties are fully funded.
Members are now proceeding to organise petitions around the issue of Faculty Budget Cuts, and are working towards the commencement of Industrial Action next week, including withholding of examination results. Stay tuned! It's going to be an exciting end to 2010!
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Branch Contacts
Branch Office
15 Paxtons Walk 281 North Terrace Palais Apartment complex
University of Adelaide
Phone: 08 8227 2384
adelaide@nteu.org.au
http://www.nteu.org.au/adelaide
Rod Crewther
Branch President
rodney.crewther@adelaide.edu.au
Katherine Gale
Branch Organiser
kgale@nteu.org.au
Comments
[ +3 ] While I support your right to seek better remuneration and conditions I reject most of the assertions you make about what students actually want. Additionally, your critique and pro-forma response to Professor Sachs email to students is juvenile at best, lacks any real substance and demonstrates a level of arrogance in making assumptions about what students actually want.
Like • Dislike •Further, and more broadly, as a part time student working full-time and attending classes at night, the re-introduction of student service levies/student union fees is unfair. I have no time nor desire to participate in extra-curricular activities - I'm only on campus at night - yet, if student union fees were re-introdued, I'd pay twice as much for these "services" as my full time counterparts who may actually benefit from these services, over the course of my degree. At $250 per annum this would add an additional $1500 to a part time degree studied over 6 years instead of the full time equivalent of three years. All for "services" that the your average part time evening student never actually uses (and this is not just from my experience). So please refrain from making assumptions about what the general student body actually wants as the NTEU clearly has no idea.
[ -4 ] you guys are lame.
Like • Dislike •