Information for all staff
AWA-ONLY EMPLOYMENT ILLEGAL SAYS WORKPLACE OMBUDSMAN
The Workplace Ombudsman has agreed with the National Tertiary Eduction Union (NTEU) that it was illegal for the management of the University of Wollongong to offer employment on the condition that staff sign an AWA (Australian Workplace Agreement) – as they had to offer the choice of the relevant Enterprise Agreement.
DID YOU SIGN AN AWA OR WANT TO KNOW MORE?
Come to a meeting on Tuesday 5 February 12.30pm in room 19.1066 to hear details about what it means for you. RSVP to joannek@uow.edu.au
The Workplace Ombudsman has advised us in writing that:
1. University management have breached the Enterprise Agreements by offering AWA-only employment to staff in the Graduate School of Medicine; and
2. the University is required to produce employment records for all UoW staff employed since November 2005 (when the Enterprise Agreements began) to assess how many staff were offered AWA-only employment.
One of the possible outcomes of this investigation is legal action against the University.
Both the University of Wollongong Academic Staff and the General Staff Enterprise Agreements, which took effect in November 2005, provide that:
At the time of offering an AWA the University will offer a genuine and informed choice between the AWA and this Agreement.
WHAT DOES THIS DECISION MEAN?
The NTEU has asked the University to:
1. cease offering AWAs to any staff from now on (given that the Labor Government will soon pass legislation to prevent AWA employment in future);
2. offer choice of the Enterprise Agreement to any staff member who has signed an AWA – allowing any staff, who choose, to terminate their AWA and revert to the Enterprise Agreement;
3. ensure that any staff who revert to the Enterprise Agreement are able to benefit from any conditions that are in the Enterprise Agreement that were missing from the AWA; and
4. improve their relations with staff and the Union by reinstating the union rights that existed prior to the Howard Government’s Higher Education Workplace Relations Requirements (HEWRRs).
We will keep you posted about the University’s response and provide further updates on the Workplace Ombudsman’s action. For a copy of the WO media statement go to their website.
BACKGROUND
On January 4 2008 the NTEU was contacted by two academic staff in the Graduate School of Medicine who advised that they had only been offered employment if they signed a five year AWA that had inferior conditions compared with the University of Wollongong Academic Staff Enterprise Agreement.
Investigations by the NTEU revealed that:
University management had a policy of:
- offering employment to all new staff members in the Graduate School of Medicine only if each person signed an AWA; and giving no choice for the staff member to be covered by the Enterprise Agreement;
- the ‘AWA only’ employment had been offered to both general staff and to academics;
- the University claimed it would offer choice to someone if he or she had previously been an employee covered by the Agreement but not to new staff (however, we found two people where this had not occurred and the University then corrected this. We do not know if there are others affected); and
- the University had offered AWA only employment to some staff outside the Graduate School of Medicine since November 2005 but would not indicate the numbers, the areas of employment or the types of employment.