Victoria University: Staff Vote ‘No Confidence’ in VC, 48 hour Strike on April 28-29
NTEU VUT Branch Media Release 11 April 2005
University staff at Melbourne’s Victoria University of Technology have expressed their growing frustration and dissatisfaction with the University’s Vice Chancellor, Professor Elizabeth Harman, by passing a unanimous motion of No Confidence in Professor Harman at meetings held by the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU). Staff also unanimously voted to support the NTEU’s recommendation for a 48-hour strike action on April 28 and 29 across the University’s campuses in the Western region of Melbourne.
Staff represented by the NTEU have been locked in protracted industrial negotiations since 2003, a period marked by deteriorating relations between staff and management over a range of issues, including enterprise bargaining, management moves to dismantle the University’s Academic Board, and job and service losses arising from a Faculty reorganisation.
Since taking over as Vice-Chancellor in October 2003, Professor Harman has presided over industrial unrest and the growing demoralisation of the University’s staff. Despite rhetoric about a ‘new culture’ of management Professor Harman’s tenure is now associated with an unprecedented sense of crisis and deterioration in the quality of the University’s core activities of teaching, research and scholarship.
A planned 48-hour strike prior to Easter was suspended when Professor Elizabeth Harman agreed to key union items, including a three-year agreement to 2008. Professor Harman reneged on the deal at the last minute. Professor Harman and her management colleagues have subsequently made a range of contradictory statements on the issue, further deepening staff’s lack of confidence in University management.
NTEU-VUT Branch President Dr. Jamie Doughney stated: “No objective impediment exists to a new three-year Enterprise Agreement.”
“The sole impediment in the way at the moment is management’s desire for a substantial, new and indeterminate concession on conditions. They do not even know what this is! It was put to us as and “X’, as an ‘invitation’ for us to undermine our own conditions! This is management’s current method for resolution, which looks more like extortion, or incompetence, than negotiation.”
“We are in the business of getting some security of employment conditions for staff. We can no longer be sure that management even know what they are doing. Staff are feeling that keenly.”
“University finances are more than healthy and the University budgets already forecast a pay increase at the value we are after for the entire period to 2008 that we seek. It is time for enterprise bargaining to be brought to a respectful close. That would appear to lie in the hands of university management. Anything else is simply irresponsible.”
“At the same time management are unable to answer the questions of staff who may lose their jobs through a restructure of the University’s faculties.”
“Management is also intent on ramming through a series of changes to the University’s governance structures that will reduce the academic credibility of the institution. When management received feedback that ‘consultation’ had been inadequate they simply rejected this idea.”
“Due to the Federal Government’s proposed VSU legislation around 50 members of staff do not if they will have a job in 2006 – the University has made no statement on this issue.”
Further comment and information from:
Dr. Jamie Doughney 0400 303 063