UNIVERSITY OF BALLARAT REWARDED FOR FOLLOWING GOVERNMENT AGENDA ON AWAs
8 September 2006
MEDIA RELEASE
The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) is disappointed that the University of Ballarat has been ‘rewarded’ with a grant of $3.1 million from the Government’s Workplace Productivity Program for following the Howard Government’s agenda of aggressively offering AWAs to staff in early 2006.
“The bulk of the money - $2.2 million – is for ‘Operational and Structural Reform of Workplace Relations’. This is really the Government saying ‘thanks’ for being the only public university in Australia to have pushed the Government’s preferred option of AWAs,” NTEU UB President Dr Jeremy Smith said today.
“While of course we welcome UB receiving these funds, it’s worth noting that no other university has received a grant of this size for this activity, even though every university has had to meet the Government’s Workplace Relations Requirements (HEWRRs) to ensure additional funding.”
Dr Smith said that even though UB staff have now achieved a new Union Collective Agreement that is significantly better than the AWAs offered in January, there are still unresolved issues about the circumstances in which the AWAs were offered.
“UB staff who felt pressured into signing an AWA, or who felt they had no option but to sign, should now be given the ‘genuine choice’ that the Government likes to trumpet, between being covered by the new Collective Agreement or the inferior AWA.”
For further information and comment:
Dr Jeremy Smith, NTEU UB Branch President 0429 334 938