Mass meeting at ANU demands withdrawal of sacking threat
At a meeting of over 200 NTEU members at ANU today the following motions were passed by an overwhelming majority:
Motion 1:
This meeting of ANU NTEU members endorses the need for further investment in the university to ensure it is able to continue to fulfil its national responsibilities to undertake internationally leading research and offer high quality teaching and learning for students.
However, this meeting strongly rejects the strategy proposed by the Vice-Chancellor to achieve this objective, which necessarily involves forcing large numbers of university staff into redundancy and an extreme level of institutional disruption, precisely at a time when research expectations are elevating and the student population at the ANU is growing.
Moreover, this meeting believes the Vice-Chancellor has failed to provide a credible or convincing financial case for such radical action against those working in the ANU. It also disputes the logic for the ANU to demand such significant ‘underlying’ surpluses, particularly when this is at the direct cost of the range, quality and diversity of research and teaching activities offered by the university.
Therefore, this meeting calls on the Vice-Chancellor to withdraw his recent threat to sack staff and provide complete and transparent financial data to the university community.
The meeting also calls on the Commonwealth to fulfil its obligations to the national university identified in the recent Bradley and Base Funding Reviews which identified that Commonwealth Supported Places were underfunded by at least 10% (which was over $7 million in 2011).
This meeting calls on the NTEU to immediately convey this motion to the Vice-Chancellor as its response to the declared consultation period, consistent with the Managing Change provisions of the ANU Enterprise Agreement 2010-12. It also calls on the NTEU ANU Branch Committee to immediate establish an open Campaign Committee to plan public responses to highlight the dangers of these proposals, and a Finance Committee to provide further analysis of the actual state of the ANU budgetary environment. It also calls on the NTEU ANU Branch Committee to organise a general meeting of NTEU members to consider the progress of the campaign against the cuts and further action at 12.30 pm on Thursday 26th April, followed by a rally of ANU employees and students over the issue, thoroughly publicised well in advance.
Motion 2, from the floor:
That the NTEU will include a no involuntary redundancies clause in its claims in negotiations for the next NTEU-ANU Enterprise Agreement.
Mass meeting of ANU NTEU members rejects rationale for proposed cuts
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University of Canberra
Phone: 02 6201 5355
canberra@nteu.org.au
http://www.nteu.org.au/canberra
Craig Applegate
Branch President
craig.applegate@canberra.edu.au
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