Open Day Pressure - a survival guide for staff at VU

Posted 30 July 2010 by Atosha McCaw from Vic Division

The NTEU has called a 24 hour strike on Open Day – August 8th.  More information on the reasons for the strike can be found here.

If you do not work on Open Day anyway, this strike does not affect you, but the NTEU calls on you to come along to the picket line to show your support.

If you have been rostered on to work on Open Day, then the NTEU calls on you to join the strike and come along to the picket line.

If you have been asked to “volunteer” on Open Day, then the NTEU calls on you not to do so and come along to the picket line instead .

Management may ask you to indicated NOW whether you intend to strike on Open Day.  You are not required to answer and definitely should not do so.

Every individual worker has the right under Australian law to decide whether or not to participate in properly authorised strikes like this one.  You can make up your mind about participating at any time up to and on the day.  Your employer cannot require you to make up your mind, or to declare your intention, before then. You are also entitled to change your mind.  Serious penalties apply against the University and potentially your supervisor if you are disadvantaged in your employment in any way as a result of participating in protected action.

Of course, everyone who goes on strike loses pay for the duration of the strike – if you would normally have been paid for that day’s work, or for some hours of that day, then you will not be paid that amount when you go on strike.  So on or after the strike day, the employer is within their rights to ask you or your supervisor to report whether you worked or not.  This enables them to dock pay.  

But there is no requirement for you to tell them in advance. 

The purpose of the strike is to place maximum pressure on the University senior management to take a more reasonable position on wages and conditions at the bargaining table.  If they get detailed advance notice of exactly who is and isn’t going on strike, then that undermines the effect of the strike by helping management to make contingency plans.  If you support the Union’s claims, then do not tell VU management in advance whether or not you will be striking on August 8.

If VU management ask you to say whether or not you intend to go on strike, NTEU advises you that you are entitled to simply respond that you have not yet decided.

Please circulate this message widely within your VU networks, and encourage those colleagues who have not yet joined the NTEU to join online.  

Richard Gough,
President, NTEU VU Branch

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