BY JEREMY SMITH
& DANIEL JARDINE
MELBOURNE — "Finally I can say we are the industry union", said a triumphant Carolyn Allport, the president of the National Tertiary Education Industry Union, of a decision by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission to grant the union coverage of university general staff. "But a strong union must be a strong organising union".
The decision, which will allow the union to expand from its academic base, made the union's annual national council meeting the largest in the union's history. More than 250 councillors came to the Melbourne meeting on September 28-30 to debate the NTEU's future directions.
Allport outlined to delegates the extent of the damage done to the university sector by the present Coalition government, and its Labor predecessor.
Figures from the NTEU's preliminary audit of higher education indicate that Australia has suffered the second largest decline in public funding to tertiary education of any industrialised nation. Research and development funding has fallen from 0.43% of gross domestic product to 0.35% in ten years.
Meanwhile, the federal government has benefited from a significant windfall, she said. Figures from the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee show a $22 billion return to the government on a $9 billion investment in the university sector — a handsome profit.
These changes make education a pressing national issue, indeed a pressing election issue, Allport urged. Education minister David Kemp's white paper promises to further privatise research by opening up the government's $500 million research pool to competition by private providers. The NTEU, however, is determined that no concessions are made on research.
The union's industrial strategy has been largely successful. At the 1999 council meeting, workplace relations minister Peter Reith's "third wave" of anti-union laws looked like it might get through the Senate, Kemp seemed on the offensive in higher education and only one university had reached an enterprise agreement.
A year later, general secretary Grahame McCulloch reported, 28 out of 39 institutions have either signed an agreement or made an offer acceptable to NTEU. The union gained pay rises of between 12-14% in all institutions and had held firm on all other claims, exceeding the expectations held in 1998 at the start of the present round of enterprise bargaining.
McCulloch told council however that better outcomes could have been achieved at the rich Group of 8 universities and said extensive industrial action will be needed earlier in future rounds. Planning for the next round of enterprise bargaining will commence in June 2001, with the development of a more ambitious strategy.
The extent of casualisation in the industry was the hottest issue of discussion. McCulloch estimated that there are 20,000 casuals now working in the industry and the NTEU has approximately 1000 casual members. A proposal to investigate the establishment of a casual brokerage service sparked a fierce debate; a range of options for organising casuals will now be developed.
National assistant secretary Ted Murphy outlined a series of international concerns held by the union, including the globalisation of tertiary education through developments such as Universitas 21 and the establishment by Australian universities of campuses overseas. Greetings to the conference were read out from the militant Indonesian union federation, the FNPBI.