BY LOUISE WALKER
Ever since the federal government announced the higher education budget for 2003, a war of words has raged across the mass media. The rhetoric is set to heighten over the coming months.
That's because the government has made it clear that it intends to deepen the privatisation and commercialisation of universities, acting on the behalf of business and university managements across the country. As part of its reform package, the government also intends to massively increase student fees.
It hopes to achieve these goals by making it difficult for higher-education workers and students to resist such measures through their unions. But the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) — along with other trade unions, student unions and a coalition of other groups — will pose a significant challenge.
The government hopes to both increase fees and add substantially to graduate debt. This two-pronged attack, HECS top-up, has been roundly condemned by student and staff unions because they understand the enormous financial burden it will place on graduates, their families and their communities.
The NTEU has declared its solidarity with the National Union of Students and the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations in opposing these moves.
Attacks on uni workers
The government is targeting the NTEU by making another $400 million in funding contingent on universities forcing staff onto individual agreements, or Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs). They also want to remove university staff's right to strike by changing industrial law.
Their aim is to further casualise the work force and to make it more difficult for workers to bargain collectively. Education minister Brendan Nelson has tried to justify the attack by alleging that the occasional imposition of bans affecting students is "unreasonable industrial action". Once again, unions have not been rewarded for their industrial restraint.
There is a clear link between the rise in industrial action on campuses and the government's attacks on the NTEU. According to NTEU national secretary Grahame McCulloch, industrial action during bargaining has increased since the Howard government came to power, because of increasing employer intractability brought on by the intervention of successive federal education ministers. This intervention has largely been welcomed by crisis-ridden university managers.
The NTEU has also used pattern bargaining to try to overcome some of the worst aspects of the destruction of a national award system. It helps the union to create national benchmarks in wages and conditions which all branches of the union must reach. The government's now-infamous building industry royal commission demonstrated that the federal government would try to defeat unions who engaged in pattern bargaining. The introduction of AWAs is one way to do it.
Crisis
The higher education sector has been in financial crisis for years — a crisis manufactured by the government through the withdrawal of funding. This crisis is so pronounced the even university bosses have been sounding increasingly desperate over the last couple of years. Five billion dollars have been cut from university budgets since the Howard government came to office in 1996.
The financial burden has been shifted onto those working in the industry, students and their families. A number of extensive national surveys conducted over the last few years have demonstrated that higher education workers are chronically overworked and unwell. Some 150,000 casuals are now employed in the sector, and wages are falling behind. Graduates owe a whopping $9 billion in outstanding fees, up from $8 billion last year.
The creation of that debt is especially remarkable when you consider it did not exist 15 years ago. That's when Labor scrapped free education and introduced the $100 up-front fee for students, promising we would not end up in the situation we are today.
Action
There is no doubt that the NTEU wants to defeat all socially regressive aspects of the reform agenda. However, overworked university staff are keen to see more money for more staff. The workplace relations act has made it increasingly difficult for unions to legally resist the attacks. Nevertheless, we cannot expect the union to be very successful without a national industrial fight.
At this stage the NTEU leadership has not indicated that a campaign of industrial action is planned, although one may emerge. For now, however, it seems that the union will continue with a less confrontational strategy, including lobbying parliamentarians, making alliances with selected university bosses and running media "blitzes". While these tactics may have slowed the privatisation agendas of successive governments, they have not overturned them or even held them in check.
In fact, pro-privatisation forces are more aggressive than ever — perhaps they suspect that the NTEU leadership is not keen to really take them on. Whatever the reason for the bosses' increasing confidence, given the size of the attacks we face it is evident that building national industrial action on the campuses will be central to winning back some ground for public education in Australia, and a better life for higher education workers.
But NTEU leaders seem unconvinced that members, students and the public will fight, and this is a stumbling block for getting industrial action organised. Academics, other university staff, students and anyone else who will lose out from this budget must show the NTEU leadership that we're willing to take the government on: ring the union's leaders, email them, fax them, write to them. Those living in Melbourne should organise delegations to meet them.
If we can convince these leaders that we want to stand up for our rights and that we expect them to lead us, a more serious and effective plank could be added to the broader campaign.
The bosses and the government may appear to be united on this reform package, but they are also divided by competing and contradictory interests. These will become more apparent in the light of a stepped-up campaign. With properly organised national industrial action we could force the first truly significant compromises from them since students and unions forced the threat of full up-front tertiary fees to be turned into the present system of government subsidised places.
[Louise Walker works at the University of Melbourne, and is an NTEU national councillor and member of the Socialist Alliance.]
From Green Left Weekly, May 28, 2003.
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