BY NICK FREDMAN
LISMORE — "There's something rotten in the state of Lismore!", thundered Maurie O'Sullivan, president of the NSW Public Sector Association, at a picket and rally at Southern Cross University (SCU) here on April 11. O'Sullivan was comparing the miserable salary offer made by management in recent enterprise agreement negotiations to the secret salary rises and bonuses that the university executive has granted itself.
In the negotiations, which have dragged on since December 1998, management is refusing to budge from its pay offer of 7.5% over five years. The university executive also refuses to include clauses stipulating no net job losses and no increase in workloads. Agreements recently signed at other universities include such clauses and wage rises of 12-14% over three years.
During a one-day strike on April 11, more than a 100 staff and students rallied in front of the university's main entrance and picketed other gates. The industrial dispute has sparked a debate around how, and in whose interests, the university should be run. Staff unions are focusing on how management's tight-fisted attitude will severely affect the quality of education.
Unions estimated that 80% of staff did not work on April 11 and that student attendance was barely 10% that of a normal work day. Most centres of the university were closed.
The campaign is being strongly supported by the SCU Student Representative Council (SRC), which is led by environmentalists, socialists and other radical activists.
Mark Dolahenty, a National Tertiary Education Industry Union (NTEU) organiser, told the rally how the new SCU vice-chancellor, John Rickard, a conservative economist, has spent $130,000 of the university's money to renovate the vice-chancellor's residence and fund a business trip to China.
SRC chairperson and Resistance member Bernie Wunsch explained that cuts to pay, staffing levels, working conditions and library funding have allowed the university to accumulate $28 million in reserves, set aside for increasing facilities for full-fee-paying students and industry-oriented projects. "Do we want a university for fat cat bureaucrats, big business and rich students, or a university for all staff, for all students and for the community?", Wunsch asked the crowd.
Beginning on April 12-14, rolling half-day strikes were held in which unionists at each school or centre of the university stopped work each morning or afternoon. Participation in these actions was 90-100% of staff. Staff and students have combined the stoppages with picketing and leafleting different parts of the university, and with an SRC-organised forum on education on April 14.
Unions are giving management until the next enterprise bargaining meeting on May 3 to make an acceptable offer, and will hold a mass meeting on May 4 to consider acceptance or further action.