By Jeremy Smith
On August 20 the federal Industrial Relations Commission handed down an important decision on tenure and conditions for casual and contract staff working in tertiary education.
Since 1995, the National Tertiary Education and Industry Union (NTEU) has been campaigning against the exploitation of casual and contract labour in the education industry. In late 1996, it sought provisions guaranteeing conversion to continuing employment after three years of contract work, protection against the arbitrary non-renewal of contracts and an improved ratio of continuing/contract employment.
More recently, the NTEU had been seeking to install two essential principles into the award, which could be used later to improve conditions of employment for the most exploited in tertiary education.
First, the union wanted a reduction in the use of fixed-term contract and casual appointments in universities.
Secondly, it was demanding better entitlements for those segments of the work force. Conditions for casual and contract staff fall a fair way below those of continuing staff. The former do not get protection from unfair dismissal, redundancy benefits and superannuation rights, benefits available to permanent staff.
Witnesses at the commission gave evidence of continuous but precarious employment on annual contracts for up to and beyond 20 years.
Responding to the IRC's decision, NTEU general secretary Grahame McColloch said, "Even though the commission did not accept our proposals to get minimum conditions of continuing employment, the decision should see an award eventually made which will at least ensure that staff are only employed on a non-continuing basis where this can genuinely be justified".
Regulations in the award now stipulate that casual employment should be for work that is "irregular and usually of a short duration", usually on a project or task basis. It sets out the broad terms and conditions of employment for continuing, contract and casual workers in areas such as termination procedures and entitlements, redeployment and re-employment rights, loadings, superannuation and study leave.
The union sought to build in provisions which could be used to compensate for the disadvantages of contractual and casual employment.
Further, the commission concluded that research-based jobs should be more permanent. It also found that management was largely responsible for poor employment practices rather than conditions in the industry.
Finally, it declared that the use of contract and casual employment is less justified for general staff given that general staff are more likely to utilise generic skills.
The NTEU's national industrial officer, Linda Gale, told Green Left Weekly that the union's immediate task is to ensure that the best award provisions emerge between now and mid-November.
"In the long-term, the real battle will be implemented at the campus-by-campus level. It will mostly take place through enterprise bargaining and local negotiations."