BY SAM KING
& ROBYN MARSHALL
BRISBANE Three hundred trade unionists and students attended a loud and determined protest march for union rights and intellectual freedom on October 30 at the University of Queensland (UQ) campus at St Lucia.
The march was organised to protesting UQ administration's decision not to renew its employment contract with George Lafferty, associate professor at the UQ school of business, economics and law, and president of the UQ branch of the National Tertiary Education Industry Union (NTEU).
NTEU officials believe this action was taken because of Lafferty's demand that his faculty follow proper consultation procedures about restructuring and because he spoke out against full-fee paying places for Australian undergraduate students.
They believe Lafferty's sacking is intended by the UQ administration as a warning to all university staff who do not have protection against arbitrary dismissal, including all those on casual or fixed-term appointments.
Lafferty was appointed in 1998 under a five-year contact, which was to be renewed in January 2003. All other contracts at UQ, appointed in this way before the new agreement came in, have been renewed.
Lafferty addressed the protest, explaining that his sacking from the UQ business school was an attempt to soften up the NTEU in the lead up to the next enterprise bargaining agreement period. "We shall win this and other issues we face in future", he declared.
Queensland NTEU secretary Howard Guille told Green Left Weekly that the aim of the march was "to make a noise" so that university management could hear the level of opposition to their dismissal of Lafferty. Guille noted that the loudest cheers greeted statements of international support.
Statements of support were read out from ACTU president Sharon Burrow, the Association of American University Professors, the Association of University Staff (NZ), the Canadian Association of University Teachers, the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (UK), the Association of University Teachers (UK) and the Portuguese Technical and University Staff Union.
From Green Left Weekly, November 13, 2002.
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