The Victorian division of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) rallied 500 supporters of tertiary education on November 20.
The announcements of hundreds of job losses at La Trobe and Victoria universities have provoked a sharp response by the union, and a ballot for an extensive industrial campaign at Victoria University began on November 20.
Supporters pouring into the Atheneum Theatre were greeted by video clips of comments on the state of education from students, academics and general staff at different institutions around Victoria.
NTEU division secretary Matthew McGowan opened the rally by noting messages of support from other unions: "This is not just about us who work and study in higher education, but the whole Victorian community", he said.
National president Carolyn Allport followed with an impressive analysis of the "black hole" of public funding for universities (which remains just above 1996 levels), the lack of dedicated infrastructure funding and the huge increase in casualisation (53% of teaching is now carried out by casual academics).
Sarah Cole, Victorian president of the National Union of Students, spoke passionately about the negative impacts of privatisation on the curriculum.
Colin Long, NTEU branch president at Deakin University, explained the union's dispute with the university over the latter's plan to "accelerate the throughput" of students, and the union's stalled negotiations with management over a new collective agreement.
He bemoaned some university managements' addiction to the former Coalition government's policy agenda, and his quip, "Neo-liberalism is dead. They're actually defending a dead ideology", was greeted with loud applause.
Victoria University staff member and NTEU division president Jamie Doughney inspired the crowd with a description of the scale of the union's campaign. In response to a predicted 310 redundancies of academic, TAFE and general staff, Doughney called for "not just a scrap, but a fight".
Noting that the crisis will likely spread beyond Victoria, Doughney appealed to the rally: "We've got to release the inner mongrel in this fight. We have our working-class universities to fight for, our uni system to fight for, and our union is in the fight with us."
for more information about the NTEU campaign, visit here.