Despite ongoing calls to remove weapons manufacturing from universities, the Government has pledged funding for Commonwealth-supported places to support AUKUS.
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Staff from the University of Melbourne were joined by striking workers from Monash, Deakin, La Trobe and Federation universities as they marched towards Melbourne Trades Hall.
“This vote is a call for university managements and our government to think seriously about our sector.”
The acting Vice Chancellor said that the redundancies were due to a number of factors including a drop in student numbers and insufficient government funding. She said that this meant the University was forced to make “hard decisions” in an attempt to reduce its operating budget by $60 million annually.
The NTEU is campaigning on many of the same issues as at the University of Sydney: academic workloads, casualisation and pay. They want management to maintain the 40/40/20 model of academic workloads and create 150 extra permanent positions for current casual staff by 2024.
Monash has applied to the Fair Work Commission to retrospectively change the enterprise agreement in place between the University and the NTEU from 2019.
Applications have surged post-COVID, and are now on track for the largest intake of Indian students ever seen. However, universities have deemed that many applications are not from ‘genuine temporary entrants’ per Australian visa requirements, and that many are at risk of overstaying their visas.
Members instead resolved to “provisionally endorse the University’s Enterprise Agreement Package to Conclude Bargaining as an acceptable framework to finalise negotiations.”
The University is seeking to remove limits on teaching loads for both staff in EFRs and mixed Teaching and Research positions.
The University urged the Albanese government to “fix the worst elements of the Job-ready Graduates Package,” in its submission but stopped short of recommending its repeal.