The vote relates to the Union’s log of claims for the 2021-22 Enterprise Bargaining period.

The NTEU's history can provide us with a guide for future industrial action.

The protest follows mounting rebukes of managements’ treatment of casual staff, including investigations into wage theft across 21 universities.

Staff are demanding renumeration for six years of unpaid marking and administration work.

“It seems that everyone now knows systematic underpayment occurs in Australian universities — everyone, that is, except our managers.”

Claims of wage theft were referred to as “a mistaken belief that casual academic staff are entitled to be paid for any time spent at their discretion and choice.”

Enrolment numbers will determine what will be cut, merged or otherwise diminished.

“Once again the University's response appears very much to be 'why pay your staff correctly when legally you can get away with underpaying them?'”

Critics have said that the apology is not enough.

For casual staff, working while ill is not an anomaly but points to systemic exploitation in the university model.