Charles Darwin University proposes new conditions under staff enterprise bargaining agreement

About 1700 Territory workers will make a huge decision as voting gets underway for Charles Darwin University’s enterprise bargaining agreement. Here’s how the process will unfold.

Charles Darwin University’s Scott Bowman wants staff to accept the latest enterprise bargaining agreement. Picture: Julianne Osborne

Charles Darwin University is putting its “best offer” forward for 1700 staff, with plans to renegotiate a stronger offer in 2025.

Voting for the new enterprise bargaining agreement begins at 8am on Tuesday, November 15 and concludes at midnight on November 17.

CDU vice-chancellor Professor Scott Bowman said the University was working to achieve a fair, transparent, and sustainable set of conditions for staff.

“Our focus is on ensuring that we can offer a pay deal that is sustainable for the university, is fair for staff and ensures that there will be enhanced employment conditions for current staff at the university,” he said.

“We have been honest and clear about our financial position and increased pay for staff, will mean more money in the pockets of our valued staff with an increase in salary in the years following.”

Professor Bowman said he had hoped negotiations surrounding the agreement would end in October.

“We thought that would be paying these new salaries from October,” he said.

A sign-on bonus for staff would mitigate the delay, with $500 on offer for full-time employees (pro rata for part-time staff) and $200 for casual staff, Professor Bowman said.

He said the new EBA had a lot of benefits in it for staff, but the University was “caught up in the National Tertiary Education Union’s national negotiations”.

“The Union’s negotiating with some very rich universities that are making billions of dollars of profit, and they want bigger pay rises at those, but they’re pay rises that we can’t afford,” Professor Bowman said.

“The pay increases we’re offering next year will cost us an extra $10 million, and this year, we only made a three million dollar surplus, so we’re going to have to work really hard to pay even what we’re offering.”

Professor Bowman said the Union asked the University to “sign off that there would be no restructures for the life of the agreement, or only one restructure”.

Given the fast pace of change and movement in the Territory, he said the University needed to be able to “rearrange itself” to be successful.

“Those restructures don’t always mean loss of jobs,” Professor Bowman said.

“At the moment, we’re going through a restructure to form a TAFE college, and we’ve given assurance: no redundancies, no demotions.”

The NTEU has amped up its campaign against the agreement, saying it was concerned about the sign-on bonus.

The Union’s NT president, Darius Pfitzner, said the bonuses were a “cynical distraction” because the pay increases would not keep up with the Territory’s inflation.

“This proposal is bad for Darwin’s economy because it means less money in people’s pockets at a time when inflation is going through the roof,” he said.

“Under this offer, the average full-time CDU employee’s annual pay will decline by 5.17 per cent in real terms by mid-2025.”

Mr Pfitzner said the EBA should “alarm” CDU staff.

“The more people we talk to, the more we’re seeing them understand this is not just about the pay offer – even if that doesn’t go anywhere near keeping up with the cost of living,” he said.

“We’re urging all staff to vote no so we can return to the negotiating table to get a deal that’s fair for everyone.”

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Originally published as Charles Darwin University proposes new conditions under staff enterprise bargaining agreement