RMIT staff are the latest preparing to strike, with nurses also threatening to walk off the job

RMIT students may face class disruptions next week when hundreds of staff walk off the job for days over a pay deal. It follows strike threats from nurses and midwives earlier this week.

RMIT classes may be thrown into chaos as staff walk off the job for days next week. Picture: Supplied

RMIT students may face class disruptions next week when hundreds of staff walk off the job for four days, after waiting a record 1000 days for a new pay deal.

Lecturers, tutors, academics, administrative staff and other National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) members employed at the institution will strike from 12.30pm on Monday, following failed negotiations for a decent pay rise, more job security and reduced workloads.

Consequently, some students have reported receiving emails from teachers informing them classes running from Monday until Thursday may be impacted as “many staff will be joining colleagues across the university … to protest the lack of progress in negotiating an Enterprise Agreement”.

NTEU secretary of the Victorian division Sarah Roberts described the week-long period of industrial action as “unprecedented for RMIT”, but said staff have “upped the ante” in hope of finally coming to an agreement with university management.

“I’ve been bargaining since 2001 and I can’t recall a longer period of time since the expiry of an agreement,” she said.

“There’s been this absolutely intolerable delay in getting bargaining done (at RMIT) and that’s why we are at this extreme point of taking this week-long industrial action.”

Victorian nurses and midwives threaten to strike

Victorian nurses and midwives could walk off the job after union members took the first step towards protected industrial action.

The threat is the latest battle between frontline services and the Allan government, which has been involved in unresolved negotiations with paramedics,firefighters and police.

Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (ANMF) members on Thursday voted to apply for a protected industrial action ballot in the FairWork Commission.

The government has offered a three per cent pay rise for public sector nurses and midwives over four years and a cost-of-living bonus of $1500.

But ANMF Victoria branch secretary Lisa Fitzpatrick said that “seriously inadequate” wages and conditions offer will fail the health system because it won’t reverse an increasing casualisation of the workforce.

Lisa Fitzpatrick says wages are ‘seriously inadequate’. Picture: Ian Currie

Instead, the union wants financial incentives to reward working additional permanent hours and unpopular shifts.

“Our nursing and midwifery workforce is at a critical juncture and it’s not unlike the situation at the end of the 1990s caused by the Kennett government making nurses redundant,” Ms Fitzpatrick said.

The union’s application for protected industrial action would hand nurses and midwives with a “number of opportunities”.

“One of those, which will be the last resort, will be for nurses and midwives to do walkouts, which is what we also had to do in 2012 under the Coalition government,” she said.

“It’s not something that our members want to have to do, and of course there’s a lot of opportunities for common sense to prevail and for an improved offer to come from the government prior to any industrial action being taken.”

Just this week paramedics launched their own strike action after pay negotiations between the union and Ambulance Victoria enter its 13th month.

V/Line train drivers are also pushing for improved working conditions, while the union representing 56,000 public sector workers is also fighting for a new wage deal.

Also on Thursday, more than 50 public school principals turned up to parliament to demand Victorian Labor MPs put pressure on Canberra to fully fund state schools.

Australian Education Union Victorian branch president Meredith Peace said Victorian public schools are only funded to 90.4 per cent of the Schooling Resource Standard.

“That means effectively one in 10 students receive no funding for their education. In any community that is simply unacceptable,” she said.

Federal and state governments are currently negotiating a new national school funding deal, but Ms Peace said lifting the funding to 100 per cent is crucial to deal with severe workforce shortages.

Kennington principal Travis Eddy said before Covid he was getting 100 applications for every teaching job. Now, he is receiving just two applications.