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University union agrees to wage cuts to save 12,000 jobs
By Nick Bonyhady and Anna Patty
Australian universities will negotiate campus by campus with their staff over wage cuts of up to 15 per cent after agreeing on a national framework with the higher education union to help save jobs in the sector.
The sector estimates it will lose up to $4.6 billion this year because of the coronavirus, which has caused lucrative international student enrolments to plummet, but no university is eligible for JobKeeper as a result of changes made by the Morrison government.
Australia's universities have agreed on a framework for cutting staff pay and hours in exchange for saving jobs.Credit: Monash University
In a deal struck on Wednesday between the National Tertiary Education Union and the universities' industrial association, the union agreed to exchange temporary wage cuts for rules forbidding universities standing down staff without pay and other protections.
Each university will decide whether to implement the deal on its campus, with some including the University of NSW already considering it.
But some NTEU members and the union-representing non-academic university staff argue the deal does too little to protect the 30,000 workers who the union estimates face losing their jobs as a result of the pandemic.
NTEU president Alison Barnes said the agreement aims to protect more than 12,000 jobs in return for temporary, up to one-year salary reductions between five and 15 per cent for some university workers at the hardest hit campuses.
"I fully understand the position of those who argue the union’s job is not to find savings for management," Dr Barnes said.
"However, these are not normal circumstances ... The real world consequence of inaction is the collapse of careers and livelihoods, campus by campus, determined at the whim of local managers."
Troy Wright, the assistant general secretary of the CPSU NSW, said the agreement would hurt low-paid workers.
"It was cooked up behind closed doors between academics and universities," Mr Wright said. "The only thing it secures is an easy way for employers to foist a pay cut on workers."
Universities will not be able to apply the deal unilaterally. The NTEU's membership will first have to vote for it overall and then a majority of staff members at each university that wants to apply the deal on their campus will have to approve it before it takes effect.
Some, including the University of Sydney, have told staff they do not intend to take up the deal. A University of Melbourne spokeswoman said every institution would have to decide whether to take up the deal. "We will be communicating with our staff on this in coming days," she said.
Alma Torlakovic, a University of Sydney NTEU branch committee member, said pay cuts of up to 15 per cent would be devastating for workers, particularly those with families on single incomes, and some members were preparing to vote no to the deal.
"This framework represents the biggest attack on our wages and conditions in a generation and our union endorsing it is an outrage," she said.
Wage reductions will be scaled under the agreement, with only higher paid staff taking the full 15 per cent cut. Casuals will be protected from wage reductions, but their hours can be cut.
Stuart Andrews, executive director of the Australian Higher Education Industrial Association, which led negotiations on the universities' side of the deal said individual universities would be considering whether they wanted to implement the deal.
Education Minister Dan Tehan welcomed the deal.