NTEU leader Grahame McCulloch looks back on his 25 years in office

Rising workloads and the increased casualisation of staff remain problems to be overcome by universities and the staff union.

Grahame McCulloch, the outgoing general secretary of the National Tertiary Education Union, in a 2003 file photograph. Picture: Bob Finlayson

The contemporary university system was formed in the crucible of the John Dawkins revolution of the late 1980s.

Nineteen universities and nearly 50 colleges became 37 old and new universities in a new ­unified national system.

In the 30 years since this revolution, the sector has nearly quadrupled in size, with student enrolments rising from about 400,000 to just under 1.6 million today. The move to a mass-based system has produced many outcomes of which university staff and the country as a whole can be proud.

Australian universities are world-class in teaching and research. They are of internationally recognised high quality, and are one of the country’s principal sources of innovation and technology transfer. They have enriched cultural and ­social life. They have produced highly skilled graduates with access to well-paid jobs, and they have increased dramatically the opportun­ities for working-class people, women, ­recent migrants and, importantly, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

And universities are now Australia’s second largest export earner.

At the same time, there are ­serious problems within and ­between the individual univer­sities that make up the sector, and increasing financial burdens on the students who enrol.

Declining public investment has forced universities to become excessively dependent on private income (particularly from international students). Successive Coalition and Labor governments have increased the fee ­burden on domestic students to one of the highest in the OECD (notwithstanding that fees are levied through the uniquely Australian model of HECS repayments after graduation).

In turn, this funding model ­increasingly drives a widening divide between richer and poorer universities, with particularly ­adverse consequences for students and economic and social life in rural and regional Australia.

The internal culture of universities has been transformed for the worse. We have seen an exponential growth of an out-of-touch (and sometimes parasitic) senior executive elite. Their inflated salaries reflect neither the contribution nor, in many instances, the capability of this new bureaucratic management caste.

Academic and professional staff increasingly are surveilled and assessed against sterile metric-driven performance indicators that bear little relationship to the core teaching, research and community service obligations of universities. This is incrementally eroding professional autonomy and has been accompanied by ­rising workloads and insecure employment.

The system is approaching a crisis point. There is still scope for university staff to assert their ­professional rights and to have their voice heard within most univer­sity ­decision-making processes. But this may all but disappear if there is not an urgent change in the management culture of universities.

The evolution of the National Tertiary Education Union has been shaped by, and has sometimes shaped, these developments. Through seven rounds of enterprise bargaining, the union has proved itself to be a formidable industrial and professional rights advocate.

In several key areas our collective agreements have set groundbreaking standards for the economy as a whole and in the international university labour market.

Australian university staff salaries are among the highest in the world, and we have achieved 26 to 36 weeks’ paid parental leave, a 17 per cent employer superannuation contribution, strict limits on fixed-term contracts (accompanied by generous severance payments), strong protections for intellectual freedom, a comprehensive system of independent and/or peer review pro­tections against allegations of poor performance or misconduct (with no right of summary dismissal), strong consultation obligations on managing change, and binding Aboriginal employment targets for every university.

While university managements gradually have acquired greater discretion, collective agreements have nonetheless sharply circumscribed manager­ial prerogative. But we have failed to halt rising workloads and a rapid increase in casual employment. These are the two biggest challenges of the next decade.

The union has been at the centre of the drive to create gender equity, and big strides have been made in equalising pay, promotion and representation of women within the academic labour force, but female professional staff have made less progress. There is more to be done for both groups.

In the public policy arena, the union has become a highly influential player. We have consistently defeated proposals for deregulation and upfront fees.

These achievements have been possible because of the union’s highly democratic structure, the active participation of our members and the incremental but continued growth in the union’s membership. We are nearly 30 per cent bigger than when the NTEU was established, with an annual growth rate of 1.2 per cent (an outcome very few unions can match), and we retain high density among permanent staff. Above all else, we have been successful because we are an ­industry union combining the discrete and complementary interests of all university staff.

I have had an incredible personal journey as your general ­secretary at national and international levels, and no words can properly capture my gratitude for the trust and support I have been given by the union’s members, its elected council and executive, and my fellow full-time state and ­national elected ­officers (particularly presidents Carolyn Allport and Jeannie Rea). Above all, I give my thanks to the union’s staff.

Grahame McCulloch is general secretary of the National Tertiary Education Union. He soon will end his 25-year tenure in the role. This is an edited version of his parting column in the union newsletter, the Advocate.