News Flash

ENTERPRISE BARGAINING UPDATE NO.20

Enterprise bargaining in Australia’s universities is almost complete, with only a few new Agreements still outstanding.

The University of New South Wales, Macquarie University, and the University of Wollongong in particular, are finding it difficult to achieve similar improvements in salaries and employment conditions that have been successfully reached at most other universities.

The major sticking point is the important issue of job security, with some university managements refusing to reinstate employment conditions that were stripped away by the Howard Government’s industrial laws. These protections for fixed term and casual employees have been agreed to by every university that has finalised a new Enterprise Agreement.

The major outcomes achieved in this round of bargaining include:

• Most of the salary increases are between 16 – 18% over the life of Agreements, with an average increase of 4.6% pa to 2012.

• Restoration of job security and managing change provisions and limits on management prerogative.

• Guaranteed Indigenous employment targets.

• Improved general/professional staff classification processes.

• Caps on academic and general/professional staff workloads.

• Improved conditions for casual staff, including increasing the casual loading to 25%, separate payment for marking for academic staff, more secure employment opportunities, limits on the use of casual staff.

Report on South Australian University negotiations

It has been a long and tedious process but we are almost there. Many thanks to all members who have been supportive during this process. We are pleased to finally reach an agreement which restores our working conditions and provides a just and fair competitive salary offer.
University of Adelaide - Heads of Agreement soon to signed

After 18 months of negotiations a breakthrough on all of the key sticking points including a salary offer of 18% has been made - this means a further 3% on 30.6.11, 3% on 30.6.12 and the final instalment of 4.5% on 31.12.12 . This is consistent with maintaining Go8 relativities.
Unions will continue to work with management to translate the in-principle agreements into final clauses for the new Collective Agreement.

University of South Australia - Heads of Agreement has been reached

A Heads of Agreement has now been signed by the Vice Chancellor, NTEU and CPSU. The Heads of Agreement deals primarily with issues that were contentious in the lead-up to industrial action.
The salary increase is 18.5% by June 2013. This equates to around 4.1% per annum from expiry of the last agreement to expiry of the new one and is a nationally competitive outcome for this round of bargaining. The increases from here on are 4% on 30 June 2011, 4% on 30 June 2012 and 4.5% on 30 June 2013.

Flinders University of South Australia

Flinders University have made a salary offer and agreement has been reached on conditions matters.

The university has revised the salary offer as follows:-

3.0% on 2 July 2011
3.5% on 30 June 2012
4.5% on 29 June 2013

These increases are in addition to the cumulative administrative salary increases already announced and paid by the university since the nominal expiry date of the current agreement (30 June 2008) of 9% giving a total schedule of salary increases of twenty percent up to and including the nominal expiry date of the proposed agreement of 30 June 2013.

Where to from here?

Once the universities and the Unions are satisfied with the terms of the final draft Enterprise Agreement, staff will be provided with a copy of the draft Enterprise Agreement for consideration. Information sessions will be conducted across the Universities to inform staff of the details of the draft Enterprise Agreement.

All staff will then be asked to cast a vote by ballot. Once the draft Enterprise Agreement is approved by staff it will go before Fair Work Australia for final approval.

Following approval by Fair Work Australia the Enterprise Agreement comes into effect and the full range of benefits will be available to staff.


Please do not hesitate to contact CPSU Industrial Officer, Margaret Warner on mw@cpsu.asn.au or phone 82053209. Your comments and views are greatly appreciated as we strive to get agreements that deliver just and fair pay increases and restores and improves conditions for general/ professional staff in universities.

CPSU THE UNION NEGOTIATING ON BEHALF OF PROFESSIONAL/GENERAL STAFF IN UNIVERSITIES