Victoria University staff voted at a meetings on Monday and Tuesday to begin a campaign of industrial action which will begin from next week. The two motions which were passed are below.
If you have time to support Victoria University in this action, staff would welcome your support.
Please contact us if you are interested in helping so you can be put on our contact list.
Friends of Victoria University have been setting up information tables this week at the University and are handing out leaflets.
You are also welcome to join staff on picket lines and Friends of VU will be sending information out about this soon.
Unfortunately Vice Chancellor Elizabeth Harman is still focused on forcibly sacking 200 staff and this is having serious consequences for the quality of education at Victoria University.
Already with the beginning of the semester and the present austerity measures to being imposed by the University to find $7 million dollars in ‘savings’, we are seeing a huge jump in class sizes above 25 and a worsening of the staff/student ratio which is already the third worst in Australia.
Course, unit and campus closures are still on the agenda.
That we, Victoria University’s staff, record our dismay at the University management’s failure to negotiate a settlement with the Union that would restore job security, acceptable workloads, a fair pay outcome, and decent working conditions for all staff.
Management’s refusal to negotiate such a settlement means that VU’s general and academic staff are all at risk from the largest program of lay-offs, proportionally speaking, in Australian university history — and that the workloads of staff who remain will become a serious risk to health and morale.
Noting the impending release of the federal government’s response to the Bradley review and the University’s $17 million surplus in 2008, we are convinced that the proposed lay-offs are unnecessary.
Further, the changes to workloads are drawing staff time away from the core business of the University, while ongoing faculty restructures will reduce the productivity of general staff and reduced opportunities for sessional staff will undermine the University’s long-term staff development.
This meeting reiterates its lack of confidence in the Vice-Chancellor and the senior management of the University.
That we, the Victoria University Branch of the National Tertiary Education Union, resolve to take rolling strike action in the form of two consecutive 24-hour strikes at all campuses in each week, commencing in Week 2 of First Semester until further notice.
Strike action will be staggered across a roster of days each week, in order to maximise the pressure on University management and minimise the impact on particular groups of students and staff.
This meeting directs the Branch officers to convene a meeting of members in the week starting 16 March, to review management’s response to date and to agree on dates for further strike action.
If genuine and significant progress is made in negotiating our claims, this meeting authorises the Branch President to suspend or vary the above schedule of strike action.
Finally, we note this is the first time that staff have ever taken such significant rolling strike action at an Australian university — but we also note that no Australian university has ever before treated its staff and students with such contempt.
