Dear members,
Bargaining update: decision-makers finally attend negotiations
As you would have seen in last week’s update, Monash management agreed that members of senior leadership will participate in this round of intensive Enterprise Bargaining negotiations with the NTEU’s bargaining team.
Today was the first of these intensive negotiations, which will continue into next week. Chief People Officer, Anna Philips, and Vice-Provost, Matt Gillespie attended alongside the University’s usual team of negotiators. The tenor of today’s discussion was far more positive than in the past.
The NTEU bargaining team welcomes this sign of the University’s good faith and seriousness with respect to reaching agreement on widely and deeply felt claims.
Movement at the table
In the wake of our industrial and direct action a few weeks ago, there has been substantial movement from management on working from home rights and working hours. Today, management signalled further progress on Fixed-Term conversion and Periodic Academic Employment that bring them marginally closer to the NTEU’s position.
This has given our bargaining team hope that we can continue to bridge this gap with productive negotiations next week.
Management can do better
In spite of this, we believe that Monash management can do better – especially on workforce planning and job security. The University today upped its offer of new full-time academic positions .... by a whole 10 jobs, from 120 to 130. Needless to say, our team was pretty underwhelmed by this. We continue to argue for much stronger measures to securitise the workforce at our university. Compared with other G08 universities, Monash is lagging behind its peers.
Next steps:
Stay tuned for further updates next week, as we continue our intensive negotiations. We will be in touch about a members meeting in the near future to provide a fuller update.
In union,