Staff and students shut down The University of Sydney at both the Camperdown and Conservatorium campuses on Wednesday from 7am, forming picket lines and blocking entrances in the fight for better working conditions.
The cross-campus strike organised by the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) saw picketers turning several vehicles away and preventing individuals from entering university across each picket location.
The NTEU have been negotiating with management for over twelve months during their enterprise bargaining agreement (EBA) in the fight to prevent further attacks on staff’s workplace rights and an “entrenchment of the unsustainable status quo” which includes “crushing overwork, exploitative casualisation, permanent workplace change, management by redundancy”.
Some of the demands by the union include no forced redundancies, improved job security, the preservation of the 40/40/20 model (division of academics’ workload which ensures an adequate amount of time for research and teaching), a pay rise above the current rates of inflation and enforceable targets for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment.
USyd NTEU President Nick Riemer commended the branch for its union membership being “bigger than it’s been at any time in the last decade”, and for staff’s dedication to being out on the pickets for the fourth strike day since May this year.
USyd student activists dancing on the Ross St picket. Photo: Christine Lai
Riemer condemned university management for their failure to come to the bargaining table, stating that staff at USyd recognised that overwork “either means work poorly done or staff badly treated.”
He noted that there had been movement since their last strike on May 24 where workload control mechanisms for professional staff had been implemented as well as a “softening attack” on the teaching research nexus and academic workload regulations”. However, Riemer added that the university’s alleged promise to fix decasualisation, would have to create 880 new ongoing teaching and research jobs and that staff would not be shy of striking again if this was not done.
The University recently reported that there are 350 full-time equivalent positions filled by PhD-qualified casuals, who perform the teaching equivalent of 880 teaching and research staff.
Fighting for a wage increase above inflation and job security
At the Ross Street picket, NTEU Branch Committee member Alma Torlakovic declared an urgency for workers to be paid adequately amidst the cost-of-living crisis, referring to the NTEU’s motion to raise the wage claim to the Cost Price Index (CPI) plus 2.5 per cent per year.
Inflation has jumped up to 6.1% since USyd staff’s last strike and is projected to peak at 7.75% by the December quarter of this year. “The cost-of-living pressures, of essential items that we cannot afford to buy like food, groceries, transport have gone up by 7.6%”, Torlakovic said.
“A pay rise is crucial because it is the quickest way to lift people’s living standards. Why should an institution with a $1.05 billion surplus be so stingy and insulting to staff with a 2.1% pay offer?” she added.
Lucy Nicolls, a casual tutor in the Department of Philosophy and organiser with the Casuals Network and USyd NTEU declared that she had experienced “tens of thousands of dollars of stolen wages” while working at the university and had been told that this was performed at her “discretion and choice.”
“We deserve secure jobs. We deserve not to have to reapply for our jobs semester after semester. We deserve pay for every hour of work at this university and we deserve an end to the crisis of exploitative casualisation at Sydney Uni,” Nicolls said.
Student writing “Honk 2 Support Strikes” on cardboard. Photo: Christine Lai
Public sector solidarity
Members from the Rail, Tram, and Bus Union (RTBU) and Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) also attended the pickets in solidarity.
RBTU member Emma Norton mentioned the strikes occurring in the UK, quoting National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) leader Mick Lynch’s, “the working class is back. We refuse to be meek, we refuse to be humble, and we refuse to be poor anymore.”
Norton praised USyd for taking another 24-hour strike action and spoke on “reciprocal solidarity” within the union movement, stating that “a win for you guys will be an incredible boost to workers and will lift the standard for people across the country.”
Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi demanded an end to casualisation and a need to secure fair pay, “you shouldn’t have to fight tooth and nail for your pay to match inflation and the cost of living.”
She denounced the system where staff are forced to “sacrifice their pay to fight for their basic right” and the “misguided imperatives of imperialism and productivity that has resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs in the last couple of years.”
USyd Education Officer Lia Perkins emphasised the connection between conditions of staff and students at university and described the grassroots organising to build the student contingents in the lead up to the strike which involved leafleting, having stalls, and making lecture and tutorial announcements.
Perkins criticised the attacks on staff and students, “entirely the fault of uni management”, and the Job-ready Graduates Package created under the former Liberal government which has seen students paying double the amount for an arts degree.
She condemned the “$1.04 billion surplus which they (management) made from stealing more than $60 million from casual workers.”
Protest signs stood against fence. Photo: Christine Lai
“Management are not budging on the important demand of better pay and protecting the bread and butter that makes this university run: teaching and research and staff have every reason to go on strike,” Perkins said.
Strike planned for Open Day
Further strike action has been planned for USyd’s Open Day on August 27 where USyd staff will be continuing their fight for better wages and working conditions.
