Australian National University staff have been offered a 12 per cent pay rise over the next four years – a deal the National Tertiary Education Union says is a vast improvement on the 6 per cent offer they received before threatening to walk out on strike.
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The union and management came to an in-principle agreement on Wednesday afternoon after two intensive weeks of negotiations. The first pay rise will be backdated to July 1 with four 3 per cent increases in total.
Talks between the parties broke down in August after management offered three 2 per cent increases and the union won a ballot for protected industrial action overseen by Fair Work Australia.
On Wednesday, NTEU ACT division secretary Stephen Darwin and Vice Chancellor Ian Young put out a joint statement saying the deal had been reached, subject to approval by "the University Council because of its budgetary implications," according to Professor Young.
Mr Darwin said there was little doubt that management had softened its line after staff won the right to protected action and the new deal included decent workloads, and important improvements in conditions.
Key features of the in-principle agreement include, for the first time, a cap on academic workloads at the university and the introduction of college workloads policies; a greater ability for professional staff to access flex-time leave; a new centrally-funded scholarship scheme for professional staff; new, sector-leading bullying and harassment provisions; concrete and much higher numerical targets for indigenous employment; and pioneering domestic violence provisions, including leave.
There are also broader eligibility provisions for casual and sessional staff to convert to more secure employment, a fairer probation process, strengthened protections in the performance management process, higher duties allowance made available to fractional staff, improved rights to review of decisions made by the university, an expanded redeployment period, and an improved career structure for maintenance staff.
But Mr Darwin noted the pay rates still left ANU staff behind University of Canberra staff and even after a 3 per cent increase in 2014, the ANU salary for an Academic Level C would still remain over $1,300 below the average for the Group of Eight universities – of which the ANU is a member.
The salary would be just barely higher than average for all Australian universities, trailing institutions such as the Australian Catholic University and the Universities of Newcastle, the Northern Territory, and Edith Cowan University in Perth, Mr Darwin noted.
In a letter to staff commending they vote for the agreement, Mr Darwin said: "This is a great achievement given the initial hostile agenda that the union confronted from ANU management which involved reducing the Enterprise Agreement to a brief statement of principles with significant reductions in rights."
He said their original "radical proposals included a dramatic expansion of professional staff's span of ordinary working hours, the removal of rights in such things as probation, performance management and misconduct, and academic freedom."
"This Enterprise Agreement was also negotiated under the extra pressure created by ANU's exaggerated claims of a financial crisis, as well as the effects of the 'efficiency dividends' imposed by the Commonwealth."
A draft Enterprise Agreement will now be submitted the NTEU National Executive to ensure that it meets the goals that members across the country have set for sector wide conditions as well as ANU Council.
The agreement will then be submitted to a vote of all staff and, if accepted, be sent to the Fair Work Commission for endorsement as a legally enforceable instrument.
