USYD NTEU April Bargaining Update
What is the NTEU discussing at the table this month?
1. Fair pay rises
20% over the life of the Agreement (circa 3 years) and 17% casual super
You and your colleagues carried our university community through unprecedented crises, adapting to remote teaching and heavier workloads without fair compensation. While you were doing the hard work, the sector posted a $3.6 billion surplus in 2024 – half a billion here at USYD alone. You need fair pay that keeps up with the cost of living. Food, fuel, rent, and bills haven’t stopped rising and neither should your pay. Your hard work, sacrifice, and increased productivity should be recognised.
All USYD staff should get the same rate of super. Superannuation is about dignity in retirement. As casual staff receive lower superannuation contributions, it creates long-term inequality and locks people into financial insecurity. It sends the message their contribution matters less, even when they’re doing the same work under the same pressure. Fair is fair.
2. Workloads
Unreasonable and unsafe workloads are undermining the wellbeing and capacity of staff across the university sector. Management’s unrealistic expectations are putting staff health at risk and contributing to burnout.
Nearly one-third of professional and general staff are working extra hours without pay or time off in lieu. Many redundancies and ‘voluntary’ departures are being absorbed by remaining staff, left to carry the increased workload.
Academic workload calculation policies can no longer be based on fanciful time allocations. Where management talks excellence, policies must be based on the empirical reality of time taken to perform the role to that expected standard.
3. Enforceable access to Flexible Working Arrangements with rights to collective agreements
We’ve all seen how flexible and remote work can make our lives more manageable, particularly in a city with a long and expensive average commute. Flexible work lets us get a few household chores done during break time, freeing up our evenings and weekends for relaxation and leisure, and improving work/life balance.The Union has won improvements to these rights in previous rounds, and wants to fix problems associated with uneven access to them, reversing the onus of proof (why can’t staff have a flexible provision?) and facilitating collective arrangements to ensure flexible work agreements satisfy the whole team.
The union branch is hosting a forum on enterprise bargaining on Tuesday April 21st from 5.30pm, in person on the Camperdown campus and via Zoom. You can find out more and register here.
