USYD NTEU Bargaining Summary

Weeks 1 and 2: 14th, 15th, 21st, 22nd April 2026

Summary of this Summary

This document summarises the first two weeks of Enterprise Bargaining. Bargaining was delayed by six weeks due to management, prompting the NTEU to push for an intensified schedule and improved procedural protocols. Early meetings focused on outlining claims, with the NTEU presenting the most detailed and developed log, alongside initial proposals on workloads, gender affirmation, and union rights.

The NTEU’s claims emphasise a 20% pay rise, job security, improved leave, stronger equity provisions (including disability and Indigenous rights), regulation of AI, and enhanced conditions for casual, professional, and academic staff. The CPSU’s claims broadly align but focus more on workplace processes and development.

Management proposals include changes to leave, career structures, casual employment (including a new “Continuing Tutor” role with no research allocation), and agreement simplification (including the complete removal of the cap on education focused roles), though many remain underdeveloped. Upcoming negotiations will test whether management clarifies its position or maintains strategic ambiguity.

Start of Bargaining

While the NTEU was prepared to begin bargaining at the start of March (as permitted under the current Enterprise Agreement), Management were unable or unwilling to begin bargaining for six weeks. Because of the NTEUs stated desire to conclude bargaining within circa 9 months, the Union pushed for more intensive bargaining than in the preceding round – two full days per bargaining week (alternating weeks) and with two weeks back-to-back in April to attempt to catchup lost time.
As part of the preparation for bargaining, Management and the Union negotiated protocols to govern the process of bargaining, including time release for the bargaining team and a clear process of agenda setting, clear record keeping, and the identification of action items for following meetings. The need for clarification of these points were important lessons taken from the analysis of the last round.

Preliminaries: Outlining the respective Logs of Claim

The 14th, 15th, and most of the 21st were consumed by preliminaries, where the parties outlined the substance of their respective claims. It is clear that the NTEU is the only party with a detailed log. The CPSU only finalised their Log of Claims the Friday preceding the start of bargaining and are clear that elements of their log require time to be developed. While Management released their “outline” document following the NTEU’s publication of our Log, it is also clear that major elements of that document are not finalised (see below).
Given this the NTEU provided a clear summary to the group on the first two days, explaining the substance and rationale of our claims. Questions about the rationale, and practicalities of some elements were asked by management. Similarly, the NTEU probed management on their proposals.

NTEU puts details on the table

Demonstrating the NTEU’s commitment to good faith bargaining and the resolution of the negotiations without unnecessary delay, the NTEU distributed three proposed clauses (actual text for the proposed new Agreement) for discussion in the second week of bargaining:

• Academic Workloads Clauses
• Gender Affirmation Clauses
• Union Rights Clauses

NTEU Log of Claims elements, grouped by staff type

All staff

• 20% pay increase over the life of the Agreement (circa 3 year agreement)
• Parental leave improvements to improve access, eliminate differences of rights based on parental status, and permit more flexibility in use; and breastfeeding and comfort facilities
• Improved gender affirmation provisions – understanding that gender affirmation is not something contained to a single year and extension of this right to casual staff
• Bringing explicit recognition of disability and chronic health issues into the agreement with a social model of disability that has implications for workloads, leave provisions, flexible work, performance assessment, and other matters
• No forced redundancies, building on redeployment processes
• Alignment of freedom of expression with the Charter of Free Speech and Academic Freedom; explicit projection against misconduct when engaged in protected communication rights; clear campus access provision
• Governance for new AI systems including clear expectations of transparency, explainability and contestability, retaining “human in the loop”, and no job displacement.
• Improved union rights to organise and communicate with staff

Please note, in general these apply to all the categories below.

Specific to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff

• Kinship leave
• Updated and expanded allowances (cultural duties)
• Cultural property protections
• Improved employment parity provisions

Specific to Professional staff

• Severance pay equity with academic staff (increasing)
• Improved access to workload review panels, including collective use by teams (aimed to significantly increase the use of this good provision from the last agreement)
• Improved flexible working provisions providing that Flexible work be a norm and refusal the exception, and collective agreement making (to allow for greater workplace level involvement in flexible work choices)
• Filling vacant roles rapidly to prevent work intensification
• Identification of professional staff work areas with ongoing casual employment for targeted creation of continuing positions

Specific to Academic staff

• Academic workloads determined based on empirical reality
  • Note that this has important implications for casual academic staff whose hours of employment are also determined by these allocations
• Improved collegiate committee process for workloads development
• Improved and clarified University-wide Academic Workloads Monitoring Committee

Specific to Casual staff

• 17% superannuation
• Clearer conversion processes that require improved processes by management in decision making
• Improved decasualisation provisions
• Inclusion in gender affirmation rights clauses

Specific to Education-Focused staff

• 60% teaching cap
• Total hour per week caps (technically this applies to all academics, but is focused on Education-Focussed staff where they have high marking spikes)
• Improved conversion processes
• Clarifying and reiterating the research autonomy provisions for Education-Focused Staff

Specific to Precarious contract staff

• Bringing aspects of the Closing the Loopholes Act into the Agreement
• Second contract to be afforded the option of being appointed on funding-contingent basis
• Secondary rights to the redeployment process to increase retention at the University of Sydney

CPSU Log of Claims

In general, the CPSU are similar to those of the NTEU, and/or in the same area of concern of the NTEU with a different emphasis.  The significant novel proposals in their Log are related to:

• Bullying and harassment provisions,
• Improvements to PP&D and position descriptions, and
• An increase in the quantum of the Professional Staff Development Fund.

Management claims and approach

Management’s claims can be summarised as:

• Offering some improvements to leave provisions (management released on the intranet a parental leave offer following the first week of bargaining)
• Changes to the change management provisions, that they identify as overly complex in places
• An eventual pay offer that they want to position as sector leading, but constrained and calibrated against the Group of Eight universities and their narrative of declining revenue and increasing costs
• Alterations to professional staff career advancement (which seems to be focused on changes to secondments and post-secondment job advertising
• Changes to Schedule 1 (the casual pay rates and definitions)
• Altering Education-Focused roles to remove or modify research responsibilities (but they have indicated not the transfer of that quantum of work into teaching, instead some form of service / leadership)
• Eliminating the cap on education focused roles
• The creation of a new category of employment – the “Continuing Tutor” role to replace casual teaching staff (with a particular emphasis on large unit staffing). This would not include a research component
• The expansion of Professional Practitioners out of Medicine and Health
• General “simplification” to the Agreement

There is a lot in the proposal of Management and while some of their proposals have been well developed (parental leave was a specific and clear proposal), some remain “for development” but with some clarity around what management does want to achieve (Schedule 1), and many key proposals are yet to be finalised (Management was clear, for example, that their Continuing Tutor role is still subject to internal consultation and yet to go to their bargaining steering committee).  That last proposal has considerable implications, not just for the University of Sydney (and would require detailed discussion with Union members, but also for the sector as a whole.  It is not a proposal to be considered offhandedly.

The NTEU pushed Management on many of these proposals, partially to simply understand them, but also to ensure that Management clearly understood that their significant proposals – such as the creation of a whole new category of employment – is only something that can be considered by Union membership through our democratic processes.  There are areas where the underlying assumptions of Management were teased out, for example, their attitudes to the connection between research and teaching (the nexus is not required).

What’s coming up?

At the Table

The agreed Agenda for the 5^th and 6^th May bargaining meetings is:

• A more formalised decasualisation position / Continuing Tutor has been promised by the University
• The parties will develop and implement a Schedule 1 working group
• The NTEU will present the detail of its Freedom of Expression clauses
• The parties will examine the respective draft clauses on leave provisions
• The NTEU will present its position and clauses on No Forced Redundancy and equalising Severance Pay
• If time permits, the NTEU will discuss our proposals for filling unfilled professional staff positions

The following fortnight will focus on the NTEU’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander claims (no other party has presented claims for these staff), and will be led by the Branch Committee Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander elected representative.

On the Ground

To be determined in the Action-Oriented Debriefing meeting on 24^th April, including preparation for a Members Meeting in May.

The Bargaining Team will be organising a meeting of stakeholders and Subject Matter Experts related to the Schedule 1 proposals, and reconvening the Branch’s AI Policy Advisory Group in anticipation that matter will come onto the table soon.

Reflection on Bargaining

The start of bargaining is a complex time where the parties attempt to “get the measure” of the other parties.  The Bargaining Team have been surprised that so many elements of Managements claims have not been developed nor finalised, and have pushed Management to make more specifics.  The next few meetings will determine if they are “catching up” or if this is strategic ambiguity on their part.