VU academics to begin rolling strikes

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25101161-12332,00.html

Andrew Trounson February 24, 2009

VICTORIA University is facing a campaign of rolling strikes after academics voted in favour of an indefinite industrial campaign against the university's redundancy plans.

Members of the National Tertiary Education Union will from next week strike for two days a week at different campuses.

With students already back on campus some classes may be disrupted. The NTEU said it would aim to minimise disruption for student by staggering stoppages.

The union says it is taking protected action to seek job security provisions under a new enterprise bargaining agreement.

"We want the university to back off on its current redundancy plans and deal with this more through negotiation," NTEU Victorian secretary Matthew McGowan told The Australian Online.

VU deputy vice-chancellor Jon Hickman said the strike action was disappointing given the university believed most items on the EBA had been agreed.

"The main points of difference with the NTEU remain with their demand that the new agreement include a clause committing the university to no forced redundancies during the life of the agreement," Mr Hickman said.

"Given the university's commitment to financial sustainability, it would be irresponsible for us to commit unequivocally to a no-forced-redundancies provision without potentially impacting negatively on the university financial status and staff's long-term job security," he said.

VU vice chancellor Elizabeth Harman is seeking $27 million in annual cost savings that she says are need to make the university sustainable in an environment of rising costs outstripping revenue increases.

After last year initially flagging compulsory redundancies and up to 270 job losses, the VU has so far limited job losses to a voluntary programme from which it has secured $7 million worth of savings.

But further job cuts remain on the agenda. Earlier this month Professor Harman warned staff that while VU's staff-student ratios were close to national averages, it was paying more staff at senior lecturer level and above than other universities.

"Therefore we will have to be careful in making decisions on staff changes and redundancies in order to solve the financial problem," Professor Harman said.

But the NTEU says redundancies are unnecessary given a surplus last year of $17 million. It also notes that the university is set to get an extra $10 million to $20 million in funding from 2010 if the federal government implements the Bradley Review of higher education that seeks to encourage universities like VU in Melbourne's lower income western suburbs to expand. But Harman said the extra money would not change the need to cut staff costs.

"We must act now to change this so that we are able to use any new money to help more low SES (social economic status) students to succeed at university," she said.