[Greens-Media] Uni managements wedge staff to cut permanent workforce

[John Kaye]

Uni managements wedge staff to cut permanent workforce
 
Media release: 22 September 2010
 
The Vice Chancellors of UNSW and Macquarie University have called on ballots of employees in an attempt to divide the workforce and force through the beginning of the end of permanent employment, according to Greens NSW MP John Kaye. ('Universities set to conquer over divided unions', SMH 22 September, page 10, http://bit.ly/smh100922)
 
Dr Kaye said: "Professors Hilmer and Schwartz are prepared to open up a bitter rift between academic and professional and technical staff in order to push ahead with their vision for a future based largely on casual and temporary employment.
 
"While it might suit their model of universities as businesses, destroying tenure will undermine the culture of critical and fearless academic inquiry it supports.
 
"The game they are playing will irreparably damage these important institutions.
 
"Holding  ballots on the professional and technical staff enterprise agreements might be clever industrial tactics but it will divide and weaken these two universities.
 
"It might read well on the Vice Chancellors' resumes, but it will leave a lasting scare on their universities.
 
"By undermining permanency for the professional staff, the university managements are trying to begin to wind back tenure for academic staff.
 
"The consequences for Australia will be unacceptable. Free inquiry is at the heart of the ability of universities to provide research and analysis that is free from fear or favour.
 
"Keeping pay at UNSW below all other Australian universities is unfair and will damage the ability of the university to recruit.
 
"Professor Hilmer and Schwartz might feel proud of themselves for having turned unions against each other, but they will be remembered as wreckers who used cheap tactics to get their way.
 
"NSW Education Minister Verity Firth should take a closer look at these two institutions and ask why their managements should be allowed to declare war on their academic and general staff," Dr Kaye said. 
 
For more information: John Kaye 0407 195 455 
 
 
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John Kaye
Greens member of the NSW Parliament
phone: (02) 9230 2668
fax: (02) 9230 2586
mobile: 0407 195 455
email: john.kaye at parliament.nsw.gov.au
web: www.johnkaye.org.au
 
mail: Parliament House, Macquarie St, Sydney NSW 2000