University of Newcastle management and the institution's union-represented staff have reached an in-principle agreement to settle their long-running and messy enterprise bargaining dispute, according to Vice-Chancellor Alex Zelinsky in an email to staff circulated late this week.
The agreement follows the intervention of the Fair Work Commission on May 30, after union members rejected the university's latest offer, leading to another breakdown in the almost two-year negotiation.
The university's academic staff, covered by the National Tertiary Education Union, rejected a proposed offer that included a pay increase of 13 percent over three years, backdated to April this year.
Meanwhile, the university's Community and Public Sector Union members voted in favour of the same proposed professional staff agreement on June 1.
In a message circulated among the staff of the university on Friday, June 9, Dr. Zelinsky said bargaining representatives, in a meeting facilitated by the Fair Work Commission, had reached an in-principle agreement "on the content of both of our new enterprise agreements covering professional, academic, and teaching staff that will be put to staff for a ballot."
In a statement released by the Fair Work Commission, deputy president Tony Saunders said both unions representing various university staff would encourage their respective members to vote in favour of the agreement.
"The next step is for the university to draft relevant provisions of the enterprise agreements to give effect to the in-principle agreements reached during bargaining," the Fair Work statement said.
The May 30 bargaining meeting follows almost two years of dispute between management and the unions representing the staff after the previous agreement expired in September 2021.
Long-running negotiations have regularly stalled as union members feared a new agreement would drive down pay and conditions at the institution.
Negotiations ultimately descended into union in-fighting in past weeks as Community and Public Sector Union members voted in favour of an enterprise proposal put forward on May 19, even as National Tertiary Education Union members took strike action over the same agreement on June 1, leading university management to refer negotiations to the Fair Work Commission for mediation.
In October last year, as protracted negotiations extended more than a year since the last agreement expired, NTEU branch president Dan Conway said while members held "a significantly increased desire to reach an agreement ... we remain miles apart on the key issues."
At the heart of the union's holdout were concerns over staff workload, job security within the institution, and fair pay.
The university's most recent annual report recorded a $34.6 million loss in the 2022 calendar year, compared with a $185.3 million surplus in 2021.
The institution's wage bill dropped 4.8 percent from $453.9 million in 2021 to $431.7 million last year, but a net loss in investment income and a fall in government funding sent the university into the red.
