QUESTIONS have been raised at the University of Newcastle after emails from the union to staff appeared to have been quarantined.
Sessional academic Natalia Soeters said she missed a National Tertiary Education Union Newcastle branch question and answer session last Friday - about enterprise agreements staff are voting on this week- because the union's email to staff was "held" in UON's Mimecast system.
Vice Chancellor Professor Alex Zelinsky AO said all external emails were processed through Mimecraft, which provides "email security and protection".
He said when external emails were "quarantined for review" staff could either permit or block all emails from a sender, or allow one-off release of emails.
Ms Soeters said she had permitted NTEU emails.
"A lot of people were saying the same thing and some people were saying 'I only actually received the Mimecast email [about quarantined emails] after the event'," she said.
"Anything that is industrial relations related should automatically be whitelisted and never ever held."
Branch president Associate Professor Terry Summers said UON's chief digital officer Anthony Molina had advised "NTEU emails are not blocked and that these emails are processed the same way as any other external email".
"That may well be true that the emails from the NTEU have not been blocked, but I am led to believe that emails from the NTEU were previously whitelisted and that this policy was apparently changed on December 6, such that emails from the NTEU were classified as spam," Dr Summers said.
He said he contacted Professor Zelinsky on December 9, who said he would instruct IT staff to "reset the spam filter".
"If the policy was changed it would seem to me that there has been a breach of the information technology conditions of use policy and I would hope this would be fully investigated."
Professor Zelinsky said UON was "not blocking or classifying NTEU emails as spam".
"It is important to note that some of our staff want to receive NTEU emails and some do not. We need to respect all of those wishes."
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