The University of Newcastle had its Open Day last Saturday. It's a positive day that is about new beginnings and planning bright futures. A surprising and exciting new world is opening up for students, who are keen to get started on the next leg of their life journeys.
But what is happening behind the happy faces and brightly coloured balloons? At the University of Newcastle, staff are well and truly feeling the squeeze.
Last year hundreds of colleagues were impacted by job cuts, despite the University recording a surplus of $185 million. We now have fewer staff being asked to support more students than ever before. And last week in enterprise bargaining, UON management made a pay offer that, if accepted, would result in a significant cut to wages.
The University of Newcastle is among the most financially secure in the country, having made sector-leading surpluses for over a decade. In light of this, the broader economic environment, and the pay offers being made by other employers across the country, we consider the pay offer of less than 2 per cent a year completely unacceptable and offensive. The pay offer is in fact irresponsible and will adversely affect the University's ability to recruit and retain staff in an increasingly competitive workforce. In turn this will lead to a significantly diminished student experience.
So while University management showed its best face to the public last weekend, in private it is failing to support staff, who are more fatigued and overworked than ever, pressuring them to take a massive pay cut while also avoiding making any significant effort to improve conditions.
We can see this situation happening at Unis around Australia. A recent NTEU survey report The final straw: Insights into workplace culture and staff well-being at Southern Cross University shows:
- 82 per cent of staff regularly experiencing psychosocial hazards
- 44 per cent of staff likely to seek medical advice for work-related stress
- 63 per cent of staff rating SCU workplace culture as negative or extremely negative
- 36 per cent of staff saying they are likely or very likely to resign from the university
While we haven't had the same official survey conducted at Newcastle, our members have been reporting these same kinds of stresses for the last two years and more.
The NTEU represents all staff at the university, whether they feel safe talking about their deteriorating working conditions or not. And unlike university management, who are often just passing through (on immensely inflated executive salaries), we genuinely care about our university, and we want it to flourish.
Together, staff and students are the university, but this is something the University of Newcastle's executive seems to struggle to understand. Staff working conditions are student learning conditions. The best student experience is one that is delivered by sufficient numbers of staff, who have healthy working conditions - and that means job security and manageable workloads.
At the University of Newcastle, we need managers who work hard to protect all of these things, not those who seek to undermine them. We deserve leaders who will stand up to support staff instead of trying to bleed them dry. Pursuing profit over people sets a dangerous precedent and is ultimately unsustainable: our students, our staff, and our communities demand better.
Associate Professor Terry Summers is vice-president (academic) of the National Tertiary Education Union's Newcastle branch
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