The Australian government of John Howard has launched what critics say is an all out assault on trade union rights and university independence through a series of proposed new labour law reforms.
The Higher Education Workplace Relations Requirements (HEWRRs), introduced earlier this year, require universities, in order to be eligible for planned funding increases, to offer all new staff individual employment contracts that exist outside of negotiated collective agreements. Next year, universities must extend this offer of individual contracts — called Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) — to all existing employees.
In promoting the proposed changes, Australia’s minister for education, science and training said labour relations reform is needed so universities can attract and keep top academics.
“The higher education sector is not immune from the global pressures faced by other industries,” Brendan Nelson said. “(HEWRRs) are designed to support a workplace relations system in the higher education sector focused on greater freedom, flexibility and individual choice. It will assist universities in becoming more competitive nationally and internationally and enable them to attract, retain and reward the best people.”
But the union representing faculty and staff in Australia’s tertiary education sector says the real motive isn’t about attracting and retaining top academics, but of undermining the collective bargaining process.
“While Minister Nelson claims his workplace reform proposals are all about rewarding high flyers, the detail doesn’t bear this out,” says Grahame McCulloch, general secretary of the National Tertiary Education Union. “In fact, his key proposal is that AWAs must prevail over the conditions in a collective agreement — the sole legal effect of which is to ensure AWA conditions can undercut those in a collective agreement.”
Adds Carolyn Allport, president of the union, “The government hopes that at poorer universities and in cash-strapped discipline areas, new appointments can be made at lower cost. If a significant number of new staff accept AWAs on inferior conditions, this in turn makes more vulnerable those staff who remain on the better conditions in the collective agreements.”
The higher education requirements also represent an unprecedented assault on university autonomy, says McCulloch.
“The government is now telling universities what to do in terms of employment of staff, interfering with management processes and the normal running of universities,” McCulloch said. “No other Australian employer will have its funding cut if it doesn’t kowtow to bullying. Extortion is not a choice.”
More recently, the government has stepped up its campaign to reform Australian industrial relations through the introduction in September of the Better Bargaining Bill. The bill, if enacted, would prevent unions from bargaining for similar wages and working conditions with multiple employers in a sector — so-called “pattern bargaining” — that has become the standard in the higher education sector.
“We’ve made important gains recently through pattern bargaining in the areas of academic workload, maternity and parental leave and indigenous employment,” Allport said. “The Better Bargaining Bill is aimed at unions such as ours which conduct coordinated bargaining strategies to maintain and improve industry-level conditions or to protect quality through industry standards.”
In addition, the bill would make it possible for any individual directly affected, or likely to be directly affected, by industrial action to apply to the Australian Industrial Relations Commission seeking an order to stop the action. That means any student or parent could conceivably intervene to end a strike at a college or university.
For critics, this represents yet more serious assaults on collective bargaining rights in Australia.
“Collective bargaining is the key means by which workers can protect or improve their pay and conditions and yet the Howard government is taking every step it can to prevent workers from bargaining collectively,” says Greg Combet, secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions. “At the same time, the government is actively promoting individual contracts — the key means by which employers can reduce the wages and entitlements of employees.”