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Australia: Meeting at Newcastle University lays bare union’s refusal to fight job cuts
A revealing discussion erupted at a National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) meeting at the University of Newcastle (UoN) last week as the union sought to corral academics and staff into another round of enterprise bargaining the very same framework that has facilitated an ongoing onslaught of cuts to jobs and conditions at universities across the country.
As is the case internationally, corporations and their governments have seized on the COVID-19 pandemic to accelerate a fundamental restructuring of workplace and social conditions, at the expense of workers. By the NTEU’s own estimates, some 90,000 university workers’ jobs were eliminated during 2020, and more cuts are being announced constantly, including at UoN and the universities of Adelaide and Western Australia.
Australian pseudo-left groups try to shore up university unions’ enterprise bargaining straitjacket
Under conditions in which university workers and students face historic and intensifying cuts to jobs and conditions, two pseudo-left groups are trying to help the trade unions to divert widespread opposition back into the same industrial framework that has facilitated the assault.
“NTEU Fightback,” organised by Socialist Alternative, is urging National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) members to seek supposedly better clauses in enterprise agreements with individual university managements, while Solidarity is calling on university workers to “work with” NTEU officials to “strengthen” the union.
University of Melbourne (Image credit: Flickr/Travis)