Re: Govt. attacks on Aust universities

From: Andy Blunden (ablunden@mira.net)
Date: Thu Oct 02 2003 - 04:31:46 PDT


Can I just object to the repetition of this cheap shot at the NTEU, the
union fighting for its life against a "Higher Education Reform" whose only
logic is the destruction of the NTEU, a union which has managed to maintain
national standards and even achieved legal ruling against casualisation of
university staff, despite 15 years of "enterprise bargaining", funding cuts
and deregulation, coming from an outfit (wsws) that has never contributed
anything to this or any other workers' struggle.

Andy
(a Life member of the NTEU, now retired)

At 05:59 PM 2/10/2003 +0700, you wrote:
>The NTEU's track record has been one of accommodating itself to these
>requirements, presiding over enterprise bargaining agreements that have
>traded off traditional conditions, allowed academic salaries to slip by 25
>percent compared to average weekly earnings since the early 1980s, and
>permitted student-staff ratios to deteriorate from 14.5 in 1993 to 19.9 in
>2001.
>The Howard government is now exploiting these deteriorating conditions to
>declare that the only way to save the universities from prevailing
>"mediocrity" is to expose them to unmitigated market forces. The results
>will deprive hundreds of thousands of students of the right to higher
>education.



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