Re: Govt. attacks on Aust universities

From: Andy Blunden (ablunden@mira.net)
Date: Fri Oct 03 2003 - 02:15:52 PDT


The legislation is indeed draconian. It is so bad that even the
government's most ardent supporters among the Vice-Chancellors have
condemned it. In order to qualify for government funding Universities have
to negotiate an individual contract with every member of staff, they are
not allowed to provide an office for the union or give new starters union
forms or deduct union dues from salary; and student unions get the same
treatment. Student fees are deregulated and increased. And this is a
government that just recorded a $5b surplus.
Andy Blunden
At 04:09 PM 3/10/2003 +0700, you wrote:
>I've replied to Andy off-list...the excerpt that he included below,
>written by two reporters for wsws wasn't my main interest - it was
>bemoaning the return to an era of more elitism in higher education in
>Australia. I'm not in a position to comment on the NTEU, as a retired lifer is!
>
>Phil
>
>At 21:31 2/10/03 +1000, you wrote:
>>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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