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The Howard government follows the examples of others, as usual. My first
degree in Australia was free, apart from a $50 union fee.
Phil
Australian government launches new offensive against university staff and
students
By Erika Zimmer and Mike Head
2 October 2003
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/oct2003/uni-o02.shtml
The Howard government has embarked on a major confrontation with university
staff and students in order to push through its plans for a radical
restructuring of universities. Two weeks ago, it unveiled its cynically
named Higher Education Support Bill (HESB), which will dramatically
increase student fees. Days later, it announced a new industrial relations
regime, effectively scrapping all restrictions on the driving down of
salaries and conditions for academics and university workers.
On September 17, Education Minister Brendan Nelson tabled an “enhanced”
HESB, rejecting calls for any compromise on its central thrust, which was
first outlined in the May Budget. Despite opposition from students and
staff, as well as from some universities, and criticism by the official
opposition parties in the Senate, Nelson declared he would not contemplate
changes that “undermine the fundamental integrity of the package”.
The two central measures will stand—allowing universities to increase
student fees under the HECS repayment scheme by up to 30 percent, and
doubling the proportion of university places open to full-fee paying
students from 25 to 50 percent.
These “user-pays” measures will add to the already near-impossible
financial burden on ordinary students and their families, while at the same
time allowing increased numbers of wealthier students to buy university
places. The upshot will be a two-class university system, with elite
institutions for those who can afford to pay, and poorly-funded rump
universities for the rest.
New funding formulae will mean that newer universities, such as the
University of Western Sydney and the Victoria University of Technology,
attended by thousands of working class students, will lose millions of
dollars per year. Overall, 8,000 extra students will be denied university
places around Australia each year, on top of an existing shortfall of up to
30,000 places. Thousands more are expected to drop out for financial reasons.
One of Nelson’s “enhancements” consists of encouraging cash-strapped
regional universities to provide “distance learning” courses via the
Internet, a measure that will further undermine the provision of full,
on-campus, study. A few sops include extending slightly the time limits for
students to complete their degrees, allowing struggling universities to
over-enrol by up to five percent and exempting scholarship holders from
social security income tests.
Hidden away in the 265-page bill are far-reaching powers for the minister
to dictate what courses and degrees the country’s 38 public universities
can offer, and how many student places they can provide, in line with
“national priorities” set by the government. These powers will be used to
further boost narrowly-based commercial, professional and vocational
courses at the expense of arts, humanities and other courses involving
historical study and critical reflection.
Under “governance reform protocols”—which have received no media
coverage—university governing councils will be required to restructure
themselves along corporate lines, focusing on the acquisition of
“commercial expertise”.
In another little-known provision, low-interest loans will be offered to
full-fee paying students to encourage them to attend one of the many
private institutions that have sprung up over the past two decades, such as
Bond University, the University of Notre Dame, the Australian Institute of
Music, Tabor College and the Christian Heritage College.
Industrial provocation
Five days after tabling the bill, Nelson and outgoing Workplace Relations
Minister Tony Abbott jointly revealed “new workplace relations requirements
for universities”.
Their announcement was timed to scuttle a three-year collective agreement
about to be signed between Sydney University and the National Tertiary
Education Union (NTEU) and to sink negotiations and industrial campaigns
underway at most other public universities. The two ministers declared that
the “requirements” would operate immediately, even though the necessary
legislation had not yet been introduced.
The purpose of the announcement was to deliver an ultimatum to university
managements. In order to qualify for a share of the $404 million in federal
funding over three years, they would have to draw up individual contracts
with academics and other employees to undercut collective agreements, drop
all limits on the hiring of casual and limited-term contract staff, and
introduce performance pay systems to tie salaries to commercially-rewarding
outputs.
Nelson and Abbott also foreshadowed measures, likely to be announced by
Abbott’s successor, Kevin Andrews, to strip academics of the right to
strike, even after the expiry of a collective agreement. The provisions
will allow the Industrial Relations Commission to outlaw industrial action
that “seriously disadvantages third parties”. This power will be used to
ban stoppages that will allegedly affect students.
Under the new regime, universities must steadily replace all collective
agreements with individual contracts. This will mean the dismantling of the
current minimal provisions relating to termination, tenure, academic
freedom, redundancy payments, maternity leave, and study leave. It will
intensify the imposition of low-paid and insecure casual labour, which
already accounts for 25 percent of all academic labour and half of the
total university workforce.
While scrapping minimum standards for most university staff, the new rules
will facilitate the awarding of superior conditions to high-profile
academics and handpicked employees in the elite universities, accelerating
the divide into a two-tiered system.
The government hopes to bludgeon universities into enforcing the new
requirements by starving them of funds if they fail to comply. The $404
million is part of a larger sum of $1.5 billion being offered to the
universities over four years. Yet, according to media estimates, the
funding plan will still leave universities $3 billion a year worse off than
when the Howard government took office in 1996.
The September 22 industrial relations ultimatum triggered immediate
conflict when Sydney University management cancelled the formal signing of
its enterprise agreement with the NTEU, scheduled for the following day.
Vice-Chancellor Gavin Brown claimed that the new rules necessitated the
shelving of the agreement, reneging on the results of negotiations
conducted since October 2002.
Angry staff held a two-hour stoppage and voted unanimously for two weeks of
industrial action and a 24-hour strike on October 7 to demand the reversal
of Brown’s decision.
The NTEU Council then called a national 24-hour strike on October 16 to
defend the current bargaining process underway at all universities. This
will be the first national strike call since 1996, when the Howard
government slashed $600 million from university spending in its first budget.
NTEU general secretary Grahame McCulloch said the strike call “signals our
determination to maintain not only the pay and working conditions of staff,
but to preserve the quality of education our members provide to students”.
The union has depicted the industrial relations requirements as “nothing
more than an ideological vendetta on the part of the government” which
would “do nothing to improve the quality of teaching and research”.
Together with the National Union of Students, it has urged staff and
students to lobby the Labor Party and the two smaller Senate opposition
parties, the Australian Democrats and Greens, to block or modify the proposals.
But the latest offensive flows directly from the economic restructuring
agenda spearheaded by the Hawke and Keating Labor governments and backed by
the trade unions between 1983 and 1996. The agenda includes gutting public
education and other social spending, reducing business and high-income
taxation and turning universities into profit-generating businesses that
serve corporate interests.
Fees for overseas students were introduced by the Hawke government, and
then extended in the late 1980s to domestic students—first post-graduates
and then undergraduates, ending a decade or so of free university
education. Labor also began the process of transforming tertiary education
into a money-spinning and export-earning industry. The Howard government
has merely followed in its footsteps.
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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