Dear colleagues,

I write in my capacity as the union negotiation lead for a new enterprise agreement at the University of Melbourne. I am also a Professor at the Melbourne Law School and the NTEU Victorian Assistant Secretary (Academic Staff).

A central point of contention in bargaining for a new enterprise agreement at the University of Melbourne concerns job security. The NTEU is seeking to establish continuing employment as the norm with an 80% target for such employment, while University management has resisted the claim, stating that ‘it had no appetite for targets’.

To facilitate informed discussion, I have written an analysis evaluating the bargaining proposals made by University management to reduce insecure work. Available at the Melbourne University NTEU bargaining website, this analysis concludes that these proposals fail to properly honour the public commitments the University has made to overhaul its insecure workforce model (which has enabled pervasive wage theft) and also fail to provide effective accountability – resulting in a fundamental failure to fix the chronic job insecurity plaguing this University.

I hope this analysis is helpful in addressing the crisis of working conditions at the University – it is only through acting collectively that this crisis can be overcome.

Kind wishes, Professor Joo Cheong Tham

Please note: NTEU maintains a list of names and email addresses of staff in the sector, which is collected from publicly available sources. The list is only used for purposes consistent with NTEU’s Objects and purpose and is not disclosed to any other parties outside NTEU. If you are not a member and you would prefer not to receive any further information from NTEU, please click on the Unsubscribe link below. For more information, please see our Privacy Statement on our website.