University of Canberra staff to strike on October 26

National Tertiary Education Union members unanimously voted for a half-day strike on October 26, claiming negotiations have stalled after five months.

Salaries under the current agreement are tied to the consumer price index, but the university wants to cap wages to a "responsible" 3.5 per cent.

With inflation soaring to 6.1 per cent in the year to the June quarter, members say the proposed cap would leave them worse off.

The union is also calling for reduced face-to-face teaching hours, more job security for casual and fixed-term staff and better access to flexible work conditions.

Deputy vice-chancellor academic Geoff Crisp said it was unclear why the union members wanted to go on strike as negotiations continued.

"We believe that 3.5 per cent is a responsible amount which would allow us to be able to have job security as a priority and to have workload intensification as a priority, where we can continue to employ new staff that we can continue to replace staff when they leave," he said.

NTEU ACT division president and Canberra business school associate lecturer Katie Ley said the university was struggling to fill academic and professional vacancies after people resigned.

"Everyone's exhausted. There's a lot of people that haven't had a break. We feel like we've been carrying the university and students have been the priority," Ms Ley said.

"Our position all along has been we're not actually opposed to a cap. But if we're going to be asking people to cut their pay, then there needs to be a trade off. There needs to be some better conditions to go along with it."

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The university reported a $29.8 million surplus in 2020 and $98.9 million surplus in 2021. It did not shed jobs like many other universities during the pandemic.

Vice-chancellor Paddy Nixon took home a salary of more than $940,000 last year and lived on campus, while other senior managers were also entitled to performance bonuses.

NTEU University of Canberra vice president general staff Jo Washington-King said staff were feeling the cost of living pressures.

"With mortgage rates now, who knows what's going to happen to some staff and their houses?" she said.

"They [the senior management] can live on their money that's more than the Prime Minister and not even bother to contribute to the cost savings that we supposedly have to do."

Professor Crisp said the 2021 surplus included shares the university received.

"We do not have large cash surpluses and those surpluses that we did have are actually quite modest," he said.

"The surpluses that we've had over the last two years have actually been used to pay down our debt because the university has debt rather than spare cash in the bank."

He said the salary of senior staff were part of individual contracts that were based on the contribution that each person made to the organisation.

He could not rule out redundancies if the 3.5 per cent was agreed.

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