Australian college union suppresses discussion to market organization bargaining sham

The New South Wales (NSW) condition division of the Nationwide Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), the main trade union covering university staff members, held a meant on the internet “forum” final Friday.

The celebration furnished a revealing image of an organisation that is more and more discredited in the eyes of college staff, and desperately hoping to block any real debate about the historic and deepening federal government-administration offensive in opposition to the employment and ailments of staff and students.

NTEU division secretary Damien Cahill (Twitter picture @damiencahill8)

Regardless of the event staying billed as a statewide “forum,” NTEU associates and all other employees individuals have been prevented from speaking. Even the chat functionality was disabled to make interaction impossible in between participants.

Any comments or queries that participants asked could be witnessed only by the union officers. Just a choose couple ended up study out, none of them crucial of the union.

This requires to a new degree the anti-democratic techniques utilised by the NTEU, and all unions, for a long time to thrust by way of “enterprise bargaining” agreements, which companies have conveniently utilized to attack workers’ wages and ailments, significantly casualise the workforce and change the universities into companies serving the needs of the company elite.

Whilst suppressing all discussion, the NTEU officials promoted the fraud that a further spherical of union-administration company bargaining (negotiations at personal workplaces) could be made use of to reverse the mounting assault on college workers.

In actuality, NTEU branches are proposing obscure logs of promises that are built to fulfill the escalating needs of managements. For case in point, the College of Sydney log phone calls for “enforceable protections from excessive work” without defining what is “excessive.” The function of these logs is to deepen the union’s relationship with administration, as a new wave of attacks on college staff is applied.

Members of the Committee for General public Education and learning (CFPE) demanded to know why the chat experienced been disabled. A single requested: “Are college staff not authorized to have open up discussion?”

CFPE customers denounced company bargaining, and the NTEU’s attempt to cover up its portion in opposing any unified struggle towards the avalanche of job destruction considering that the COVID-19 pandemic began. “Why aren’t you telling workers the real truth about the NTEU’s position?” 1 asked.

On casualisation, a member asked: “Why isn’t the union calling for personnel to be made long term and having up a battle in opposition to insecure get the job done?”