In an all-members meeting today, NTEU members passed a motion to undertake the following industrial actions:
- A ban on attending campus from Friday, July 7, to Tuesday, July 11.
- A ban on teaching in Week 2 (July 17 to July 21 inclusive).
- A 24-hour strike on Thursday, July 20.
We will commence the formal processes of informing management and prepare resources, including factsheets and templates, for communicating with students ahead of the actions.
We will also host a meeting on the teaching ban action to address questions and present ways to engage students productively around this action in the coming days.
How did we get here?
The National Tertiary Education Union has been in negotiations with Deakin Management for a new enterprise agreement for eight months, with little progress being made. On June 7, NTEU members passed a motion calling on management to make significant progress by June 30. Unfortunately, this progress was not made.
Why are we taking these actions?
We understand that these actions are significant in scale and impact, and we want to assure you that we do not take these actions lightly. We know a strike means our members lose money, and for some people, it’s money they just can’t afford to lose. This is why we only go on strike as a last resort and why we do everything to bring all our members with us.
We believe such dramatic action is required to indicate that we are serious and want an agreement soon. Previous, smaller actions have not dramatically moved management (making statements, half-day stop works).
The university can afford to meet our claims and could make everything happen if management wanted to. We need to remind them that it’s the workers who make the university everything it is and that it can’t survive without us.
The three actions have been chosen to allow for staff from all cohorts across the university while reaching as many students and members of the public as possible.