Deakin Enterprise Agreement 2023
Deakin NTEU members have negotiated a new Enterprise Agreement.
About the New Agreement
Deakin University staff can look forward to improved pay and conditions, as the proposed new Enterprise Agreement edged a step closer after passing a vote by NTEU members at the university.
With Deakin NTEU members giving the proposed new Enterprise Agreement a ringing endorsement at an all-member meeting on 31 August, all staff at Deakin University will now be able to vote on the new deal and put the seal on the long campaign to win real pay rises, more secure jobs and fairer workloads at the university.
What are the core improvements in the new Enterprise Agreement?
The new Agreement has a nominal expiry date of 30 June 2026, replacing the current Agreement which had a nominal expiry date of 28 June 2021.
- It features salary increases of 17.25% over five years [1.5% and 3.75% administrative] [3x 4% during the Agreement]. This totals 18.45% compounded over a five-year period.
- The first pay rise will be effective 7 days after it is approved by the Fair Work Commission.
- Academic workloads will see a reduction of 30 hours off the annual workload hours, and unplanned leave will also be deducted from workload expectations.
- Faculty-based Academic Workload Committees will be created with 40% NTEU membership to review and develop Academic Workload Allocation Models. Individual reviews will also have access to a review committee before proceeding to the dispute process.
- There will be an express reference to the right to exercise Academic freedom with a prohibition on being subject to misconduct/serious misconduct processes.
- An additional 3 days of public holidays will be introduced while retaining the Christmas closedown.
- There are 30 days of paid Gender Affirmation Leave.
- Paid partner leave will increase from 2 to 4 weeks.
- There is an express inclusion of 10 days of paid Family and Domestic Violence leave, which was previously categorised as special leave.
Academic Decasualisation
- There will be a minimum of 90 FTE positions created to decasualize the academic workforce: 60 Education Focused positions (with a cap of 75% teaching and a minimum of 10% research) and 30 standard Teaching and Research positions.
Casual Academic Staff
- Casual Academic staff will also access to library and online facilities for 200 days post-engagement.
Casual Professional Staff
- Casual Professional staff will have access to overtime after 7 hours and 21 minutes a day and the introduction of weekend penalty rates. They will also retain access to campus and online facilities during their engagement.
- There is an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment target of 3% (134 EFT positions). There is formal recognition of ‘cultural load’ as part of the workload.
- The formal establishment of an Indigenous Staff Network will be regarded as paid time for all, including casual staff (both Academic and Professional) who are employed at the time.
- Ceremonial Leave has been broadened to Cultural Leave and doubled from 5 to 10 days of paid leave per year.
- Staff can substitute 26 January public holdiday for another day.
Deakin NTEU Branch President Piper Rodd is delighted and proud of her members, officials and supporters, who worked tirelessly throughout the campaign, recruiting members and rallying staff support, in particular for defeating a non-union ballot as management attempted to circumvent the bargaining process.
“Deakin NTEU members have worked exceptionally hard to collectively achieve an improved agreement for the benefit of all Deakin workers. Together, we organised to defeat a non-union ballot that forced management to take us and the concerns of our members seriously.
“This has very much been a collective victory for and by Deakin members who took unprecedented industrial action across many months, the first time in more than a decade any industrial action has happened at Deakin.
“Our members joined our strike days and rallied on multiple campuses. Our week-long teaching ban was extremely effective in forcing management to take our claims seriously because it showed them that it wasn’t just a few disgruntled union members who cared about working conditions but all of our students who voiced their concern by supporting our actions and writing to our VC to say they understood the importance of good working conditions for high quality education.“We say thank you to our bargaining team, Audrey, Jack, Rhidian, Sam and Michael and we say thank you to all our members who joined together to tell management that we all deserve sustainable workloads, a decent pay rise and more respect. Our membership continued to grow through this campaign and will keep building as we now embark on ensuring that the rights we’ve won in our new EA are enacted for the benefit for all our members at Deakin.
Dr Piper Rodd, Deakin NTEU Branch President
“Together we’ve learned that we can have our voices heard and we can fight for a better university.”