NEWS AND RESEARCH UNIKEN August 2003 • 3

University, unions
sign off on pay deal
For the Record
The University and the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) have agreed on a new enterprise agreement for academic staff, the first to be negotiated in the current round of bargaining in the higher education sector.
    The proposed agreement, put to a vote of staff late last month, will deliver an effective salary increase of up to 19.5 per cent.
    “I am very pleased that we have reached this agreement,” Vice-Chancellor Professor Rory Hume said.  “It provides for a range of benefits for both the University and academic staff.  Academic salaries at UNSW are now the highest in the country, and I am confident that this will assist us to attract and retain academics of the best quality.”
    The agreement provides for an increase on base salary of 12 per cent over three years and a new annual $3,000 loading for all academics. Together these measures will deliver an effective salary increase of between 15.5 and 19.5 per cent.
    The enterprise agreement also provides for an increase in paid maternity leave to 14 weeks; or 28 weeks on half pay paid partner leave; access to paid maternity leave for casual staff; and a		 scheme to support academic career development.
    “Greater flexibility in employment has been achieved through the introduction of fixed-term contracts that can be converted to continuing employment,” Professor Hume said.  “Streamlining of disciplinary and redundancy provisions will also be beneficial.”

General staff agreement
The University’s general staff endorsed their enterprise agreement in a vote on June 10 and received the first two per cent salary increase and a one-off payment of $1,500.
    The general staff agreement also provides for substantial salary increases – 12.6 per cent over three years – and establishes a process for ‘broadbanding’ general staff positions, creating the possibility of further salary increases. The casual loading has increased from 21.8 per cent to 23 per cent.
    The general staff agreement also provides significantly enhanced benefits including an increase in paid maternity leave to 14 weeks; the introduction of paid partner leave and access to paid maternity leave for casual staff.		 “I haven’t detected any rancour. I should say continuing rancour. Initially I did get some very hard comment.”
Vice-Chancellor Professor Rory Hume describing the reaction of his fellow V-Cs to his ‘pre-emptive strike’ last year of making generous pay offers to academic and general staff before unions had lodged their claims – The Australian

“The image that environmentally friendly products have is that they are not the most sexy, cool products … environmentally conscious producers [need] to re-brand themselves as the fashion of the season.”
UNEP director Klaus Topfer, who delivered the 2003 Jack Beale lecture at UNSW – SMH

“All those illegal immigrants who cheat the system by flying in on short-term visas and then disappearing … are presumably not worth bothering about. We must focus exclusively on these poor blighters in leaky boats who transparently throw themselves on our mercy. People like John Yu, chancellor of UNSW and one of our most distinguished paediatricians – a man who arrived in Australia in just such a boat but, luckily for him … in more humane times.”
Columnist Hugh Mackay – The Age

“What governments give, no government shall take away – especially if it is capitalised into the value of property.”
Neil Warren of ATAX on calls for the abolition of negative gearing – Australian Financial Review

“The Dawkins restructure (of universities in the 1980s) … will prove to be the greatest single mistake of the Hawke-Keating years.”
Former ALP federal president Barry Jones – The Australian

“[Japanese tourists] like cute animals, but once you cuddle a koala you can’t cuddle it forever.”
UNSW’s Dr Roger March on the drop in the number of Japanese tourists visiting Sydney – SMH

Members of the NTEU general staff bargaining team,
from left Andre Byron, Laura Wilson and Chris Holley.