“If you’re here now, get ready to come back to more of these over the next few months, because what we are fighting for is our life, and the life of our university”, Dr Kim Davies proclaimed to fellow staff at Deakin University’s second strike of this year. 

Members of the National Tertiary Education Union participated in a week-long teaching ban and a 24-hour strike on 20 July. Staff members, students and fellow unionists attended rallies held at the Burwood and Geelong Waterfront campuses. 

The action came in the wake of eight months of failed enterprise bargaining, and an attempt by university management to bypass the NTEU with a non-union ballot. The ballot offered a 2.9 percent salary increase per year—a pay cut in real terms—and failed to meet key demands around Indigenous employment, job security and improved workloads. The NTEU ran a successful “Vote No” campaign that defeated management’s deal by a two-thirds majority. On 7 June, NTEU members passed a motion calling on management to make significant progress by the end of the month. This progress was not made. 

Staff are fighting for better pay, decasualisation, restrictions on restructures and changes in workloads. These changes include overall reductions, work from home rights and the establishment of democratic committees to determine workload models. Staff are currently not afforded enough time to complete key duties, and casuals estimate that half of their working hours are unpaid. 

“We want improved casual conditions, we want superannuation equity at 17 percent, we want all hours paid for all hours worked, we want sick leave for casuals, we want penalty rates for casual professional staff on the weekend”, said NTEU casual representative Audrey Statham in her speech at the strike. “We have been saying this since the beginning of bargaining, and on all of those things they continue to say no, and that is part of why we are here today. To say we won’t take it.”

Students held placards that read “student solidarity with staff” and “give back stolen wages”. Saravina Afaj, a student activist at Deakin, spoke to the importance of student/staff solidarity: “we should be united in this fight, the interests of staff and students are one and the same, because education should not be a commodity only the few of us can afford, because staff should not be overworked and underpaid ... a win for the staff is a win for students, a win for you is a win for us!”