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Culture change at UNE

Posted 12 August 2010 by Helen McLennan (University of New England)

Congratulations to the bargaining team, for a great job. The new Academic Agreement has been given the seal of approval of both staff and management, and will now go to Fair Work Australia to be signed off. People closer to the process than me have explained at meetings how the new agreement overcomes many of the problems of the last one, which was struck under the shadow of the Howard era industrial relations laws and the higher education workplace relations arrangements enforced as a condition of Commonwealth funding. Beyond the detail, this marks a significant milestone in a return to a more collegial workplace. We now have an agreement which re-establishes our rights at work, including our right to bargain and negotiate with management about how we do our work. One of our banners, you will remember, called for RESPECT. The new agreement signals a change for the better in the workplace culture at UNE.

Unfortunately, the Branch Executive still regularly hears of cases where managers appear not to have noticed that the world has changed. An agreement is only as good as the willingness of those who are party to it to abide by its spirit, not just its letter. We have come out of a very difficult period in industrial relations history, where unions and workers were told the pendulum had swung too far our way, and we had to make sacrifices for the good of the enterprise, the economy, and the nation. Well, we made the sacrifices, but the global financial crisis came anyway. No wonder, then, that many institutions are finally realising that their employees are their most important asset. The enterprises which will survive and flourish in the 21st Century will be the ones where workers are respected and decisions made collaboratively.

Not long ago, collegial decision making was recognised as a fundamental condition for good intellectual work. The last decade saw that collegialism slowly eroded, and an increase in the power of corporate managers. With this agreement, we take one small step in the other direction. From now on, when decisions are made in Faculties, Schools, Centres and Administrative Units, the voices of all who work there should be heard and listened to, not just those of the chosen few. The best thanks we can give the bargaining team is to use the agreement now to make sure this happens.

Bob Boughton

UNE Branch Executive member