Students don’t have their results. Teachers don’t have their pay rise. And RMIT University says it doesn’t have the money.
Photo: LeeAnne Adams
It’s now been more than seven weeks since the National Tertiary Education Union at RMIT put a ban on releasing results to students but an agreement between the union and the university still seems far away.
While students are aching to know their results, the teaching staff is fighting for a pay increase and conditional improvements to what they believe are currently inadequate arrangements.
The RMIT senior management has so far offered a 2-2.5% pay increase per year over the next four years, which Melissa Slee of the National Tertiary Education Union believes is an “insulting low pay offer” that when combined with inflation effectively “represents a pay cut.”
“To add insult to injury, the offer comes on top of lengthy delays in negotiations. Our collective agreement expired in July of last year,” Dr Slee said.
“RMIT management has intentionally delayed reaching agreement since that time. What this means is that staff have not received a pay rise since last July and important conditions remain in limbo.”
But RMIT believes its pay offer has been made in accord with the university’s current and future financial forecasts.
“The pay offer is sensible, considered and realistic in the current environment of limited revenue growth. It is consistent with maintaining the University’s staff numbers and its financial viability,” RMIT Vice-President, Professor Gill Palmer said.
“It is now time for the NTEU to be realistic and review its $240 million log of claims, including its claim for a pay rise of 7 per cent per year for four years.”
Many students are frustrated that the NTEU has used student results as a bartering tool for their own causes and have vented their outrage online.
“This is an ineffective action which exploits students, who are already exploited and pay too much for education,” a student called Melody wrote on the NTEU webpage.
“It is an outrage that you would penalise students who pay for a service and work so hard in their courses to put pressure on to change conditions for your workers.
“This action was also very poorly publicized I found out about this when I went to get my results.”
However, the RMIT University Student Union condoned the withholding of results, with the view that teachers’ current conditions are having a negative effect on student experience and the temporary inconvenience will inflict no serious harm on students.
“The students agreed that while this industrial action has the potential to be a significant inconvenience, it is for the greater good of everyone’s education and the standing of the institution from which we all hope to graduate,” RUSU President James Michelmore said.
“One of our major concerns is casualisation. Students can tell which of their lecturers and tutors are continuing staff and which are casuals. It’s obvious through no fault of their own that casuals simply don’t get the training, experience and support they need.
“Students are already feeling the effects of increasing tutorial sizes at RMIT. The Student Union supports the NTEU’s claim for a cap to tutorial sizes to protect the quality of learning at RMIT.”
Watch a full interview with National Tertiary Education Union, RMIT branch President, Melissa Slee, below.
