RMIT management and its teachers have been playing a game of tug of war over wages and contractual agreements for 14 months now and so far there’s nothing to show for it.
The National Tertiary Education Union has thrown a few sticks and stones at the university: a half day strike, a brief ban on email correspondence and a two month ban on releasing assessment results to students.
But university management and their lawyers have barely flinched, sticking to their pay offer of 2.5 per cent per year for four years – an offer that the NTEU has scoffed at seeing it as effectively a pay cut if inflation is taken into account over that period.
Put simply, RMIT is crying poor.
“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.
The union regularly chuckles whenever this comes up, citing Vice Chancellor Margaret Gardner’s annual salary of $915,000, nearly 10 times that of the average senior lecturer.
Not to mention RMIT’s annual revenue of $1031 million, the sixth greatest university revenue in Australia – an amount seemingly materializing in the grand projects the university has been popping up around Melbourne and abroad.
It can’t be said enough that any educational facility’s most important asset is its teachers. A quality teacher that is attentive, knowledgeable, engaged and motivated is the ingredient in education that is pivotal to the success of it.
But sadly it seems the imperative for universities across the board has shifted from education to business.
It seems RMIT has committed itself foremost to building facilities that are filled with flashy but unused equipment and pouring millions into projects that make the campus look futuristic in an attempt to seduce potential students.
Meanwhile, teacher numbers have been dwindling in recent years and full time staff are being replaced by the financially attractive option of casual academics.
Currently more than 50 per cent of undergraduate teaching is done by casual academics with RMIT holding the second highest rate of casual academics in Australia.
Casual academics have less preparation time, training and support which undermines their ability to deliver quality education, straining not just themselves, but entire programs as well.
A staff survey conducted by the NTEU this year found that 64 per cent of staff believe there are not enough staff employed to meet work demands, and 67 per cent believe they have insufficient time available to work on high priority projects and activities.
“Students can tell which of their lecturers and tutors are continuing staff and which are casuals,” President of RMIT University Student Union James Michelmore said.
“It’s obvious through no fault of their own that casuals simply don’t get the training, experience and support they need. It is bad for the casual staff member and it is bad for students,” he said.
“Students are already feeling the effects of increasing tutorial sizes at RMIT. In the long run it is going to undermine the credibility of RMIT and deplete the value of our degrees.”
The NTEU is prepping itself for a pivotal two months coming up, in which they will be hoping to reach an agreement with management enabling them to begin afresh in 2014.
A full day strike is looming in the air, and the threat of abandoning the graduation ceremony is sure to unnerve the bartering table.
But it seems if RMIT management decide to stick to the current trend of profiteering over educating, supplying and paying teachers properly will be seated at the back of the classroom.
