NTEU News | 26 November 2013
Staff at Melbourne’s Centre for Adult Education (CAE) have been on an indefinite strike since Monday 18 November 2013.
90 year old CAE student Margaret Swann on the picket line
The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) says it has been bargaining with management representatives for a new enterprise agreement since February 2011 and staff have not had a pay increase since May 2010.
An agreement was reached at the end of 2011, but, according to the NTEU, six months later the CAE reneged on the agreement, “after interference by the state government.” A new agreement was reached at the end of 2012 and again they reneged on it, and in June this year they put over 30 cuts to employment conditions on the table.,” said
NTEU Victorian Division Secretary Colin Long says that:
Staff have lost trust in management’s willingness to actually reach an agreement, let alone a fair agreement. They are incredibly angry and sick of management’s behaviour and the state government’s interference. It’s the government that is demanding that employment conditions be cut, and encouraging management to thumb its nose at the Fair Work Commission.
An indefinite stoppage is unprecedented in the Victorian tertiary education sector. That’s how angry staff are about the way they are being treated.
