7 March 2013

The Vice-Chancellor

University of Sydney

Dear Michael

Why I went on strike today

Thank you for your emails of 12 and 20 February, and Stephen Garton’s of 1 March, and Boyd Williams’ of 5 March, giving me the management’s views about the enterprise bargaining and our industrial action. In return, I will try to help you understand why a significant part of your staff are on the picket line today.  I’m one of the oldest inhabitants of the village – my first job at the University of Sydney started in 1971 - I care a lot for this place, and for the people I work with.

University staff don’t take industrial action lightly.  As you may know, a strike rarely has a single cause.  It generally grows from a build-up of frustrations, setbacks and conflicts that result in a loss of trust in management.  That is the case at the University of Sydney.  It is the same in much of the Australian university system, which has become more troubled, and more tense and distrustful, than in previous generations.

Universities as employers have not made it their priority to have a secure, committed workforce.  Over time, university managers have responded to funding pressures by making job insecurity grow – through outsourcing of general staff work, erosion of tenure, and above all, casualization.  Our glossy brochures don’t admit this, but around half the undergraduate teaching in Australia is now done by temporary staff.

To management, this looks like flexibility.  To many of my younger colleagues, it looks like a life of precarious labour, scrabbling for short-term, part-time and totally insecure appointments.  These are poor conditions for building an intellectual workforce.  From an educational point of view, it means a mass of teaching done by staff who can’t build up the experience, depth of knowledge, or confident relationship with students that are needed for the very best teaching.

The full-time staff too have been under growing stress.  You will be very familiar with the worsening student/staff ratios in the last generation.  No pretence that we can work smarter can reduce this pressure, on both academic and general staff.  The industrial relations colleagues call this “labour intensification”, and it’s a reality at the chalk face in this university.

At the same time there has been more micro-management and surveillance of how we do our jobs.  The staff of this university are increasingly enmeshed in a thicket of anonymous online control systems - to document our courses, get permission to travel or to do our research, get our “performance” managed, and many other things - taking increasing slices of our time and energy.  In other ways too, we have been losing autonomy in our day-to-day work.  Have we agreed to these changes?  In most cases we were never asked; they have simply been imposed on us.

That’s part of a broader decline of organizational democracy and self-management in the university.  We don’t have any forum, or set of forums, where the problems of this university can be debated in a participatory way, with some prospect of influencing outcomes.  The nearest we have is the Academic Board, where good discussions do occur, but most academic staff aren’t invited and of course non-academic staff aren’t represented.  What we do have in abundance are media releases, “staff news” (comprising PR and commercial “offers”), all-staff emails from you and Stephen, threatening messages from the HR Director, even videos that you send us - in short, announcements from the management.  It’s not a good substitute.

With performance management, online surveillance systems, and closed decision-making, it appears that the university authorities these days don’t really trust the staff - to know our trades, to act responsibly, or to share in running the place.

That’s an important reason for the depth of anger about the redundancies issue in 2011-12.  We are grown-up people, we know universities have financial problems, we too want to work out solutions – and we know there are many ways for institutions to handle financial pressure.  Instead of an invitation to work on the problems together, we saw colleagues threatened, tenure weakened, arbitrary rules imposed, and mysterious exemptions granted.  And then a further round of redundancies was mishandled too.  I don’t know what your original intention was; but as these events unfolded, staff saw the management behaving unpredictably, wrecking the livelihoods of valued colleagues, and undermining security for all the staff.

It’s not encouraging to see university managers across the country increasingly resembling the executives of big corporations – in pay and conditions, in language, in techniques of running an organization, and in hard-handed approaches to the workforce.  Corporate managers are an increasingly powerful, rich and selfish group in Australian society.  The more that university managers integrate with them, the bigger the gulf that will open with the staff of the universities.

When it came to the enterprise bargaining, then, there was a big question: would you and your colleagues recognize these growing concerns and use the enterprise bargaining to build a positive relationship with the staff, or treat it as an occasion to beat the staff and the union back?  Unfortunately it was the second, and that’s basically why this strike has happened.

I’m not on the bargaining team; I follow what is happening from union report-backs, management announcements (including Ann Brewer’s welcome visit to my Faculty), and the documents.  Some things have been obvious.  Management wasn’t trying for a prompt agreement.  When management did put proposals on the table, they weren’t proposals for improved staff conditions – they offered weakened rights and less security.  I know that management contest the NTEU’s statements about this, but I’ve looked at the documents, compared management proposals with the previous enterprise agreement, and the union is right.  On some points management proposed startling increases in managerial prerogative, and weakened accountability by management to staff.  On a number of points the proposal erodes existing protections for staff.  What management did in writing this offer was moving in exactly the wrong direction.

On the pay issue, I’m not a specialist but I do have common sense.  To suggest that one of the richest universities in Australia, which you tell us in other ways is prospering, which can afford major new building works and salaries for senior staff (including me) on the current scale, will be driven broke by more than a 2% wage deal for the staff – well, like Alice, I may be urged to believe six impossible things before breakfast but I can’t believe that.

I’m glad you have recognized that to drop the guarantee of intellectual freedom from the enforceable industrial agreement was a wrong move.  Thank you for changing approach on that.  Please look at the other issues in the same spirit.

Since the Dawkins ‘reforms’ twenty-five years ago, Australian governments have tried to get an expanded university system on the cheap.  The decline of public sector funding, and the bizarre doctrine that intensifying competitive pressures will make under-resourced education systems work better, are background problems we all have to cope with.  But there is room for manoeuvre.

I think the most difficult thing, for your generation of university administrators, is remembering that you are running a billion-dollar institution that is not a corporation.  Our staff, both academic and general, are proud to work here precisely because it’s a university.  It’s concerned with the making of highly sophisticated knowledge and with the most advanced and demanding forms of education.  These are the public interests for which Australian society puts resources into the university system.  The staff are trying to make this happen, and a good personnel policy for a university will respect and support them.  The very last thing a university needs is an intimidated and conformist workforce.

Most of us would welcome a more cooperative and respectful relationship with the university management.  There are benefits for you – including benefits from a better relationship with our unions.  The unions will tell you the tough stuff, the hard truths about working life in the university; and it’s in union forums that the best thinking about higher education in Australia is currently happening.  It’s a funny thing, which you won’t hear from corporate advisors: for navigating the next stages of university life in this country, the unions are your best friends.

In the next few years, especially if we have an Abbott government, university managements might try to weaken the unions and casualize the workforce more.   It seems some Vice-Chancellors and their advisors would like to try this - but not all.  I hope that Sydney’s managerial group will follow a more intelligent path, because there is something at stake here beyond staff morale and a particular log of claims.  The future character of our university system is involved.

The staff on the picket line here are the people involved in building universities for the twenty-first century, in practice as well as in imagination.  We’d rather do this with your cooperation.

With best wishes,

Cc: Stephen Garton; Ann Brewer; Boyd Williams; University of Sydney Branch NTEU

 under fire after pulling the plug on a planned speaking event by the Dalai Lama.

Students at Sydney University scored a major coup when the Tibetan spiritual leader agreed to speak at their campus during his upcoming short visit to Sydney in June.

But the ABC's 7.30 has obtained emails revealing the university, which has close links to China, went to great lengths to wash its hands of the iconic monk.

Campus authorities ticked off on the Dalai Lama's visit in January, and the university's new Institute for Democracy and Human Rights (IDHR) began to organise the event at the Seymour Centre.

One of the organisers was Sophie Bouris, a mature age student with links to Australia's Tibetan community.

"We envisaged groups of students from Sydney University and other universities would be invited to the Seymour Centre and His Holiness would speak on the subject of why education matters, and they would be invited to ask him questions," she said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-17/uni-under-fire-for-pulling-pin-on-dalai-lama-event/4635720

picture by Mrs Leonisky

If Julia Gillard were not carrying heavy baggage marked Labor with parcels of mistrust and mismanagement locked inside, education policy would be a key factor in deciding the 2013 election.

New South Wales has become the first state to sign up to the Gillard Government's multi-billion dollar Gonski school funding plan, the ABC understands

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-23/gillard-and-ofarrell-to-announce-gonski-funding-deal/4646138

The University of Sydney is set to host a lecture by the Dalai Lama in June, ending a dispute over whether he would be welcome on campus.

In a statement, Institute for Democracy and Human Rights (IDHR) director John Keane said the university was looking forward to hosting the Tibetan spiritual leader at a lecture for students.

"The University of Sydney and IDHR remain firmly committed to the principle that academics are free to invite to our campus anyone who has a legitimate contribution to make to public debate," Professor Keane said.

"It is hoped the mid-June event will form part of a determined commitment of the University of Sydney to develop a constructive dialogue on matters concerning Tibet and the wider region."

Campus authorities ticked off on the Dalai Lama's visit in January and the IDHR began to organise the event at the Seymour Centre.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-23/university-of-sydney-to-host-dalai-lama/4647110

The New York Times, Slate and Al Jazeera have recently drawn attention to the adjunctification of the professoriate in the US. Only 24 per cent of the academic workforce are now tenured or tenure-track. 

Much of the coverage has focused on the sub-poverty wages of adjunct faculty, their lack of job security and the growing legions of unemployed and under-employed PhDs. Elsewhere, the focus has been on web-based learning and the massive open online courses (MOOCs), with some commentators celebrating and others lamenting their arrival. 

The two developments are not unrelated. Harvard recently asked its alumni to volunteer their time as "online mentors" and "discussion group managers" for an online course. Fewer professors and fewer qualified - or even paid - teaching assistants will be required in higher education's New Order. 

Lost amid the fetishisation of information technology and the pathos of the struggle over proper working conditions for adjunct faculty is the deeper crisis of the academic profession occasioned by neoliberalism. This crisis is connected to the economics of higher education but it is not primarily about that. 

The neoliberal sacking of the universities runs much deeper than tuition fee hikes and budget cuts. 

Thatcherite budget-cutting exercise 

The professions are in part defined by the fact that they are self-governing and self-regulating. For many years now, the professoriate has not only been ceding power to a neoliberal managerial class, but has in many cases been actively collaborating with it. 

As a dose of shock capitalism, the 2008 financial crisis accelerated processes already well underway. In successive waves, the crisis has hit each pillar of the American university system. The initial stock market crash blasted the endowments of the prestige private universities. Before long, neoliberal ideologues and their disastrous austerity policies undermined state and eventually federal funding for universities and their research. 

Tuition soared and students turned even more to debt financing. Now that bubble is bursting and hitting all the institutions of higher education that depend on tuition. Students are increasingly unwilling to take on massive debt for jobs they have little confidence of getting. 

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/04/20134238284530760.html

See story at top...

And by the way, as some reports go, the Gonski reforms seem to favour private schooling... It does not. The point is that with proper funding of public education, why pay a lot more to send your kid to a "segregational" school... Sport?... Most public school have been equipped with sporting facilities under the BER scheme. Some people will always choose to have their kids educated under their own religious preference and upper class school ties, no matter what... But overall the Gonski plan is to help all kids, and help the disadvantaged children in education... 

One can also argue that kids in a poorer family don't get the same parental attention and that teachers cannot bear the responsibility of kid being behind the eighth ball, but at least one should try to improve the education system. The Gonski reforms are a good start but watch for schools — especially private — that could rort the system... Nothing new...

Meanwhile at the school for gods and other spiritual inventions:

Independent Member for Sydney Alex Greenwich says it is "appalling" that a loophole exists in New South Wales law allowing private schools to expel students for being gay.

The state's anti-discrimination laws currently make it a crime to refuse admission to a student or expel a student who is gay, lesbian or transgender.

However private schools and colleges are exempt from the law.

Mr Greenwich is preparing to introduce a Private Member's bill to State Parliament to close the loophole.

"A guy I know who's in a Christian school in western Sydney came out to his headmaster who said to him essentially, 'you know, I can expel you for being gay. I'm not going to do that but don't be open about your homosexuality'," Mr Greenwich said.

"Often these exemptions are not used by the school, but the fact that such a law exists I find that quite appalling and I know many others do as well."

Mr Greenwich is hopeful of getting bipartisan support for his bill, which he plans to introduce in the New South Wales Parliament in August.

"I've found parliament to be quite a gay-friendly place," he said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-07/alex-greenwich-gay-legal-loophole-private-schools-nsw/4804252

From John Passant.

This demonisation of the other and increasing criminalisation of difference and dissent – the unlawful associations laws currently being used to attack bikie gangs are the latest example – is all around us. Refugees, Muslims, Aborigines, bikies, protesters, unions, leftwing groups — we are all, or can be, the ‘enemy’ in the minds of the ruling class. This tactic of targeting minorities has a long and dishonourable history from conservative governments, and their armed thugs, the police, are often at the forefront of it. They will say they are just ‘following orders’, but they do so with gusto because it is their real role in society. What better way to distract attention away from the increasing problems of the Queensland economy than to concoct a state of crisis around bikies and begin to round them up without any attempt at due process? This means that for someone like me, I cannot go to the Victorian Police to express my concerns about one of their own verbally attacking protesters and displaying a view of the world that reinforces the perception the police hate demonstrators and are looking for any excuse to attack them. I contacted Simon Corbell, ACT Police Minister, to ask if they could do something about the death threat, including oversighting any police investigation. As for the Victoria Police using foul language to attack demonstrators, I hope the more people who know about this the better. The student demonstrators deserve all the support they can get. I urge readers to let as many people as possible know about this disgraceful attempt to silence dissent.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/life/life-display/victoria-police-threaten-academic,5857

The Federal Government has said it is aiming to end the "school funding wars" with a new 10-year plan, but it will again have to rely on the Senate to put it in place.

• New plan would legislate federal government funding for schools instead of state and territories
• Greens won't rule out support for the plan, hoping it could end the political tug-of-war
• NCEC says the Government modelled the plan without consulting any of the sectors

The Commonwealth is planning to spend an extra $18.6 billion on education over the next decade as it seeks to remodel the needs-based funding system first introduced by Labor.

It plans to legislate Commonwealth funding for schools instead of relying on a series of agreements with the states and territories and independent school sectors.

"What we're committing to do is ensure that we actually fix all those different deals and transition over a 10-year period that sees money there, each and every year into the future, to get every school onto a fair, needs-based formula that is truly sector-blind, that is truly fair to every single state and territory in treating them the same way," Education Minister Simon Birmingham said.

But the Government's approach presents the obvious challenge of getting the legislation through the Senate, before the current funding arrangements expire at the end of this year.

Labor attacked the plan as a $22-billion cut from its original proposal, and most crossbench senators said they wanted much more detail before commenting.

But the Greens did not rule out support in the hope of giving schools long-term certainty.

"People are sick of the argy-bargy between the states and the Federal Government, they're sick of the hyper-partisan fights between the Government and the Opposition, we've got to get the politics out of this," Greens education spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young told AM.

She said the Greens would examine the detail of the plan closely, and wanted to see funding increased for public education.

"We want more funding for the schools that need it, we want to look after our kids and give them certainty, and for those schools that have been getting off with being over-funded for far too long, they need to be reined in," Senator Hanson-Young said.

The Government's plan will see 24 independent schools in the eastern states suffer a direct funding cut over the next decade, and a further 353 will not receive as much money as previously forecast.

Just over 9,000 schools will be better off over the decade.

read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-03/greens-not-ruling-out-support-for-...

So, what happened to the Tony Abbott's revisionists?...

see also: http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/31714

and: http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/28734

read from top... AND PLEASE NOTE THAT THAT DOUBLE DEALING HYPOCRITE CHRISTOPHER PYNE IS STILL POLISHING PARLIAMENT BENCHES ON BEHALF OF TRUMBLE... in some occupational bullshit...