Open letter from Dr. Carol Williams, NTEU Monash Branch President
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Tuesday 24 August 2004
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| Professor Richard Larkins, Vice Chancellor Monash University Dear Professor Larkins, the actions of management negotiators in the current enterprise bargaining negotiations have demonstrated that they are not prepared to value staff. You will be aware that the management team has refused to contemplate, let alone resolve any of our claims without our prior agreement to its claim on performance based contracts. Not only is the management claim unacceptable to Union members on this point, the team’s approach to negotiating it with the Union is contemptuous. Monash University staff have earned the right to have their industrial claims taken seriously. To our regret, NTEU members realise that management’s lack of due engagement has forced us to take industrial action. We shall proceed to a stopwork meeting on the 1st of September. If a heads of agreement has not been resolved prior to that stopwork meeting, NTEU members have resolved to organise further industrial action. The Branch Committee shall be recommending a 24 hour strike on September 16. The NTEU’s strike will have statewide support. Victoria’s universities will all be registering some industrial activity with a focus on Monash. We understand that industrial action is never welcome. It is not something we enter into lightly. Our track record demonstrates this. To date we have avoided industrial action out of respect for the important work of this University. Nonetheless, we cannot see how these dysfunctional negotiations ensure staff at Monash University will get a fair deal. We maintain our claims are entirely reasonable, and worthy of negotiation.We believe that the pending heads of agreement could be resolved very quickly. One way to breach the current impasse would be that you personally ensure senior management staff become involved in the negotiations. That would at least ensure that both parties at the negotiating table were empowered to make decisions. Professor we remind you, the most senior representative of University management, that Monash is ultimately defined by the labour of its staff. We can withdraw that labour. Yours sincerely, Dr. Carol J. Williams |