Professor Lindsay’s reply to open letter from Dr. Carol Williams, NTEU Monash Branch President
Professor Alan Lindsay
Deputy Vice Chancellor and Vice-President, (Academic)
30 August, 2004
Dr Carol Williams
President, Monash Branch NTEU
CLAYTON CAMPUS
Dear Carol,
Thank you indeed for your letter to the Vice-Chancellor which I understand has also been circulated to members of Monash staff who are members of the NTEU.
As I am sure you are aware, I hold university responsibility for enterprise bargaining and as such, the Vice-Chancellor has asked me to respond on his behalf.
I am disappointed at some of the assertions in your letter.
In particular, your letter appears to attack the university’s negotiating team and asserts that it is making a “claim” on performance based contracts. The university has no claim on performance based contracts. The university wishes to keep the existing performance based contract clause, agreed by NTEU negotiators in two previous enterprise agreements, in its current form. The university has accepted your concerns about some aspects of the current proposed clause and made a more than reasonable suggested compromise. I believe your suggestion that the management team is in any way contemptuous of the union is without foundation.
I reiterate that the position of Monash, as expressed by our negotiators, reflects the views of the Vice-Chancellor’s Group and the Senior Management Committee of the university, who are kept regularly informed in an objective and impartial way of the relative status of negotiations. The university negotiators have long experience in enterprise bargaining negotiations. Previous negotiators (both locally and at the state level) from the NTEU have been able to reach enterprise agreements with the same people, as have officials of other unions.
I am disappointed that you now state you intend to take industrial action and in particular, that some of the industrial action contemplated will impact on students on the most important day of their university life, that is on graduation day. I urge you to reconsider your intended industrial action and its potential impact on students.
The university has already agreed to the highest non-contingent salary offer amongst Victorian universities and the highest quantum of maternity leave offered at Australian universities. To therefore suggest the university is mean or contemptuous is without foundation. I do not believe that either the NTEU or the university can readily reach resolution if we move to a phase of attacking each other’s negotiators.
Both Peter Marshall, Divisional Director of Student and Staff Services, myself and the management negotiating team are happy to meet with the NTEU negotiating team to bring these negotiations to a rapid conclusion, but clearly this cannot occur under the threat of industrial action.
If you are able to pause your proposed industrial action, say until 24 September, so that these meetings can take place I believe that we can, with goodwill on both sides, bring the negotiations to an early conclusion with a satisfactory result for both the university, its staff and of course the NTEU.
The university is prepared to resume negotiations without any preconditions on either side, but not under the immediate threat of industrial action.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Kind regards,
Alan Lindsay