Enterprise Bargaining

The Enterprise Bargaining teams have continued to meet on a weekly basis since the beginning of February this year. Negotiations have progressed well with the parties reaching agreement on staff workloads, maternity leave, and grievance procedures for academic and general staff. Significant advancements have also been made in the areas of performance management for general staff and workplace bullying issues.

All parties are working towards signing a Heads of Agreement document as swiftly as possible.

After a long and productive meeting on 21 April, significant progress was made in the negotiations at Monash. Heads of Agreement clauses were agreed relating to:

• parental leave
• academic workloads
• grievance procedures
• performance management for general staff

I am particularly pleased with the outcome on parental leave where the parties have agreed on a new standard for Monash of 14 weeks paid leave on normal salary and a further 38 weeks leave paid at 60 per cent of normal salary. This benefit can, of course, only be available to staff following final certification of the agreement.

In recognition of the progress being made, the university has also increased its salary offer to a compounded salary increase of 16.5 per cent (including the 2 per cent administrative increase already paid). Based on the information I have before me, this is currently the highest salary offer made to staff of Victorian universities.

I am pleased that negotiations are proceeding in a positive and constructive manner and I hope that this will continue so that this round of enterprise bargaining can be quickly brought to conclusion and staff can then access the benefits of the new agreement.

Further details will be available on this page in the next few days.

Enterprise bargaining negotiations took place on 17, 18 and 23 March with a desire by both the university and the NTEU to make progress as quickly as possible.

The meeting considered aspects of the draft Heads of Agreement documents that had previously been exchanged. Initial discussions took place about an approach to new grievance procedures and improved performance management processes for all staff.

At today’s meeting, job security provisions were also discussed.

The next meeting will be held on 14 April. The agenda will include:

• Academic promotion;
• General staff classification processes;
• Regulation of casual employment; and
• Aspects of parental leave.