Like most academics, I’m somewhat ambivalent about strike action. On the one hand, given the nature of the work, a one-day or even a one-week strike would barely be noticed by the employers (and, as I’ll mention below, it’s not clear whether the employers are the universities or the government). On the other hand, the right to strike is an important one, that has been struggled for and defended for nearly 200 years, and we have plenty of reasons for wanting to exercise it.
In practice, there’s never been a national strike of more than one day, and my response has usually been to stay home and work there, occasionally turning out on a ‘picket’ (more accurately, ‘protest’) line. Even the loss of pay has been spotty. For the same reasons as strikes are somewhat ineffectual, it’s hard to verify who is on strike and who is simply out of the office for some other reason on a given day. So the university is generally reduced to asking people to dob themselves in and the old-style unionist in me objects to helping the boss in this way.
But on this occasion, I’ll be doing things properly. I’m going to spend the day catching up on non-uni jobs (including, I hope, polishing up the blog) and I’ve already advised the uni so they can dock my pay for the day. The issues are worth a strike
Although the strike is formally part of an enterprise bargaining round with the universities (and therefore legally protected) the real target is the government and its higher education package. Although there are quite a few aspects of the higher education policy to disagree with, and some to agree with, the really objectionable point is the government’s attempt to push its industrial relations agenda on to the universities while maintaining the stance that the universities are the employers and that employees must bargain with them if they want wage increases or better conditions.
This component of the government package (a parting gift from Tony Abbott, apparently) was not only objectionable in itself but contradicted its own rhetoric. For example, to listen to the government’s normal talk, there is only one thing worse than ‘pattern bargaining’, (that is, unions pushing the same package onto all the employers in an industry) and that is secondary boycotts (unions striking against an employer with whom another union is in dispute). Yet a central feature of the package is that the government would not fund the universities (in this context suppliers of services to the government) unless they refused to grant unions conditions that were ‘in excess of community standards). Comparative wage justice, pattern bargaining and secondary boycotts all in one!
Some of the worst features of Abbott’s contribution to the package have already been dropped but what remains is entirely sufficient to justify a strike. And its noteworthy that the government’s top headkicker has gone to water the moment he came up against a union with real muscle (the AMA).
You can read more about the strike on the NTEU site
John Quiggin 
Good on you, John.
I know it’s par for the course, but what about that Nelson prattling on and on with his faux concern about students … after launching one of the most well telegraphed strike provocations in memory … I know, I know, it’s pollie behaviour 101 … but the shamelessness is always breathtaking for this outsider.
There’s a strike today?
Good on you, John.
I suppose the fact that half of the day’s pay you lose would have gone to the government anyway, makes it all tolerable.
Earth to Yobbo …
I agree with all your points on the strike.
The parting gift is a probably a ploy. We will expend our ammunition fighting the AWAs; they will give in on that; we will sigh with relief; in the meantime the essential funding plan will get through.
I guess you’re right that there is good and bad in the funding package. I am uneasy chanting ‘Education for all, not just the rich!’ and would like to work out a coherent, sensible position on education funding. This would recognise that the current arrangements do involve a degree of middle class welfare. But it would still give a role to subsidised university education as a means income distribution, not to mention on externality grounds. Maybe I’ll say more about this in Monday’s forum. In the meantime, it would be nice to see that paper…and Chapman’s?
Just one quibble: why don’t we qualify as picketers? At my campus most students and staff stayed away today, but perhaps a couple of hundred came in. I reckon we managed to dissuade ninety percent of those from crossing the picket, without using any intimidatory tactics. It was a good opportunity to get the message across to people who haven’t been paying much attention to what’s happening. And we closed down the whole university for a day, which is not quite as ineffectual as you make out.
As a matter of interest, those who crossed the picket were mostly management personnel from the business development section. There was only one academic, as far as I know (a law lecturer), who insisted on going through with a class (on property law).
But the main thing is, good on you.
While as a rule the strike was against the Federal Government, and only formally and legally against our employer (I work at a Melbourne university and am a local union office bearer), in our case at least the significance of the action against the employer shouldn’t be understated. In our build up to the strike, we strongly put it to the uni management to take a public stand against the Government’s proposals (ie make them unworkable). They refused to do this and this was part of our grounds for dispute. To that extent, the strike was also about management’s position. It was clearly stated in the public statements and in the organising we undertook for the strike.