Tuesday, 9 August 2022
UTS bargaining update
The parties met for three hours on Tuesday 2 August 2022. Topics discussed included:
- Fixed Term Severance Pay UTS proposed a simplified mechanism to be the same for Professional and Academic staff. The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) expressed concerns regarding the impact on Academic staff.
- Managing Change UTS acknowledged the need to rework parts of their Change clause to remove technical issues and other ambiguities to better align with objectives all bargaining parties have agreed on.
- Redeployment The parties discussed the possibility of negative impacts for employees if they reject a redeployment offer. The CPSU NSW stressed that any redeployment to a different reporting line be compatible with the culture of that team. The new UTS draft clause appears to offer a choice for management between Retrenchment or Voluntary Separation. The CPSU NSW questioned this citing that in the current Agreement Voluntary Separation is offered in the first instance with Retrenchment occurring only as a last resort; understandably the NTEU is focused on the proposed reduction in retrenchment conditions for Academics.
The parties will next meet on Tuesday 16 August 2022.
UTS information on the casual workforce will be supplied to bargaining parties COB Friday 12 August 2022. It was agreed that this will not give sufficient time for parties to consider the data and caucus with their memberships before the next meeting.
The parties will discuss :
- Managing change Continuation of discussions on the UTS-proposed clause, including UTS amendments to it from discussions so far
- Redundancy review
- Indigenous employment targets
Yours in union
Thane Pearce, Andreas Dalman, Mark Christopher, Rosa Bow and Greg Hampshire
CPSU NSW UTS EB9 Bargaining Team
Community and Public Sector Union New South Wales.
