News

CPSU NSW update: University of Technology Sydney NEW STAFF ENTERPRISE AGREEMENT

Your Enterprise Agreement – Vote YES

Voting for the new University of Technology Sydney Staff Enterprise Agreement 2021 (EA) has opened.

The voting period is from midnight Friday 7 April until 3:00pm Thursday 13 April. If you have questions regarding the EA, please do not hesitate to contact your union.

The CPSU NSW UTS Branch strongly recommends that Professional Staff vote “YES” to the University of Technology Sydney Staff Enterprise Agreement 2021.

Benefits

The CPSU NSW UTS Bargaining Team spent countless hours fighting for you and your conditions throughout bargaining. The new EA contains many benefits including, but not limited to:

• Pay increases: 4.5% (2023), 3.5% (2024) and 3% (2025) with a nominal expiration date of 31 August 2025.
• Enhanced union representation
• Stronger mechanisms for taking Annual Leave
• Gender Affirmation Leave
• Enhanced Indigenous Employment conditions
• Stronger Change Management clauses to protect Professional Staff and their job security
• Professional Staff will only be subject to a maximum of one workplace change in a two-year period
• New provisions on redeployment
• Reporting on Professional Development expenditure
• The Right to Disconnect – a new clause that sets boundaries on when Professional Staff can be contacted out of hours
• The ability to make informal remote working arrangements
• The removal of additional/general shutdown and forced leave provisions
• New Agreement Implementation Committee to oversee the application of the new EA
• Conversion rights – stronger provisions to force UTS to offer conversion to continuing work for casual and fixed-term Professional Staff
• Improved Workload Review mechanisms and allocation of workloads
• Additional descriptions and recognition of sexual and other harassment
• Improved Parental Leave and clarification on adoption leave
• Special Leave for Casual Staff to be vaccinated
• Taking Long Service Leave at half pay retained
• Redundancy, Retrenchment, and Voluntary Separation pay out amounts not reduced
• Easier to read and clearer to promote consistent application of conditions across UTS

 What was lost

Unfortunately, as with all enterprise bargaining, certain concessions were made to achieve the new agreement. Below are some of the main features lost or compromised to reach agreement.

A Separate Professional Staff Agreement

The CPSU NSW has said it a thousand times. A single enterprise agreement is not the way. Academics have no place in voting on and deciding the employment conditions of the Professional Staff that keeps the university afloat. Professional Staff conditions should remain separate and not be open to trade-offs with those afforded to academics.

A separate Professional Staff Enterprise Agreement is the only way your voice will be truly heard in voting on the Agreement.

Pay

The CPSU NSW UTS team presented a comprehensive approach to UTS management on our claims for pay increases. In comparison with other NSW universities, the base (UTS) HEW level salaries are significantly lower. In 2022, we agreed with UTS’s revised proposed pay increases (better than their first offer), and made a further claim for uplifts to raise these base HEW levels, in line with common practice in this bargaining round at other universities.

The NTEU’s Log of Claims salary increase has not been met by the UTS offer. They did not provide a detailed response or counter-offer to the UTS offer and opposed the CPSU’s claim for uplifts across HEW levels. It is disappointing that the benefits of uplifts  appeared lost on the other bargaining party.

Annual Leave

The CPSU NSW strongly objected to UTS cutting down the maximum accrual of annual leave from 40 to 30 days. We maintain that it is the role of UTS to properly manage the liability of accrual of annual leave and to make it easier for annual leave to be approved. UTS’ original position was to reduce annual leave accrual to 20 days which we strongly opposed and were able to have them reconsider. An annual leave accrual maximum of 35 days was one part of our pay offer that was not accepted.

Professional Staff Development

The university has refused to state a dollar figure, and therefore commit to, Professional Staff funding. This flies in the face of competitor universities, many of which has bolstered their funding by the millions of dollars. We were able to claw back reporting on staff development spend and will watch this space carefully during implementation of the new Agreement.

Broadbanding Reduced

UTS management has reduced broadbanding opportunities at UTS:

• HEW levels from a maximum of 3 to a maximum of 2; and
• Removal of broadbanding for the majority of positions in one area at UTS

The CPSU NSW strongly objects to any reduction in Professional Staff benefiting from broadbanding.

The EA is a package deal negotiated as a whole. Compromise in some form to reach in-principle agreement is common. The CPSU NSW does not believe that any drawbacks outweigh the benefits won in this EA.

The CPSU NSW team thanks the membership for being part of the bargaining process.

Your CPSU NSW UTS Team

Andreas Dalman CPSU NSW UTS Branch President
Mark Christopher CPSU NSW UTS Delegate
Greg Hampshire CPSU NSW UTS Delegate
Daisy Amanaki CPSU NSW UTS Delegate
Michael Cope Industrial Officer Community and Public Sector Union (NSW Branch)

What can you do?

• Give a copy of this bulletin to your colleagues.
• Print this bulletin and put it up on your notice board.
• Ask a colleague to join the CPSU NSW
• Get involved as your Area Contact
  Become a CPSU Delegate
• Not a member? join online at cpsunsw.org.au/join