If you remember playing this game as a kid, where a whisper is distorted as it is circulated around the circle of participants, maybe you will appreciate what is happening at the moment with your Enterprise Agreement.
On 4 May 2023 the university made a revised offer on salaries, which we thought was worthy of your consideration. That offer, being five per cent effective from 1 April this year, and four per cent a year for two years thereafter, came at the end of a long period of intense advocacy by your union and when put to members on Friday 19 May was endorsed as acceptable by you.
We have advised the university accordingly and indicated we are keen to see the agreement balloted, lodged and approved so the pay rises we have negotiated can get into our members’ pockets without delay.
Instead we have had unwelcome intervention by new interests and the distortion of simple messages, as happens in the broken telephone game, by others.
Yesterday we were at the Fair Work Commission for conciliation following an application by a new party to negotiations, an academic who only decided to lodge an interest about 4-6 weeks ago. Then there was then a counter-application by the university for conciliation on some other points.
Your union was clear in these proceedings – the time for negotiating about minor differences is over, we want the ballot to proceed and the agreement lodged as soon as possible and this faffing around with trivialities is aiding no-one.
The Commission has set time aside over the next few days to attempt to conciliate the final outstanding matters between the university and other parties. They are not matters of any concern to CPSU NSW members, nor arguably many, if any, staff of the University of Newcastle, and we have opted to not participate.
This is not the time for industrial action. This is not the time for doomsday predictions or scaremongering. This is not the time for further delay and obfuscation.
The salary offer of five per cent this year and 13 per cent over three years is nothing to sneeze at. And we want it in your pockets as soon as possible.
We urge all the parties who still claim to have something to pursue to get it done in this conciliation over the next few days. CPSU NSW members, and Professional Staff generally, have waited long enough.
