Higher Education

Higher Education hagglers guide

Over the last decade the method of setting wages has become more de-centralised. Awards now cover 23 percent of employees, collective agreements cover 36.8 percent of employees and individual agreements cover 40 percent of employees.

However the education sector has managed to resist the move to individualised wage setting with only 9.3% of employers covered by individual agreements, 13.6 per cent by awards and 77.1 per cent by collective agreements.

Below is a discussion of the Federal Minister's proposals for greater use of AWAs in the higher education sector.

Across the board
Since the first Haggler's Form Guide came out in May there has been little change in wage levels. In the last quarter the average annual wage increase for all agreements was 4.5 per cent. However, there is a considerable variation in negotiated wage settlements. The Federal Department's report on wage trends puts the average annual wage increase at 3.6 percent for the private sector and 3.9 per cent for the public sector.

Union deals still better
While there has been some high wage increases in the construction and education sector of 5 and 6 per cent annually, some agreements with large retailers have resulted in low wage increases of 2.9 percent. Union agreements continue to provide higher wage increases than non-union agreements and AWAs.

...but Vice Chancellors lead the way!
Some workers in the higher education sector have done very well. Annual Reports from Universities revealed that increases in Vice-chancellors packages ranged up to 24 per cent.

OVERALL TRENDS

· Unemployment Rate May 2002 seasonally adjusted 6.3 per cent

· GDP 4%

· CPI July 2002 3.1%

· Ian McFarlane, head of the Reserve Bank predicts interest rates will rise 1 to 1.5 percentage points this year. Current Home Loan Rate May 6.3%. A rise of .5% adds $30.00 per month to $100,000.00 mortgage.

ABS ANNUAL INCREASES 2002

·AWOTE* WAGE COST INDEX
5.1 % 3.1%
(*average weekly ordinary time earnings)

· Average Weekly earnings

Full-time adult ordinary earnings
Feb 2002 $860.10
% change on previous quarter 1.3 % change over year to Feb 2002 5.9

Average Weekly earnings, all employees
February 2002 $684.70

Industry:

Full time adult ordinary time

Education $961.00
Government Admin $918.70
Health Community services $859.00
Finance and Insurance $1,040.70

Percentage change from Corresponding quarter

Education 5.3%
Government Admin 1.6%
Health & Community services -0.4%
Finance and Insurance 4.1%

AGREEMENTS ADAM DATA BASE DECEMBER 2001

· All industries 4.5%

Community Services (Education, welfare etc) 3.5%
Public Administration (Fed/State/Local govt.) 3.5%

March 2001 3.7%
December 2001 3.9%

December 2001

Public Sector 4.6%
Private Sector 4.5%
Non-union 4.1%
Union 4.6%
AWAs 2.2%

LIVING WAGE

Living Wage Adjustment May 2002 $18.00

Federal Minimum increase 4.35%

Federal Minimum weekly wage $431.40

Living Wage adjustment 2000 $15.00

NEWLY NEGOTIATED WAGE INCREASES

Commonwealth Bank July 2002, 2 years 8.0%
NAB offered July annual increase 4.5%
State Rail July 2002, 2 years 8.0%
HCF, July 2002, 2 years 8.6%
Independent School Teachers ACT, 2years 14.5%
Casino Workers, 2 years 9.%

NEWS IN THE INDUSTRY - `CROSSROADS - THE HIGHER EDUCATION REVIEW'

Something to bear in mind in the next bargaining round

Recently the Minister for Education, Science and Training, Brendon Nelson, released a discussion paper on the future of higher education in Australia. The paper, `Higher Education at the Crossroads' invited interested parties to make submissions to a Reference Group which the Minister has convened to consider policy options to reform the administration, funding and support of Australian universities. The process was supposed to be `a transparent discussion free of the highly politicised language of the past'.

Unfortunately the Minister's commitment to a `non-politicised' debate is somewhat questionable when the composition of the reference groups is considered. The reference group does not have any representatives from the State Ministries of Education, no student representatives, no representatives from general staff or academic unions and no representatives from the major professional organizations such as law, medicine and teaching disciplines. The Union, the CPSU-SPSF, made a submission which mainly dealt with staff issues, but as the Federal Secretary David Carey stated `we are sceptical about the process and the genuineness of the review'.

Union "suspicious" of the Crossroads Review
The Union's suspicions are also heightened when we see that one of the major issues in the paper is `workplace reform' which is supposedly achieved through greater de-centralisation, a restructuring of bargaining and individualisation of employment. The CPSU-SPSF Group made submissions on behalf of its members. We argued that proposals to further de-centralise and individualise bargaining would not deliver greater efficiency and workplace reform and that, when taken with cuts to public investment, can only be interpreted as a method of further reducing wages and conditions and of de-unionising the workforce.

Reform receipe-More AWA's for universities!
The Ministerial Paper proposed greater use of individual agreements (AWAs) and suggested that individual agreements would make workplace relations more flexible. We argued that this is an unfounded assumption based upon ideological beliefs about how the employment relationship should be based. The paper implied that the form of industrial instrument effects workplace productivity and efficiency. We presented research that indicated that employers don't see the form of agreement as effecting productivity and further research that indicated that AWAs led to a worsening of wages and conditions of workers. We argued therefore, that further decentralization and greater use of AWAs in the higher education sector will not improve workplace relations or make the bargaining process more efficient.

The Truth about AWAs

What has been the effect of AWAs on wages and conditions of workers?

Studies of AWAs indicate that while professional and managerial workers do not seem to be disadvantaged in AWAs, other workers covered by AWAs have had worse wage outcomes than other forms of agreements and they have also been subject to an erosion of working conditions. Wages data collected on the ACIRRT-ADAM database found that AWAs are less likely to include quantifiable wage increases during the term of the agreement than collective agreements.

Workers on AWAs are exposed to the risk of not receiving a wage increase during the life of the agreement. This is a significant fact when one considers that AWAs can have a lifetime of 3 years.

Workers worse off on AWA's
Studies of AWAs not only indicate a poorer wage outcome but also a reduction in working conditions and non-wage benefits. AWAs are less likely to include penalty and overtime rates for working long and unsocial hours. They are far more likely than union agreements to contain provisions which reduce the payment for non-standard work hours arrangements. (Van Barneveld & Arsovska 2002:17)

A further study conducted by the Western Australian Commissioner of Workplace Agreements found that individual agreements reduce or eliminate significant conditions of work. It found that 50% of individual agreements reduced or eliminated conditions such as overtime pay and penalty rates and that some employees lost two or more significant conditions (Bailey and Horstman 1999)

Another aspect of AWAs is that there is a fundamental difference between the way they link performance to pay increases from that of collective agreements. Collective agreements have a more team or group focus whereas AWAs are more likely to link increases to individual performance measurement.

Peformance Pay
The Union would say that for an individual performance pay system to operate effectively and fairly and be accepted by the workforce it must be properly administered by those having proper knowledge to do so, that the process must be objective and fair and that it must allow participants in the appraisal system to contest and appeal decisions.

It would seem that in the higher education sector, those in staff management positions such as Heads of Schools and Deans, who would be asked to perform such functions under a de-centralised, individualized pay system, do not have the knowledge or expertise to perform such a function in an efficient or fair manner. We would also suggest such a process would expend much of the time of Heads of Schools and Deans and therefore would not be cost effective. The process of negotiating an AWA, if one does exist, has the propensity to create more conflictual work relations as it personalizes wage bargaining.

Furthermore, the Workplace Relations Act requires that AWAs be subject to the `no disadvantage test'. For workers to be satisfied that they are not disadvantaged and for the system to operate fairly and efficiently, the process must be quick and transparent and the test must be applied within the spirit of which it was intended.

The Employment Advocate said recently that they would only do `spot checks' as the office dealt with 6,000 AWAs month and that they `do not necessarily go through every single AWA that we receive and do a no-disadvantage test assessment'. (Workforce:2002). The Employment Advocate has admitted that they are incapable of doing a no disadvantage test assessment on every AWA they receive and will from now on only do `spot checks' on agreements submitted by approved `special partners'.

This is a major failure in ensuring the protection of conditions for many workers and that it not only undermines the efficiency of AWAs but also undermines the standing of such a system in the mind of workers. The vetting of AWAs and the application of the No Disadvantage Test must reflect the purpose of the Act which is to guarantee workers an independent assessment of agreements and ensure that their wages and conditions of work are not undermined.

If the answer to this problem of vetting agreements for a large workforce is merely to introduce standardised AWAs then one must then doubt the purpose of introducing individual agreements and view this proposal as purely an attempt to de-unionise the workforce and indiviudalise the work relationship to achieve an ideological objection than a practical benefit.

Casualisation of the workforce

Increased casualisation of the higher education workforce has significant implications for the delivery of quality service to students, academics and the community but it also has a significant impact on the working conditions of general staff. The numbers of general university staff who are casuals have dramatically increased over the last decade, from 2970 in 1991 to 5144 in 1999, from being 2.66% of all university staff to 6.32% of all staff (see table below). As a percentage of general staff, casuals have increased from 7.78 in 1991 to 13.02% in 1999(see table page 14) (DETYA 2001).

The issue of casualisation of the workplace has significant implications for gender equity. Casual work arrangements are typified by insecure, low paid work, that lacks of access to many work benefits such as training and promotion, various forms of leave and entitlements and conditions enjoyed by the permanent workforce. The current level of casual workers and predicted increase in this form of work will result in greater gender inequality in the workforce.

Splitting the workforce is unfair
This will result in a dual workforce, some workers having one set of rights and entitlements and another sector of the workforce having inferior rights and conditions - we believe that this will have a disproportionate effect on women workers in the higher education sector as women are likely to be a greater proportion of casuals as they are in the workforce generally.

Contact Sue Hammond CPSU-SPSF 02 9290 4508 email shammond@spsf.asn.au

Compiled by CPSU SPSF FEDERAL OFFICE - August 2002

© 2001 Community & Public Sector Union - State Public Services Federation (CPSU-SPSF) - National Office

http://www.cpsu-spsf.asn.au/campaigns/higher_ed/20020809_94.html
Last Modified: 15 Nov 2005