Western Sydney University staff will strike for 3?? hours on Wednesday over stalled negotiations on their pay and conditions.
University staff taking part in the strike will cancel scheduled lectures between 9am and 12.30pm in protest against university management's failure to secure their future job security and put limits on their workloads and class sizes.
Staff have also rejected a 2 per cent pay increase saying it works out to be closer to a 1.8 per cent increase in real terms from the end of the current agreement to the end of the new agreement.
Unlike a recent University of Sydney strike, there will be no picket lines at entries. A rally will be held between 9am and 12.30pm at the Parramatta Square forecourt.
The National Tertiary Education Union said it has pursued its enterprise bargaining campaign for six months with "efficiency and discipline", but the future of working conditions still hangs in the balance.
A union statement to staff said: "University management has been waging a quite aggressive campaign to roll back our rights and conditions."
It said management's offer has stripped away existing job security commitments, including restrictions on the use of casual and fixed-term labour.
NTEU branch president David Burchell said union members were particularly concerned about the casualisation of the workforce. He said the majority of teaching would be done by casuals by 2020 on current projections.
"Job security, consultation and casualisation are the big things right now," Dr Burchell said.
Many universities around the country are in the process of negotiating enterprise agreements. Murdoch University in West Australia applied for, and recently won, the right to terminate the university's enterprise agreement with staff. It was a landmark decision for a public institution, and the Fair Work Commission's judgment shocked university staff around the country.
