Staff at WA's biggest university are considering industrial action after enterprise bargaining negotiations stalled over interim cost-of-living pay rises and Indigenous employment targets.
Curtin University staff said management had rejected their request for an interim pay rise while negotiations took place over a new enterprise bargaining agreement (EBA).
They said given the "unprecedented economic circumstances confronting Curtin staff", including a WA inflation rate of more than 7.4 per cent and "unsustainable" workloads, management needed to prioritise a pay increase.
They are also seeking to increase the university's Indigenous employment target from two to at least four per cent to bring it into line with the wider population, and want to establish a First Nations committee within the agreement.
Interim pay rise rejected
A Curtin University spokesperson said it would be "premature" to discuss specific provisions of the EBA while negotiations were ongoing.
"Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment, retention, development, success and cultural safety at Curtin University is a significant priority and parties continue to explore how this priority is best represented in the agreement," the spokesperson said in a statement.
But the university rejected the union's plea for an interim or administrative pay increase, saying it was not part of the EBA, and negotiations had not been "protracted" enough to warrant it.
'Miserable existence'
Hannah* has been teaching at Curtin for more than a decade on a casual basis, having been unable to secure permanent employment, and said the lack of job security and low rates of pay had made her despair about the future.
"At the end of every semester you have to knock on as many doors as possible and ask 'have you got any work for me?'," she said.
"Dad's a refugee, and he told me that when he first came to Australia, that's exactly what he had to do — knock on doors and beg for work. And it's just sad to see this repeating again."
Hannah, who has a PhD, said several colleagues had left Curtin in recent years because they could not "scrape by" on the hours Curtin provided.
She said the refusal of management to consider a pay increase as inflation rose was adding huge stress to her everyday life.
"Already I know I'm going to have to move out of my rental in a couple of months as I can't afford the ($80 a week) rental increase," she said.
"It's a really miserable existence. When I go grocery shopping I have to check my bank balance before I go, and I'm finding myself hitting up my parents for cash a lot.
"It's embarrassing and humiliating."
Workload stress increasing
Hannah said filling up her car with petrol had become increasingly expensive, and she could no longer afford to drive to campus once parking costs were taken into account.
She said increasing workloads added to her stress, and she often worked weeknights and weekends without pay to develop content for lectures and to mark assignments, because not enough paid work time was allocated for these tasks.
"It's really abominable — you're allocated 15 minutes sometimes to mark assessments when it could take 40 minutes, and there's no overtime allowed," she said.
"There's also the very real fear that you might get complaints in the student evaluations of your teaching practice if you're not seen to be delivering quality content."
Staff 'on their own'
At a meeting on Wednesday, National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) members voted overwhelmingly in favour of moving towards industrial action if management continue to reject their position.
The vote came on the same day more than a thousand public sector workers rallied outside Parliament, demanding a better pay deal.
The Curtin spokesperson said management had not been advised of any threat of industrial action, and both parties aimed to have a new EBA to present to staff by late November.
NTEU Curtin branch president Scott Fitzgerald described the university's position on employment targets and pay rises as "incredibly disappointing".
"Curtin staff are the heart and soul of the university," Associate Professor Fitzgerald said.
"We are rightly proud that we have built the institution into the top one per cent of universities in the world and we’ve kept the place running through all the changes wrought by the pandemic.
"Now we are being told we’re on our own during this cost-of-living crisis."
He said staff were particularly aggrieved that Curtin had recently agreed to contribute up to $3 million towards the cost of a community swimming pool in the City of South Perth, while rejecting an interim pay rise for staff.
In a statement, the university spokesperson said the planned "world-class" aquatic centre would include space "to facilitate the many activities Curtin could enable for the community".
*Hannah is not her real name. She did not wish to be identified.
