University of Newcastle union members have voted to reject a revised bargaining offer from management.
The University of Newcastle on April 27 offered a 13 per cent salary rise to staff as part of enterprise bargaining, which Deputy Vice-Chancellor Global Professor Kent Anderson said was "competitive with the Australian university sector and in line with the university's financial position".
In a letter to staff, Vice Chancellor Professor Alex Zelinsky said the 13 per cent was an increase of 3.5 per cent from an offer made in December and reflected "what we had heard through your feedback and at the bargaining table: that you preferred a salary increase to an overall increase in the value of conditions".
Negotiations have been ongoing for close to two years.
However National Tertiary Education Union Newcastle branch members met on May 6, where branch president Associate Professor Terry Summers said they "overwhelmingly rejected the offer".
Associate Professor Summers said the issue was around conditions, particularly job security and workload.
He said some conditions in the current agreement would also be removed if the offer was accepted.
Associate Professor Summers said they passed a motion at the recent meeting which raised the prospect of escalating action if deemed necessary after 10 minute work stoppages every hour each day since the start of May.
"Other universities have been able to achieve better conditions for their staff, and we at Newcastle are falling behind," he said in April.
Professor Anderson said scheduled bargaining meetings would proceed as planned.
"The university remains committed to working with the NTEU, the Community and Public Sector Union and staff representatives through the enterprise bargaining process," he said.
"The university is very keen to achieve agreement at the bargaining table so that together we can put the new enterprise agreements to staff for voting."
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