Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 25: Lessons from the Teach-In Part 2
96 Plays9 months ago
In this episode, we bring you the second of two episodes recorded at the teach-in held during the October strike. This time around you will hear the talks from members Chris Meallin and Marjorie Jerrard, who are both speaking about HR; the way that it has changed as a field over time, why those changes are so damaging and detrimental to a harmonious workplace, and why strong unions are so important as a counter-force to that.
If you have questions you'd like answered, or any topics you would like to hear covered on the podcast, drop us an email at [email protected]
You can also stay up to date with everything happening with bargaining at our new bargaining website, and with the branch on Facebook and Twitter. All of which can be found here - https://linktr.ee/myunionwroteaneba
Recommended
Transcript
Podcast Introduction & Acknowledgment
00:00:18
Speaker
G'day, everyone, and welcome to My Union Wrote an EBA. This is a podcast to chronicle the progress towards a new enterprise bargaining agreement at Monash University and is brought to you by members of the Monash branch of the NTEU. We're here to take the old agreement and hashtag change it. And unlike our namesake, my dad wrote a porno to everything we can to avoid being fucked in the process.
00:00:41
Speaker
Those involved with the podcast would like to acknowledge that it is being recorded on the unceded lands of the Kulin nations, on whose lands we live, teach and work. We would like to acknowledge and pay our respects to the traditional custodians and elders, past and present, and to the continuation of the cultural, spiritual and educational practices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.
Enterprise Bargaining at Monash: Union Involvement
00:01:07
Speaker
Hi, everyone. Welcome to the second of two episodes from our October teach-in. These two talks from Chris and Marjorie focus more on HR and management and some of the issues, shall we say, that stem from them and the way that the people in those positions often choose to execute their tasks and the approaches that they choose to take.
00:01:26
Speaker
This is particularly relevant now as we're officially back at the bargaining table for 2024 and progressing ever closer to the point end of bargaining where the biggest and most thorny issues around pay, workloads and job security will be discussed. These will not be simple negotiations and is where we're expecting the most pushback from the university's representatives in bargaining.
00:01:47
Speaker
As a result, it is also the point at which will be most important for union members to be aware of what is going on, to be preparing to show up and show our strength through industrial action, and to be talking to as many people as we can so that those in senior management are feeling that their feet are being held to the fire.
00:02:05
Speaker
As the bargaining team approaches the final boss battle in bargaining, we need to be as well armed as we can be. So keep an eye out for communications from the branch that will be hitting your inboxes soon with ways that you can get involved and what is coming up.
Chris Millen's Journey: From Student to Teacher
00:02:19
Speaker
And if you have any ideas or suggestions for things that we should be doing, or could be doing, or any intel that you think might be helpful, please email us at the branch at monash at nteu.org.au, or at the podcast at myunionrotantba.com. And if you think there are things that we should be covering on the podcast that we aren't, send those through to us as well. Anyway, that's enough from me. Here's Chris and Marjorie.
00:02:47
Speaker
So our next speaker is Chris Millen. Hello, Chris. Welcome. Thank you. I wonder if you could tell us where you're based and how long you've been here at Monash.
00:02:58
Speaker
Okay well I'm Chris Mill and I'm probably a little bit different in that I'm accessional and have been accessional casual here for what 16 years now and put simply is I'm here because of Marjorie because I actually did my Masters of Employment and Industrial Relations with Jerry Griffin and Marjorie back
00:03:22
Speaker
Well, it was back when Monash actually had a dedicated key centre of industrial relations in at Collins Street, and actually I'm supposed to be talking a bit about industrial relations today, so I'll try and not go too far off script and keep it within the context. But basically by the time I finished that master's degree, Marjorie said, look, would you like to come and do some teaching in the postgraduate class that I run, which I thought, well, as long as it's in the evening and doesn't interfere with my
00:03:50
Speaker
full-time day job I'd love to. I'd feel I'd be giving something back to Monash. And I think that one thing that I sort of, it struck me immediately was that Marjorie and the others from that key centre of industrial relations really understood the importance
00:04:06
Speaker
of needing to integrate education with industry. So I effectively came in as an industry partner, not in the sense that we've probably briefly mentioned today in sort of looking for some sort of corporate... You weren't for DARPA? Sorry? Yeah, no. But thinking about how can we enhance the student experience? Because after all, this is what we're here for.
00:04:28
Speaker
Now, Kate, I think it's Kate, isn't it? Yeah, Kate, you've got me feeling extremely nostalgic with what you were saying about because I've just been walking around in a bit of a surreal daydream since I arrived here this morning because I remembered how fondly I remember my undergraduate days here as a student doing a Bachelor of Economics when Monash was the only campus and only one of three universities here in the state of Victoria.
00:04:59
Speaker
Monash really gave me such a great education and got me off to such a great start. I've always felt that I owe something to Monash by coming back,
Monash University Culture: Then and Now
00:05:10
Speaker
not just doing sessional teaching, but also over the years I've done a number of voluntary participative roles
00:05:18
Speaker
on the Monash Department of Management HRM committee, curriculum review committees, and there's a couple of others that I know I've been involved in that I can't quite think of at the moment. But I think if I just, if you allow me to wallow in nostalgia, and let's just think about why we're here today, and of course, and I'm not gonna steal any of Marjorie's fund, because Marjorie's gonna talk specifically about why HR is not your friend.
00:05:47
Speaker
Now, if you go and Google why HR is not your friend, very sadly you will immediately come across a very, very long list of articles, not just from Australia but globally. So, I'm not going to steal any of Marjorie's funder other than to say, but I've had a look at the points that Marjorie wants to cover and I absolutely agree with just about everything she says.
00:06:12
Speaker
But Marjorie did ask me if I'd come along and having been involved with her for so long as an industry partner, which I think Monash might have always been a little bit dubious of, but look, we made it work and they left us alone. But just sort of thinking about what was it like
00:06:28
Speaker
for staff and students back when I was here in the 70s. Now I must admit I missed the Vietnam War but I was here at the time of the Whitlam dismissal and I can assure you both staff and students were very highly politically motivated then
00:06:44
Speaker
And I remember that David Malcolm Fraser did a visit to Monash and that was a very tumultuous day. And the turnout, it was like the show on show day. This whole area between what we used to call the Ming Wing and the Student Union, there was a very high degree of motivation.
00:07:06
Speaker
and engagement, but of course it's a very different world today. But let me just hark back to what are the things that this dispute is actually on about. Now my memory of being here in the 70s was that no staff member ever died from overwork.
00:07:25
Speaker
I remember that everyone, the professors, the associate professors, the doctors, the senior lecturers, the lecturers, the tutors, they all worked what would ostensibly be what we used to quaintly term as business hours. They were here on Monday morning, probably around 8.30, and you would see them departing around about five o'clock in the afternoon.
00:07:48
Speaker
I knew they were departing at five o'clock in the afternoon because if I was at the hitching post out the front here, when it was still legal to do, quite often staff would actually stop and say, oh, you're at the point where you want to go towards Oakley, hop in. And of course, they were more comfortable cars to get in because they'd be driving Volvos, whereas typically when students picked you up, they'd run road-worthy bombs. But let's face it, a ride was a ride. But anyway.
00:08:14
Speaker
The thing was, it was a very orderly way of life then, and I'm sort of just tying them with a couple of other things that have been said in that, from memory, the Dean of the Faculty then was a wonderful man by the name of Don Cochran.
00:08:29
Speaker
Don was one of that visionary group of leaders that Sir Louis Mafison, who was the first vice chancellor of this university, actually handpicked to come here from Melbourne
Work-Life Balance & Industrial Relations History
00:08:41
Speaker
Uni. And he had a distinct vision on how he felt, along with most of the other deans at that time, saw how could we progress in the post-war era, this higher education.
00:08:55
Speaker
and of course it was a very exciting time for a higher education because of course in the wake of the Whitlam government years a whole different approach had been taken, fees had been abolished and I feel terribly privileged I mean to say by the time HECS came along in 89
00:09:12
Speaker
I'd pretty much done my education, except when I did my master's, fortunately my employer paid for it. So I feel extremely privileged in that regard, but it was a very exciting time. But I'm trying to think, well, what actually enhanced the student experience for me? And it was the fact that you knew the staff here, the door was always open.
00:09:32
Speaker
Now, Don was the Dean and his door was always open and you could pop into Don and he would sit and he would talk to you. Now, I'm not sure if we randomly stopped any of these students, would they be able to go in and have a chat to the Dean? Would they even know where the Dean's office is? In fact, do they know even what a Dean is at the University? I don't know. But anyway, I think the thing is that Don Cochran really was very much part of that generation.
00:09:59
Speaker
where a university was a higher institution of learning for a higher purpose and it wasn't in any way based on profit or accumulation of, well, they basically hadn't morphed into the gigantic cash register that it's become today.
00:10:19
Speaker
So I sort of think back in terms of, well, what are the main issues coming out of this dispute? And certainly Marjorie, you will no doubt mention it in your run when you speak. But I can see from this thermometer of overwork here that there is a lot of hours being put in
00:10:40
Speaker
that the past generations when this university was established to any higher education institution back in Australia at that time would not have been doing or been expected to do. But at the end of the day, the quality of the outcome was very high.
00:10:55
Speaker
So, just sort of finishing up on that, I think the other way that Don Cochran was probably very ahead of his time was he actually scheduled, or what he told his staff, only schedule lectures from Monday to Thursday and try and keep Friday free from tutorials if you can.
00:11:15
Speaker
And in a way, he had inadvertently, by default, by stealth really, come up with an early prototype of the four-day week. Because I can assure you it was very hard to find anyone here on a Friday and as a result, well, if you did come in on Friday, you're just going to the main library was when you actually went to the library to read and do your essays.
00:11:38
Speaker
But anyway, so I suppose without going on too much about that, just talking a little bit about the IR side. Now, my career, after I graduated here, I actually had been inspired by a wonderful lecturer here that gave me the light bulb moment. I want to be an IR.
00:11:55
Speaker
And of course in those days, IR was a very big deal. For a start, at least I think even around the mid to late 70s, probably approximately half of Australia's working population belonged to a trade union.
00:12:09
Speaker
Over half, over half. Now sadly the private sector is well into getting into lower single digits and I think the public sector is probably fast heading out of the teens into that direction itself. So really it is a very very different world that we'll win. So you know perhaps if we stopped a lot of these students they'd say well
00:12:30
Speaker
What's the relevance of unions? What are you talking about? What are you doing? But anyway, as I said, I was inspired to get into industrial relations and had a wonderful career both in the airline industry and the automotive industry, ostensibly in IR, but also doing HR as well.
00:12:48
Speaker
And I suppose the other area where I feel I was blessed was it just happened to be at the time where IR reached its zenith in Australia because it was during the Hawke Keating years of their government that they came up with a wonderful tripartite model called the Accord.
00:13:04
Speaker
which I'm sure many of you probably have researched or done. And that really was a very exciting time to be involved in IR, regardless of whether you were management, union or government or academia. So it was the least I could say, well, I actually saw the best of it, even though as I get to the title end of my career, I think I'm told you we're starting to see the worst of it. But it is actually very important
00:13:31
Speaker
And Marjorie's going to go on and talk about why HR is not your friend. And I think one of the points you will make, Marjorie, is that it's so important, at least in a sector where you actually do have some union representation, that you engage proactively with that.
00:13:52
Speaker
And fortunately, I, both in the airline industry as it was then, and nothing like it is today, and in the Australian automotive manufacturing industry, which sadly has shut up shop a few years ago, actually had a very proactive engagement with unions and actually, not surprisingly, were very much caught up in
00:14:12
Speaker
the cutting edge of the accord and in fact both those sectors both had global joint global study tours for example to look at as we move towards some form of collective bargaining system from the centralized system what could we learn from other countries? What could we learn from the US, Canada, North America? What could we learn from Europe, Scandinavia where most of the action was
Student Engagement & Social Media Concerns
00:14:34
Speaker
actually happening?
00:14:36
Speaker
So anyway, I was very fortunate and I've sort of pretty much finished up with the corporates now and pretty much all I do is I continue to do sessional teaching with Marjorie for as long as you'll have me. So I think the thing that is very important that you don't want to lose sight of in this dispute is that at the end of the day it's the students
00:15:05
Speaker
And the funny thing that sort of really hit me when Marjorie said, look, now that you sort of haven't got your day job anymore, instead of just doing just the postgraduate in the evening, will you be happy to come and do some undergraduates? So I said, oh, look, I'd love to.
00:15:21
Speaker
And I think probably one of the things that really concerns me about today's generation of students is how compared to how I remember what life was like as an undergraduate, well two things. One is how incredibly disengaged they are with politics.
00:15:41
Speaker
And that's really scary because I mean to say this was very much frobbing in our veins. Certainly when I was an undergraduate it was so intrinsic for how you were going to go on after Monash and engage with society.
00:15:59
Speaker
But no, absolutely totally disengaged with politics. And the other thing that really concerns me is the fact of their almost total reliance on news from social media. And I know that they think that, you know, will the ABC News at 7 o'clock at night in the age newspaper even know
00:16:17
Speaker
read it online is what just their grandparents do. But, you know, in terms of this era of fake news, if there was ever a time that we need quality teaching is now to just help students think, to disseminate their way through what's actually now where we've come to and the world and the life ahead that they're going to have to sort of think rationally and analytical their way ahead.
00:16:45
Speaker
So I probably shouldn't talk for too much longer other than, yes, I did join the NTEU. Well, actually, Kelly, a wonderful person who was one of the officials at that time, said, look, it's coming up to enterprise bargaining. So now's a good time to join. I thought, well, come to think of it. I will. So I have joined the union. But I think, really, we can't kid ourselves here is that this is really
00:17:14
Speaker
a unique situation that we find ourselves compared to where we've come in Australian history. And I think that we just have to find ways to engage with our students, help prepare them for life ahead, and really that can only be done through quality teaching, and quality teaching can only come if you're given the support, the resources, and you're not worked to death and burnt out and not properly remunerated for it. So I'd better hand over.
00:17:42
Speaker
Thank you so much. So our last speaker today is Marjorie Gerard. Hello Marjorie. Hello Tal. Hello everyone else. Welcome. I wonder if you could tell me where you're based and how long you've been with Monash. I'm based at the Corfield campus in Enbilding. I got my first three year contract
00:18:02
Speaker
here at Monash in 1997, and the reason I came to Monash was I wanted to do a PhD in industrial relations strategy, trade union strategy in particular, the meat workers union specifically, and Jerry Griffin, who was the head of the department at the time, brilliant industrial relations scholar who never sold out, unlike a contemporary of his, our former vice chancellor.
Marjorie Gerard on HR Critiques
00:18:29
Speaker
Boom. Which one?
00:18:33
Speaker
She's an industrial relations professor. She's meant to know how things work. I did my PhD and I'm here still. At the end of 1998 I got tenure.
00:18:51
Speaker
Nice. And we've heard a little preview of what you're going to be chatting about. Who is not our friend again? Sorry. Is it HR? HR. I'd like to thank my comrades here on the panel. Kate took me back to my undergraduate days at University of Queensland. And I was taught by Dan O'Neill. I was very privileged to have that experience. I was also taught by
00:19:18
Speaker
the feminist scholar Carol Ferrier, editor of the feminist magazine Hecate. So two fabulous people and I saw many a play written by Dan's brother Errol O'Neill. So that was my undergraduate days. And following on from the history theme, I wrote a couple of different
00:19:42
Speaker
undergraduate history papers on smashing machines strategically, which looms and with which employer. It wasn't wholesale machine destroying, it was very, very targeted, a brilliant strategy by people who certainly didn't have an education like we have
00:20:03
Speaker
been privileged to have. So thank you for the comments on machine breaking in Luddites. And also the 1300s, that takes me back to my undergraduate days too because I have a double major in history, not quite from the 1300s though.
00:20:26
Speaker
So we've had a bit of a theme happening around history. So why am I here? I'm here because I'm a member of the NTEU and my good friend, colleague and comrade, Tui McEwen, asked me would I say a few words to the title of why HR is not your friend. So thank you for the title, Tui, and thank you for the invitation.
00:20:49
Speaker
I actually teach industrial relations in the Department of Management. I teach undergraduates, post-graduates. I've supervised honours theses in industrial relations, masters and PhDs in industrial relations within the Department of Management. I've also taught, and this was very much against my will, human resource management at the undergraduate level. They seem to think in the department because I know about industrial relations that I can teach human resource management.
00:21:18
Speaker
I taught it from a highly critical perspective and once I'd done my three year term they gave it to one of my colleagues who's much more of a traditional HR academic and she still runs it all these years later and I'm very, this is probably totally inappropriate to say in public but
00:21:42
Speaker
I don't know how many undergraduates have been turned out from that HR subject with no idea of human resource management, no idea about people which are the resources part of their job title and who seem to go out and when they move out of lower level HR positions and they move up the hierarchy, their moral compass seems to go.
00:22:07
Speaker
So they come out of their undergraduate degree actually people who are wanting to make a difference but by the time they get to a position where they can make a difference they're subsumed into the organisation and they just can't make a difference.
00:22:29
Speaker
When I was teaching human resource management many years ago, I went and invited HR people into my classroom. I also invited trade union officials into my classroom. I invited fair work commissioners into my classroom, senior public servants here in Victoria from the industrial relations area, and yes, employer association representatives
00:22:58
Speaker
trying to offer some type of a balanced view and to get students to understand that if you're going into human resource management and the reason you're doing that is because you like people. No, don't go into human resource management because you like people. Go and do a psychology degree or something. Do not do HR.
00:23:24
Speaker
I met a lot of HR professionals through working here at Monash and Chris Millen is one of them. The vast majority that I met had no professional standards or ethics that I could see. And I can count on one hand the people who come from the HR management side of the employment relationship, one hand
00:23:54
Speaker
So four fingers and one thumb. And Chris, you get to be the thumb. You're the best. And then I have four other people who also practiced what HR professionals should do. Now, why is HR not your friend? First,
00:24:19
Speaker
the duplicitous attempt to convince you that the profession is not a management function. You drop the M. People won't remember you're there for management, will they?
00:24:35
Speaker
HR or HRM is still a management function, although academics, my colleagues included, and practitioners in the field would have us believe that HRM plays a significant strategic and change agent function while being the employee voice and champion.
00:24:59
Speaker
the roles are in direct conflict. Perhaps we need to ask the US scholar who came up with this approach, Dave Ulrich. He might be able to explain how an HR manager can straddle both sides of the employment relationship.
00:25:14
Speaker
Now, second, another attempt to deceive employees into believing that HRM is their champion, their voice. This is the most recent change of name within the management team. So now they're no longer HR managers or directors of human resources. Now we see directors or managers of people and culture. Don't we all love that one?
00:25:44
Speaker
or human capital managers, people experience managers, people resource leaders, talent managers, people operations leaders and so on. Now third,
00:26:06
Speaker
This has been proven within the tertiary education sector and it's no matter what area of management you call HR, they cannot do their job within the current industrial relations system. Our system is the simplest it has ever been since 1904 when the conciliation and arbitration act was first passed. Mike Menzies, he was a former CEO of Mount Isa Mines.
00:26:33
Speaker
In 1997 he said that under the Workplace Relations Act, if you can't manage your workforce legally under that piece of legislation, you should get out of management. Needless to say, Mike was not the most popular amongst his colleagues in the mining industry, but he was correct.
00:26:53
Speaker
The Fair Work Act, which we operate under now, is also relatively simple. Why is our legislation now relatively simple? Because we have about 122 modern industry awards, as opposed to 3,000 plus, which is what happened before we ended up with enterprise bargaining. The problem is that even under our simple system, HR can't function.
00:27:23
Speaker
within that system legally. So maybe it's time that they should return to being personnel managers and officers where they legally and ethically administered payroll systems and
00:27:40
Speaker
the personnel function was about payroll, getting it right, and safety. Aren't they two of the most important things that we should have right in any workplace, but especially a tertiary education institution? Now, personal management came out of the United States.
00:28:02
Speaker
after the Second World War and it was located primarily in Ivy League business schools. It gained influence and prestige as an academic discipline and occupation. Yes, the job was basically Ulrich's administrative expert and it was a boring job if you were a personnel professional because you were there to ensure that wages were paid appropriately to everyone. That was your primary function.
00:28:32
Speaker
You didn't have so-called administrative errors, which is the term that our university prefers. Administrative errors, not wages theft. And I would like to highlight that the Fair Work Commission
00:28:54
Speaker
in its recent decision last week has basically said don't fiddle with your enterprise bargaining agreement, which has now lapsed, just because you want to say your wages theft problem is an administrative matter.
HR in Industrial Disputes & Union Roles
00:29:08
Speaker
No.
00:29:11
Speaker
Fourth, HR. Let's use the preferred term with our university. Primarily makes an appearance for disciplinary and grievance matters where they hope, fingers crossed, that's their fingers crossed, that these troublesome employees will not know their legal right to take a representative to such meetings. If an employee knows their rights,
00:29:37
Speaker
and that they have a right of representation, they're going to be in a much stronger position to fight their employers' allegations, misrepresentations, criticisms of that particular employee. The best representative to take is someone from the National Tertiary Education Union.
00:30:01
Speaker
Those people, they understand our system within Monash when it comes to HR, and they are best placed to represent an employee. Fifth, HR, our university's preferred term, and enterprise bargaining.
00:30:21
Speaker
Again, our university gets it wrong here. Chris and I teach this to undergraduates and postgraduates. What do you do in enterprise bargaining to get a good outcome for everyone? Chris could have taken you through his many rounds as a lead negotiator for General Motors Holden on the management side, where he actually worked with the unions in the Vehicle Builders Federation, and he had a relationship with those union officials. They used to come and speak to my students as a consequence.
00:30:51
Speaker
And Chris would be there and you could see the respect and the friendship between union and management. We have none of that here. And our union negotiators are staff.
00:31:03
Speaker
So they're not even professionals, but they volunteer, they're good at negotiation in their own right. We have scholars from business law and taxation as one of the lead negotiators. So someone who knows the rights of employees and how the system works and knows how negotiation for a bargaining agreement works.
00:31:29
Speaker
So the basis on which to utilize good faith bargaining principles under our current industrial relations legislation in order to achieve a positive outcome for employees, that means that the university needs to have senior bargaining people at the bargaining table. If you do not have senior HR representatives at a bargaining table, you're wasting everybody's time.
00:31:58
Speaker
because those people have no authority to make decisions on behalf of the university management. They have to go out and consult. Why is the agreement stalled? Why have we reached a bargaining impasse? It falls at the door of HR.
00:32:15
Speaker
We are at a bargaining impasse and industrial conflict occurs as a result of this impasse. And this is run by employees and their representative, the NTEU. They cannot make ground with HR's delaying tactics.
00:32:35
Speaker
Thus, as a last resort to progress negotiations and have senior HR representatives at a bargaining table, we have had to take industrial action. Now, we shouldn't be pushed to this type of a position by HR. And they call themselves HR professionals. At best, you might call them practitioners.
00:33:04
Speaker
Now our union representatives at the bargaining table have the members authority to make decisions on our behalf and when an agreement is finally reached we the union members vote on that agreement. So our officials and our members of academic staff or professional staff who are at that negotiating table they have power and authority. Now
00:33:33
Speaker
We are supposed to have democratic processes to form an ambit bargaining agenda and to decide on industrial action. We do this as a union and its members and its executive. Why can't our university's HR team also have people who are empowered to make decisions?
00:33:57
Speaker
are some other reasons for why HR is not your friend. Well, from one of my industry speakers, and it wasn't Chris, it was a fabulous person whose name is Sally Wilson, who worked as an HR manager for 20 years in public health system here in Victoria, and Sally's
00:34:18
Speaker
principles for being a good HR manager. Build the relationship with the union and use the union as an asset. The union is not the enemy of HR. The union is there to help HR. Play fair, be transparent and remain calm at all times.
00:34:43
Speaker
Conflict in any form needs to be faced, whether it's individuals such as bullying or a personality conflict amongst staff, or whether it is collective action such as we are engaged in this week. It must be dealt with quickly.
00:35:05
Speaker
Conflict spreads. Individual conflict spreads across an entire organisation fairly rapidly. And we've seen examples of issues around people's mistreatment, bullying, harassment, just disrespect, discrimination and so on, raring its head. You need an HR manager who can address this quickly. Don't be conflict diverse if you're an HR manager.
00:35:34
Speaker
So where are they here? They should be here actually listening to what you are all saying. No, they're not here because they're conflict diverse and they don't treat their staff with respect that they deserve.
00:35:47
Speaker
Fourth, this is a mundane role for an HR professional. You take accurate notes and records of all meetings and grievance procedures in case they are ever needed for something that is formal. The Fair Work Commission has little time for HR professionals who waste its time by not having accurate records for evidence. And I can guarantee that the last hearing I sat in on with a full bench
00:36:17
Speaker
Those commissioners, vice president and deputy president, they looked at the King's Council for Monash and wondered why he was wasting their time. They had something better to do with that afternoon than sit listening to a King's Council who really had no idea of what enterprise bargaining was about and what the wages theft case that they were hearing was about. They couldn't even brief their own lawyer.
00:36:49
Speaker
now.
00:36:50
Speaker
An HR professional has to check all contracts, policies, agreements, and industry awards to ensure consistency and compliance. These are legal documents. You can't make a mistake. If you make a mistake, you put your hand up and say, okay, I made a mistake, I got that wrong. Because it'll come out when you end up in the Fair Work Commission, and when the NTEU wins at that level, and then it is escalated up to the Federal Court, and then the Federal Court says, this is a bargaining matter, this is not for us to hear, go back to the Fair Work Commission.
00:37:21
Speaker
So you need to understand the legal implications of your behaviour and documents if you are an HR professional. And lastly, you have to be focused on outcomes and you must always be prepared and you need to be flexible with regards to your position and listen to other people who aren't part of your HR team.
00:37:49
Speaker
Now, if we had HR functioning like this, we would not have to be here today on strike.
Episode Conclusion & Preview
00:37:57
Speaker
But we don't, because HR at Monash is certainly not your friend. Thank you. Brilliant. Thank you so much, Marjorie.
00:38:12
Speaker
Alright folks, that's it for this episode. Thanks to Kate, Danny, Adam, Bernard, and Pod Daddy Sofio for all the work they've put into this, and we'll catch you next time.