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Episode 19 (actually this time): strike solidarity (w/Abigail & Thomas from UniMelb)
153 Plays1 year ago
In this episode, - the first of two strike-related episodes that will drop this week - Kate & Tony bring everyone up to speed with what has been happening since the last episode, and then have a chat with Abigail & Thomas from Melbourne Uni about their first weeklong strike at the end of August and lessons they learned from it, as well as the branch-wide strike that is currently underway.
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
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction and Theme
00:00:13
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, do everything we can to avoid being fucked in the process.
Acknowledgement of Country
00:00:35
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.
Economic Updates and Union Challenges
00:01:03
Speaker
Hi everyone, I'm Adam Fernandes, your National Counsellor of the Monash branch. I thought I would take a break from my usual Vice-Chancellor's salary update with some other updates on what has happened for us since the expiry of our last agreement.
00:01:17
Speaker
We have had 11 interest rate rises since June last year. The price of electricity has increased by 15% and groceries have increased by 10%. In that same time, rent has increased overall by 7% and CPI has increased by 6%. Sadly, what hasn't increased is our pay offer, which continues to lag behind the mounting bills
00:01:41
Speaker
that we have to pay, and the bonuses of our directors and Monash executives. Well that's it from me, see you all on the picket line very soon. Hi everyone, welcome back to episode 19 of the podcast. I feel like I'm late every time I begin an episode, it's with an apology. And so it is today as well. Not only because it has been a little while since our last episode. Sorry about that everybody.
00:02:05
Speaker
but also because in my haste to get the last one out, I stuffed up the numbering sequence of them. This episode is the real episode 19, and the last one, which was called episode 19, was actually episode 18. What can I say? There's a reason that I teach history and not maths.
Bargaining Wins and Setbacks
00:02:22
Speaker
So on the bargaining front, there's been little movement since the last episode, unfortunately.
00:02:27
Speaker
As you'll know, if you read the bargaining update emails, we had a minor but significant win at the last meeting with the university finally coming to the table on First Nations employment numbers. And while it's great to see management come to its senses on that and agree that our higher number was in fact the right one on a number of other things, we're still quite far apart.
00:02:49
Speaker
Yes, unfortunately on the matters of job security they continue to pretend that their shitty non-offer of 120 new full-time equivalent teaching and research positions is satisfactory when in fact it's basically in line just with the natural growth of the university. It also offers nothing to non-academic staff and with no guarantees of casual conversion it's basically a giant fuck you to hundreds of precariously employed teaching associates who are forced to live contract to contract.
00:03:17
Speaker
like me. Management has also so far continued to stick to their idea of extending the span of hours for professional staff forcing them to start earlier and finish later without overtime rates to compensate them for unsociable hours. Not to mention the impact that this would have on staff with families or people with caring duties. They also continue to push back against improved protections around academic freedom
00:03:43
Speaker
and restructures and solidarity to our ACU colleagues who have just had their roles disestablished. Finally, there is one aspect of negotiations where they are trying to pretend that there has been movement when in fact they are attempting to bait and switch us into an even shittier deal.
00:03:59
Speaker
As you would almost certainly be aware, earlier this month, the new interim president and vice chancellor, Susan Elliott, announced via an all-staff email that the university was proposing an additional 3% pay rise. Would we get that now to help relieve the cost of living pressures and soaring costs of pretty much everything? No. It would be payable from the first full pay period to commence on or after the 1st of June, 2026.
00:04:24
Speaker
legitimately a thousand days after the day that that was announced. Given that the August CPI figure was 5.2%, I think I speak for everyone, or at least those outside of senior management, when I say that rather than trying to push out the end date of the new EBA under the cover of a crappy pay offer, they should address the needs of staff now, not in two and a half years time when God knows how fucked everything in the world could be.
00:04:52
Speaker
There's also been some industrial action in the time since our last episode.
Strike Actions and Mobilization
00:04:56
Speaker
So on the 6th of September, we had a four hour stop work and picket of the university council meeting. Originally scheduled to happen at 30 Collins Street in the city, when management caught wind of the planned picket, they retreated back to the safety of the chancellory building at Clayton. When multiple security staff are on standby, unless we try and slash the tires of Simon McEwen's fancy BMW SUV, or try and storm the underground car park that allows them to enter and exit the building.
00:05:23
Speaker
having to see us normie workers daring to do the actual work of the University. The strike and picket were fantastic. It was a great turnout from both staff and students and there is no way now that the University Council can pretend not to know how pissed off we all are, no matter how much Peter Marshall might try to lie and manipulate them into believing that all is well in his fiefdom.
00:05:45
Speaker
And now we're keeping the momentum going with our next action. A whopping 48-hour strike starting at 12 midday on Monday the 9th of October and running through till 11.58, 9 a.m. on Wednesday the 11th of October. So some of you might be a bit nervous about so many strikes, but rest assured we're not taking this action in isolation.
00:06:06
Speaker
No, in fact our strikes are happening within a rising tide of strikes both in Australia and around the world and within higher ed and outside of it. In the last couple of years there have been a number of strikes in the UK both in the university sector as well as a whole range of other areas like sanitation workers, workers in the London Underground and even doctors in the NHS.
00:06:28
Speaker
The US last year saw the University of California strikes that saw tens of thousands of TAs and graduate students go on strike. And then more recently, we've just seen the end in the last couple of days of the 148-day WGA and SAG after a strike and the beginning of the United Auto Workers strike, which has already proven so impactful as to draw President Biden to the picket line. So exciting to see with so much union action.
00:06:53
Speaker
So closer to home, we've also been seeing a growing number of strikes in the last couple of years, nurses, teachers, early childhood educators, as well as those in manufacturing and retail have engaged in strikes. And just last night, I was in a two and a half hour meeting where Rafu members at Kohl's, where I also work, voted on their first set of work bands and their first strikes that will say both Kohl's and Woolworth's members strike at the same time in the coming weeks.
00:07:22
Speaker
That's amazing and our solidarity to our comrades at Coles and Woolworths who'll be partaking in strike action in the next few weeks. Don't cross those picket lines everyone. And then obviously there's been industrial action at pretty much every university in Australia over the last year or so. Swinburne, RMIT, UNSW, Sydney Uni, Curtin, Deakin and Federation Uni have all been part of that which is so exciting.
Union Involvement and Strategy Discussion
00:07:46
Speaker
So two of our comrades that are joining us today from Melbourne Uni have been leading the way in industrial action at Victorian universities. Okay, joining us now are two of our Melbourne University comrades, Abigail and Thomas. Do you guys want to maybe start with introducing yourselves, who you are, what you do, how you got involved with Unions stuff?
00:08:07
Speaker
Yeah, sure. I'm happy to start. So I'm Abigail. I'm a PhD student in the English and Theatre Studies program at the University of Melbourne. This is coming to the end of my second year now doing tutoring. I started getting involved in union stuff and sort of became a member and started getting involved in organizing early last year, but only really started stepping up into more of an organizing role, I guess, towards the end of last year and this year in particular, it's been a big learning curve and getting much more involved.
00:08:37
Speaker
So I'm Thomas, I'm a first year PhD student in Media and Communications. I also work similar to Abigail as a tutor on a fixed-term contract and I joined the union essentially at the start of the year when I started here at Unimo and I've been pretty active with the organising from like May. Cool, that's great to see my fellow PhD students being so involved.
00:09:02
Speaker
So first of all, could you tell us a little bit more about the branch's experience at this round of bargaining and what are some of the main challenges that you guys have faced? Well, one of the first things to note is that we're coming up on our 14th month of negotiations with the university. And that's quite typical of the way in which at least Uni Melbourne gauges in negotiations around EVAs with the union and from what I understand Monash as well.
00:09:27
Speaker
it's been protracted, it's been delayed and we're currently trying to figure out whether that's just sheer incompetency from the university in being able to respond to claims that we put to them, whether it's a tactical decision they've made to retract this process. So maybe that's the first thing to note, it's a very long process and it's taxing, like it's seriously taxing for those of us who are organising, for those of us who are on the bargaining team itself, for all parties involved. I think something that we've noted or something that we've
00:09:57
Speaker
also sort of found over the course of the last year and a bit is a contradiction in some of the public statements that the university has made in terms of their willingness or intention to address the issues in our key claims and then their actual commitment that they've shown to addressing those things at the bargaining table. Had the university come out and people from the management sort of team publicly state that they're committed to addressing casualization and
00:10:23
Speaker
securitizing the workforce, for instance, but that was something that they absolutely sort of refused to meet us on for a really long time. And even now the offer that they've given us doesn't reflect like a properly serious commitment to that in many ways. And there've been sort of other instances of that as well, but the university claiming to take these things seriously and yet
00:10:43
Speaker
absolutely just not put anything on the table that we can even work with. But I think despite the protracted delays, despite the misrepresentations that the university perniciously engages in, it's also been a very exciting bargaining round. We have taken unprecedented strike action. It's the longest since the stonemasons walked off in 1858, right, to secure the eight-hour work day. And we're due to engage in another strike days from now.
00:11:09
Speaker
which we just got voted up by the largest ever union meeting that we've had at this branch like 450 people 85% of whom voted to take strike action next week so there's been quite a lot thrown our way but this is also the first time that a mobilization like this with strike action like this has occurred and it really feels like something shifted like the horizons of possibility have opened up in a way that simply they weren't before
00:11:38
Speaker
Yeah, I think a lot of those delays and misrepresentations that you were talking about are definitely something that the Monash people will hear echoes of in their own experiences in our bargaining. What are the main sticking points between the union and management at the moment in negotiation? I mean, our key claims that we're still fighting for and I think the claims that we sort of went on strike for next week are workloads claim, a claim trying to get an enforceable commitment.
00:12:04
Speaker
on management's part, on the university's part to sort of empirically review their employees workloads and sort of have an enforceable commitment to addressing that and ensuring that no employee is working more than they are supposed to be.
00:12:19
Speaker
more that is safe or reasonable or healthy for them to be working. It's been an absolutely sort of quite shocking sticking point for a lot of us. We had in the lead up to today's meeting we got a proposal from management offering what was essentially like a completely unenforceable almost like absurd sort of proposal whereby they would like commence some sort of review over the lifetime of the agreement and then choose whether they would like to put it into policy in any form, which is obviously
00:12:48
Speaker
like very far from what we're asking for. I think it's been a really important sticking point for many of us because we see our other sort of key claim which is the securitization of the workforce. We see those two claims being very much in tandem or they need to be connected and they need to be fought for together and for many reasons but particularly because you know if we securitize a workforce into jobs where they are going to be systematically overworked, jobs that are unsustainable and unhealthy then we've
00:13:17
Speaker
not really improved our work area or our workplace in any way. I guess another really stark sticking point is that they're still unwilling at this point, as far as I know, they've still been unwilling to commit to Indigenous employment targets. Just like, you know, talking a talk about wanting to address the racism at Melbourne Uni and a lot of the issues that really need to be addressed around Indigenous employees and
00:13:44
Speaker
and students facing racism at this institution and not being fairly represented, they're still unwilling to commit to that by the... So all the sticking points, all the claims that they're really reticent to budge on, are the claims which would actually change the structure of the university.
00:14:04
Speaker
Because this is really what we're aiming for, right? Not sort of piecemeal provisions which bandage up what is a system in absolute crisis, but rather a structural readjustment of the actual system itself. And that's why we've been going on these strikes, right? One week strike, realized a massive change in the job securitization claim. Previously they were unwilling to give us anything and now they offered us 75% secure employment for the essential workforce, which is big, right?
00:14:31
Speaker
Yeah, it sounds like we have a lot of shared struggles on that front. Your key claims sound very similar to our key claims and the refusal to budge also sounds very similar to what Monash is doing as well.
00:14:43
Speaker
On that note, it's really great to see that you guys just voted up another strike action. In terms of the previous strike action, how did members come to the decision to strike for a week as opposed to a shorter or longer action? I'm not going to be able to give a full answer to that because I can only speak to really what happened in my work area, which is also Thomas's work area, which is in arts. I guess we can get to it in a moment.
00:15:11
Speaker
way that that strike worked in terms of work areas deciding sort of collectively to opt in. But something that I know that like organisers and like active union members in arts have been thinking about for the last five years, I guess, is how to analyse our our working conditions, our workforce, like our workplace, look at you know particular sticking points or
00:15:34
Speaker
key dates where, you know, we produce particular commodities for the university, looking at the condition and structure of our workforce with the goal of moving towards building towards action, which is not merely symbolic, but which genuinely disrupts sort of the flow of the commodities produced by the university. And so something we had been looking at or thinking about quite seriously last semester
00:15:57
Speaker
which is sort of in many ways like the result of years of organizing and having these sort of strategic conversations was we're looking to do a marking ban or some form of disruption of the assessment period, which was a learning curve for many of us because we had a lot of mobilization around that. We had a sort of a great deal of organization within arts and particularly like from where I stand, like within the School of Culture and Communications. There was a lot of energy for that action, but we
00:16:25
Speaker
were unable to go through with it because of the essentially draconian legal laws in Australia around taking industrial action. I think it was about 10 years ago, there was a similar case of an NTU branch trying to take an action during marking
00:16:40
Speaker
the marking period where they were essentially prevented from doing so on the basis that it would present a mental health risk to students, which is in many ways a fairly bad faith argument, especially when you think about the mental health risk presented to students by the way that the university currently operates in so many ways. But anyway, that was that's a little bit of the backstory to how we arrived at doing a one week
00:17:01
Speaker
area-based strike. Initially we had more of a targeted strategic action plan around the marking period. We then pivoted to thinking about what longer disruptions during the semester might look like and also still thinking of ways of sort of like pushing beyond a little bit further than
00:17:19
Speaker
what our members might have done in the past, might be comfortable doing, or might even believe is possible for their union to do. So thinking about moving towards longer hole strikes and building sort of our strike capacity, our strike muscle back up. I mean, like the strike muscle has atrophy for years, right?
00:17:37
Speaker
maybe even since 1858 and it's just been this slow process of building it up or elaborating the work that comrades like Jess Marion has done in the Faculty of Arts for years and we're building this muscle up and if you'll allow me the physiological metaphor we're getting it to this point right where we can engage in this long haul industrial action that is ultimately what can create change in the barping table such as the new school in New York when they faced their massive
00:18:03
Speaker
readjustment in the middle of COVID. It was ultimately an indefinite strike of three weeks for them. What kind of role do you think members who maybe don't consider themselves activists or organizers play in helping with the strike and ensuring that their colleagues are ready to go on strike? Sort of asking this because we're going on a 48 hour strike, as I mentioned, and this is the longest strike in more than 10 years at Monash. And we're really keen to help our members know what they can do in preparation.
00:18:30
Speaker
to make it as impactful as it can be, maybe even if they haven't sort of done any organizing before or are not kind of sure where to start. I know that a lot of people in, I guess, just in my program or in my school, like people who I work with and know who might not necessarily have considered themselves like hardcore organizers in the past felt, yeah, I think that the experience of coming to the pickets like during the strike itself or coming to the sort of mass gatherings
00:18:59
Speaker
If possible, that was a really, like, I guess transformative or important experience for a lot of people. But even in the lead up, feeling like you can be in a position to be like a point of information and to be having one on one conversations with the other tutors in your subject, if you're an academic staff member, other people in your work area, if you're a professional staff member.
00:19:19
Speaker
decentralizing the movement of information, decentralizing like the work of talking through people's concerns, talking through people's potential objections, learning more about your colleagues, particular relationship to their working conditions, what their priorities might be in terms of bargaining, sort of really decentralizing this kind of organizing conversations, sort of moving away from approaching it as like this tool, which like a tightly knit group of organizers
00:19:44
Speaker
sort of have on hand and like wield as they go out into like the masses of the members and rather sort of having that be something that everyone can be doing. That's something that I've seen make a really big difference.
00:19:54
Speaker
Going back to this strike action that you've had, the week-long strike action, did you get a response from management on your action? So not at first. At first they came back to us at the end of that week-long action with an offer that included nothing on the securitization of the workforce. And I guess because we had just had this historic action and we had a lot of industrial power under our bargaining team.
00:20:21
Speaker
felt ready to walk away from the table, flatly refused to negotiate with management's team until they did provide us with something on that, which they then sort of delayed getting to us for a week. And it was at our members meeting where we were sort of due to vote to go on the week 10 strike. About like an hour before that meeting, correct me if I'm wrong, Thomas, it was about an hour before when management got back to us with a
00:20:47
Speaker
With this offer we mentioned earlier, the 75% secure work target, which was in some ways a massive thing for us, given that management had refused to commit to a target at all up until that point. There were also immediately really glaring loopholes and issues with it. So even just aside from the fact that it didn't come with any offer on workloads at all, it also defined
00:21:15
Speaker
fixed-term workers who are working on contracts.
00:21:20
Speaker
of a year or longer as secure workers, which I think for many of us, it's just blatantly not true. That seems ridiculous. There were also a few other issues with it as well, like some get out of jail free cards in terms of what's reasonable or practical for them to do in terms of their finances. A number of things were really rotten about the offer, but at the same time, it was such a movement from where they had
00:21:47
Speaker
been willing to meet us earlier that it was also really empowering for a lot of people who were feeling quite daunted by the fact that management hadn't given us anything even after our strike. I think in many ways we felt empowered to act further rather than satisfied by that offer. Taking us back to that strike action, what was the feeling on the picket line throughout the week for all of you? I think we need to learn how to picket really.
00:22:12
Speaker
So on the one hand, a hard pick is illegal. And so then we're reverted to a soft pick, which is a question of obstruction, of making people feel uneasy that they're entering a workplace. But we're not very good at it. Or at least I wasn't. To put in a more chipper response, I think that that's true. That's been a conversation that we've had, I guess, over the last month or longer, what it means to strike without
00:22:39
Speaker
without a hard picket. And it was especially complex with that first strike because it was a work area based strike. There were people who were legally not protected to go on strike that week, so we could hardly block the entrances. And I still think that it's an ongoing conversation about picketing as the most effective form of
00:22:59
Speaker
industrial action or what the picket contributes, I guess. And I think it's a really complex question. But just in terms of what I do feel surprised me, I guess, in a more positive way about being on strike together for that week. I had been on the half-day strike, I'd been on the big
00:23:18
Speaker
sort of the big strike where we had met Trades Hall and met other NTU divisions and that was really amazing. And there's something emotional about going on strike or there's something really powerful about that experience of doing that together. I hadn't anticipated how it would be emotional in a different way to be going on a longer strike together to see the same people
00:23:40
Speaker
from my work area every day each day to turn up. I feel like it can be really lonely working at the university even if you have like a desk which you're allowed to be in half of the time or even if you kind of drag yourself onto campus and find a spot to work most days.
00:23:55
Speaker
you don't you don't see everyone and I felt like almost for the first time like I had a real job when I was on strike I like I had co-workers it kind of it was almost a feeling I hadn't had since since high school like seeing the same people almost in a structured way it was also like we had quite emotional experiences at one point we met our vice chancellor coming out of a out of the building where he'd had he'd been in a meeting sort of in the lead up to bargaining that week and we'd been
00:24:24
Speaker
holding a rally outside and a couple of us were waiting outside this bar-formed trance because he suspected he probably would leave that way. And it was a really, it was an encounter with like quite like blatant, almost disgust or disregard for us, like in that encounter with him. It was like kind of chilling in a way. It was like frustrating. It clarified for a lot of us, sort of like the violence that's sort of like often like a little bit inherent in this bargaining process, but you don't get to see the person directly.
00:24:54
Speaker
Um, one person, I think, or casual worker from the library, um, at one point said something along the lines of, you know, like we're out in a week, we're out here for losing a week's pay because we can't go any longer. Like we need a fair pay rise. We need these things to change and the vice chancellor sort of like.
00:25:12
Speaker
looked in the eyes and said, like, that's your choice. By choosing to go a week without pay, you're losing 2% of last year's 4% pay rise, essentially. Just like, was like, that's your prerogative? You've decided to give up half of your pay rise. And things like that, which I guess a direct encounter with like that kind of violent way of seeing employees, like seeing workers could have been really
00:25:37
Speaker
difficult I think for a lot of us to work through but we were there together and there were so many chances to check in with each other and to support each other on the picket lines and to support each other going to things like
00:25:51
Speaker
and having lunch together each day. I don't know, I think it's true that we really need to sort of think about what it means to pick it and to get people onto campus. But it was also like an experience of community. I think there was a lot of pride as well in what we've been able to do and the fact that we were there together. It's really cool.
00:26:09
Speaker
That's so lovely to hear the sort of community spirit on the picket line. It's really nice. Something that often comes up in our whole member meetings and at the Monash branch.
00:26:22
Speaker
around strike action in our sector is the impact industrial action has on students. How have students responded to your strikes and the disruptions in their learning? And what would you say to someone who is thinking about striking up Monash, but is maybe worried about negatively impacting their students? I would say that, well, it sounds like they care a lot about their work. And I'd also say that it's something that I think
00:26:48
Speaker
Almost everyone I know who has gone on strike has also really grappled with. There's the line, which is really true. There's the line, which you can say to someone who's grappling with that. You can say, you know, the reason we're going on strike is because staff working conditions are student learning conditions. And you can say that the way things are now is really not sustainable for a lot of students. Students aren't getting the support they need from professional staff.
00:27:14
Speaker
That's something that really came through loud and clear in our first week long strike. We had staff from the sort of stop one or like sort of student support staff testifying to just like they're complete like under.
00:27:26
Speaker
like under resourced, understaffed departments, just really unable to support students in the way that they want to and need to, particularly like the most vulnerable students in the university. You can say that to people, but not, I wouldn't say that in like a gotcha way, like, because there's still, there's always going to be that paradox, right? Like the students who most need things to change at the university are also, perhaps the students who'll be most affected by a strike. And it's this constant weighing of
00:27:52
Speaker
how much longer can we go on like this and how much longer can we allow things to get worse versus like the relatively short term disruption to student learning. But it's not something that we can erase, it's something that we just have to keep looking at and thinking about and talking about with our students and making decisions, you know, with that in mind, but nevertheless making the decision, right, to go out. It's something I've talked a lot about with my students.
00:28:17
Speaker
and someone I'll continue to talk to my students about. I had students come from this week's semester and last semester come to rallies and stuff and that was amazing, but it's also not necessarily everyone's experience. Like some people will have students who are fearful, who are cautious, who do need like a little bit of support and might need to
00:28:35
Speaker
spend some time talking about why we're doing this in class with their students as well. But it's a really important question to be asking. I think a lot of us really give a shit about our students, and that's maybe why we want to strike. It's maybe why all of this feels so high stakes in more ways than one. But it's a really good question to be asking yourself. Yeah, I mean, I'm striking for them just as much as I'm striking for me.
00:29:02
Speaker
One of the things I thought was interesting and really good about the strike that you guys did was that it wasn't just pickets that you were engaging in. There was also all this other stuff that you're doing as well. What was some of that other stuff for people that maybe weren't as familiar with what was happening at Melbourne? We got really excited and we were also very unorganized. So we had a lot going on because every work area joining the strike essentially had its own schedule, sort of full of activities, which I think we've managed to really successfully streamline
00:29:29
Speaker
into more centralized activities this time. But a few that I think were really exciting included, so we had teach-ins, we had sort of people giving lectures or running workshops or running seminars on things that sort of related to their work or things that related to our industrial action or our enterprise bargaining campaign or just the union history labor law. So we had a bunch of teach-ins running throughout the week.
00:29:57
Speaker
And I was able to attend a few of those, several of those, and they were really cool. We also had a poetry reading. Those spaces were really cool to be in. It was really, really nice to see students coming along to those, like people just from the community as well.
00:30:12
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm really passionate about the idea of teachings and I was one of the people who organized like a teaching day on the Wednesday of strike week. And part of the reason why I'm so passionate about it is because like I articulated earlier, to be faithful to the idea of the university and to run radical education programs. So we have people do poetry reading. So we have people do revolutionary astrology or lectures on the failure to repatriate Aboriginal remains in the Raymond Barry collection.
00:30:39
Speaker
Each of those things I think are particularly suited to the sort of strike action that we at the universities are engaging in because we're doing this for our students. We're doing this for the idea of education. So you mentioned earlier as well, Abigail and Thomas, that you've had a bunch of new members based on your strike action. Yeah, I think it's been one of the most exciting parts of like the strike. Obviously it's been exciting to get movement from management and it's been empowering to
00:31:08
Speaker
have the experience of doing this collectively, like withdrawing our labour. But it's been really cool to see our growth as the union, like growth as a union really sort of take off around this action. And especially to see a lot of casual or fixed term staff, particularly casual staff who may not have trusted the union, I guess, to represent their interests in the past and
00:31:32
Speaker
Like, yeah, the NTU nationally has had like a patchy, sometimes quite poor record of really like representing the interests of casual staff members. And having this action so closely tied to the securitization of the workforce claim, but also having it really come from the bottom up and to have so many casuals and fixed-term staff really organizing and making decisions and like running meetings and
00:32:00
Speaker
sort of feeling empowered to make change in their workplace and not necessarily deferring to like an authority on that, I think has brought a lot of new members who don't necessarily fit the classic type of the NTU member like traditionally. So people who might've felt quite alienated from the workplace or not even felt like really, really staff members in the past have felt empowered to join the strikes. And that's been really cool.
00:32:25
Speaker
And it's been also really cool seeing people join midweek or not necessarily know what they were going to do until the strike began and maybe even have a conversation with a colleague on their way in to their workplace. I know that's something that like the, our comrades in 757 have done really well. So 757 is sort of our student support, like professional staff sort of hub. There's a lot of different kinds of sort of teams working there.
00:32:50
Speaker
And they did some really great work outside of their building all throughout the strike week and got a number of members, I mean a number of workers to sign up as members on the spot and join the strike even on the Tuesday or the Wednesday. I just think that's been for me something that's been quite like moving and exciting to think about, to think about the way that a strike grows and builds a union and what kind of union a strike can build as well.
00:33:15
Speaker
Thank you, Abigail. Thank you, Thomas. It was lovely to have both of you here. We may well have you back after your strike, and you can tell us how you won your agreement and all of the spoils that come with it. All right, folks, that's it for this episode. Thanks to Kate, Danny, Adam, Bernard, and Pod Daddy, Sophia, for all the work they've put into this, and we'll catch you next time.