Teachers from Byron’s SAE college took part in the higher education union’s National Day of Action last week, as part of their campaign for improved wages and conditions.
As the nation’s higher education sector feels the pressure from declining enrolments, staff at SAE say they are being required to worker harder without equivalent increases in pay.
‘Morale has definitely been battered,’ lecturer Kevin Hay said.
‘We made it through Covid, and most of us still had jobs at the end of it. But then the business decided to go through a restructuring, and we’re feeling the effects of that now.’
Mr Hay said that, as part of the restructure, many staff found themselves teaching extra subjects, but not being paid for some of the extra workload that came with it.
The amount of time the teachers spent doing tasks like preparation, answering questions, and marking increased without a proportionate increase in pay.
‘Most of us just deal with it because we don’t want the students to suffer, but it is an issue,’ he said.
In an effort to address this issue, and the fact that they have been getting the minimum award rate for many years, the teaching staff joined the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) and voted unanimously to negotiate an Enterprise Bargaining Agreement (EBA) with their managers.
Two years later, negotiations over the EBA are still ongoing.
‘We would like to see an agreement reached’, says Mr Hay. ‘We’re not asking for much – a pay rise of some description, even if it’s just below CPI, and some hard limits on workloads. A per day teaching limit regardless of what semester you’re in is also on the list.’
‘We’re doing our best, we’re passionate and professional teachers. But over time if you’ve got unhappy teachers that does bleed into the quality of teaching.’
General Manager SAE University College Australia, Luke McMillan, told The Echo the college is disappointed the NTEU chose to take industrial action during negotiations, ‘and we hope they can return to the table to continue to bargain in good faith, in the hope of concluding these negotiations as quickly as possible’.
Recognise the team
‘We recognise the valuable role all our team play in delivering a positive experience to our students. In our negotiations, we are seeking a balance in rewarding our team members fairly while managing SAE responsibly in the face of steady decline in Australia’s tertiary education sector post-Covid. We have already undertaken significant reform to better meet the needs of our team and students, including positive changes to workload policies crafted through review and team feedback. We are continuing to communicate openly and transparently with our team, while prioritising our students,’ Mr McMillan added.
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