Professional staff work in Australian higher education; questioning the 30 year legacy of the first Accord
By Elizabeth Baré, Arnaldo Barone and Janet Beard.
The current focus on the Jobs and Skills Summit and the inclusion of consideration of employment conditions in the forthcoming Australian Universities Accord prompt a review of the impact of the wide-ranging reforms in university employment introduced nearly 30 years ago. Now is the time for consideration as to whether they remain fit for purpose, now and into the future.
There is no doubt that Australia’s industrial relations system was radically changed in the 1980s. The Second Tier Agreements[1], the Prices and Incomes Accords between the Labor government and unions, and the adoption of the Structural Efficiency Principles (SEP)[2] by the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission, were together designed to increase national productivity. This was deemed to be essential for sustainable productivity-based salary increases.
These initiatives have had a lasting impact on the pay and conditions of employment for Australian workers and none more so than in higher education. The period in question saw the number of Commonwealth funded higher education institutions reduced through mergers[3], challenges to the continuation of fee-free undergraduate higher education[4], and increasing questions regarding full Commonwealth supplementation for staff salary increases.
While the changes arising from the Academic Staff Second Tier Agreement[5] and the creation of the Universities Academic Staff (Conditions of Employment) Award were and continue to be controversial, it was the changes to general (now called professional) staff classification, salary structures and employment conditions which were more radical. With an emphasis on staff and career development, the changes were widely accepted and eventually formalised in the Higher Education General and Salaried Staff Award 1993. The classification structure has survived broadly unchanged in subsequent versions of the Award (now the Higher Education Industry General Staff Award 2020) and in institutional enterprise agreements.
It has been thirty years since this structure was first conceived, and since that time, the sector has grown significantly, student numbers have increased by 300% and it has seen wide-ranging changes to administrative structures, a revolution in the world of work, new staff demographics, the implementation of new technology and digitisation, increased levels of commercialisation, and survived the COVID-19 pandemic. The level of change invokes questions: has the classification structure stood the test of time, how has it performed against these and other challenges, and has it delivered on the promises made?
This paper considers and seeks to continue discussion on these questions. It begins by providing an historical background, which is followed by a discussion outlining issues, challenges and suggested actions. We recognise that this paper could not possibly provide a complete picture, but it is our hope that this document helps to generate discussion and debate on the future of this important workplace instrument.
* Please download the paper for footnotes.
Elizabeth Baré and Janet Beard are Honorary Fellows and Arnaldo Barone is a Senior Lecturer at the Melbourne CSHE.