BY CHRIS PICKERING
WOLLONGONG — On November 13, NSW Public Service Association (PSA) delegates reluctantly accepted the recommendation of their union officials to lift a range of work bans. The decision followed a NSW Industrial Relations Commission (IRC) request. The bans were instituted in response to more than 1000 planned job cuts across TAFEs and the NSW Department of Education and Training.
In return for the union promising not to strike before February, DET said that the department would not begin to implement aspects of the planned merger and job shedding until then, except where the union agrees.
Earlier that day, the PSA had been called to a compulsory conference before the industrial relations commission after DET lodged a dispute over the work bans.
In the brief hearing, the union pointed out DET had been unable to resolve the many concerns the union has with the misnamed "Lifelong Learning" restructure — particularly with the health and safety implications of the massive workload that will confront workers who remain after the job cuts.
After debate amongst delegates and officials, suggested November stop-works to vote on further strike action were postponed to February, when DET is expected to start filling jobs in its new structure.
The timing was unfortunate. The same day the decision to lift bans was taken, DET unveiled the second tranche of its three-pronged restructure, the corporate services merger which is expected to cost between 450 and 750 jobs. This plan is still in the "consultation" stage until December 5.
The first prong of the restructure, dubbed Lifelong Learning by NSW education minister Andrew Refshauge, proposed between 200 and 300 job cuts, the final plan for which will be revealed at the end of November.
DET and TAFE workers were shocked when the draft structures for this part of the restructure were given out on September 24, with disabling cuts proposed to areas of DET and TAFE which provide services vital to supporting teaching and learning, and regulation of apprenticeships and traineeships.
The third, and as yet unknown, part of the restructure will affect TAFE campuses. The recently released budgets for TAFE institutes indicate that they will be required to manage with substantially less funds. Combined with huge fee increases from January, this could spell the beginning of the end of TAFE as a provider of affordable, comprehensive vocational education and training in NSW.
Refshauge has dishonestly attempted to sell these changes as putting more resources back into classrooms, by getting rid of fat-cat bureaucrats. But the number of fat cats will contiue to flourish, while those providing services to schools, TAFEs, industry and the community will decline. Even senior managers have admitted to workers that they didn't really understand what the workers do.
PSA members, frustrated at the "wait and see" approach of their union, had begun applying serious work bans, leading to the IRC hearing. The work bans had been gathering pace. TAFE libraries across NSW were beginning to refuse to open in the evenings and refuse to collect library fines from students, in response to the plan to cut the central TAFE library collection services.
Union members in the Hunter Institute were also outraged at the proposal to wipe out the Multicultural Access Centre, the specialist library and services which provide teaching resources and assistance for English language (ESOL) and literacy and numeracy (ABE) courses across the state.
Some of the bans which had the most bite were those being imposed by DET's Blacktown office workers. These unionists, some of the most militant in DET, were incensed at plans to cut jobs in school staffing and to cut and move jobs in the casual payroll. Blacktown office is one of DETs worst offices, with workers in an overcrowded safety nightmare situation, and both school staffing and the casual payroll only surviving by significant use of labour-hire employees and extensive overtime.
Since 1995, for example, each fortnight, casual payroll workers must work Thursday and Friday nights and Saturday and Sunday. These mainly data-entry workers are largely lowly paid migrant women, who need the overtime to earn a decent living. Nevertheless, they voted on October 31 to ban all overtime. This had begun to have a serious effect on the payment of casual teachers across the state.
School staffing workers were particularly angry about lifting the work-bans. Under the restructure, they stand to lose an extra 28 positions they won after a 2001 campaign. November and December is a crucial time of the year for staffing schools, by February the most important work has been done.
PSA delegates now face the difficult task of convincing their members that they can wage a successful fight in February. Members are angry now, both at the job cuts, particularly in country areas, and the lack of effective action from the union. This will be even worse if the union permits DET to offer voluntary redundancies to demoralised workers before the proposed strike in February, and will mean a strong fight from delegates to hold union officials in check.
[Chris Pickering is a PSA delegate from the Illawarra Institute of TAFE].
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, November 19, 2003.
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