University of Newcastle pay deal: NTEU votes through enterprise agreement

Members of the union's Newcastle branch voted "overwhelmingly" in favour of the new deal, which includes a 13 per cent pay rise over three years.

The union described this as "a celebration of the long and hard campaign to achieve reasonable working conditions at the university" for casual, professional and academic staff and teachers.

Newcastle branch president Associate Professor Terry Summers said it had been a tough negotiation.

"For all staff, we successfully defended existing conditions that management were so intent on winding back. Members achieved some very important wins," he said.

"Members won agreement that casual staff must now be paid for all hours worked. For professional staff, members achieved guarantees for reasonable hours.

"For teachers and academic staff, members won agreement that workloads shall be transparent and can actually be completed in the time allocated."

Associate Professor Summers said "the students and the staff are the university".

"I want to express my thanks to our bargaining team and members at the university who campaigned so hard to defend our existing conditions and won important new gains."

He also thanked "the students who supported us and the wider community too".

"We have said consistently that staff working conditions are student learning conditions - and that's a key reason for why reasonable working conditions are so important."

University of Newcastle Vice-Chancellor Professor Alex Zelinsky welcomed the "endorsement of our new enterprise agreements by the NTEU and its members today".

"We now have support from the NTEU and CPSU and can move to a staff ballot," Professor Zelinsky said.

"Our new proposed agreements provide competitive salary increases of 13 per cent, generous leave entitlements, improved conditions and protections around workload, and maintain a wide range of benefits already available to staff.

"The university will provide the proposed agreements to staff for consideration as soon as possible, as stipulated by the Fair Work Act."

Superannuation for casual staff had been a sticking point in negotiations, with the union pushing for a rise from 10.5 per cent to 17 per cent to match permanent staff.

The negotiation team in June dropped that demand after weeks of Fair Work Commission negotiations.

"This is a critical equity issue - management knows it - and one that we will continue to prosecute," Associate Professor Summers said.

"We are not done - equity means equity and we will continue to fight for it."