All National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) members at the University of Melbourne stopped work from midday on Monday 28 August for a strike that may last up to a week, in what the NTEU claims will be the longest large-scale strike action at an Australian university campus for a decade or more.
Members from the Faculty of Arts, Melbourne Law School, the Victorian College of the Arts School of Art, student services, stagecraft and the library voted last week to take action, after representatives of the Vice-Chancellor, Duncan Maskell, did not engage on a number of issues, including job security, pay, workloads and flexible working arrangements. Of particular concern for the strikers is the limiting of the university’s constant restructures of departments and use of rolling fixed-term contracts.
