Strikes at Victorian universities: anger, exhaustion and a sense of injustice

With more than 70% of teaching-only staff casually employed and millions owed in "wage theft", university workers are desperate for better pay and conditions.
Strikes. University of Melbourne protesters march in solidarity with striking staff of RMIT University in CBD of Melbourne, October 2023. They are wearing purple and carrying placards. Photo: Darren Hocking.

Six of Victoria’s eight universities have been in enterprise bargaining negotiations for months. The strikes are coming thick and fast as workers protest the corporatisation of an education sector that isn’t serving students, teachers or the future of a creative, educated Australia.

Protestors are calling on the institutions to stop stalling on lapsed industrial agreements and to make real changes to what everyone, including the Federal Government in its current Universities Accord process, agrees is a broken system.

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Rochelle Siemienowicz is a Melbourne writer and editor. Her first book Fallen, a memoir was published in 2014 and her second, Double Happiness, a novel, in 2024. She has a PhD in Australian cinema and was previously a journalist at ScreenHub and ArtsHub. ou can find her on Instagram: @Rochelle_Rochelle or at Substack where she writes a fortnightly newsletter, The Fool and the Queen.