Tasmania uni gets jump on pay rises

For all the hullabaloo that followed Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s ‘loose’ pre-election call for an increase to the minimum wage in line with inflation, few, least of all Mr Albanese’s opponent, seemed to readily recognise the severity of financial pain facing Australia’s lowest-paid workers.

Put plainly, with inflation running at 5.1 per cent in the 12 months to March and federal budget papers estimating wages price index growth to be a miserly 2.75 per cent in FY2022, real wage cuts were already in effect when Mr Albanese made that call.

That’s without taking into consideration the effect that a 1.25 percentage points jump in the official interest rate over the past three months has had on buying power and household debt.

Given these conditions, University of Tasmania’s decision to openly recognise the problem and offer workers a 4.6 per cent pay increase, alongside a $1,000 bonus for workers paid below $80,000 per year, stood apart.

The offer is not a panacea.

Inflation in Hobart for the 12 months to March ran at 5.8 per cent, the third highest rate across capital cities, while Tasmania’s average earnings for full-time workers are safely the lowest of any state or territory per ABS data.

Still, University of Tasmania vice-chancellor Rufus Black made the point in announcing the increase that recognising the extent of inflationary pressures was part and parcel with paying workers a fair wage.

“Cost of living pressures are here now,” Mr Black said.

“While negotiations with unions and staff representatives on a new staff agreement continue, we want to pay people as we intend to, and we want to do that now.”

His offer is a fair one, not least of all as senior management has had their pay rise capped at 3.8 per cent to pay down the increased salary costs (the highest-paid executive officer earned at least $975,000 in 2020, per latest reporting).

National Tertiary Education Union officials are not impressed, though, with the union’s state division taking to Twitter shortly after Professor Black’s announcement to claim the university was “not listening” amid negotiations.

Their consternation is apparent given the local branch had requested a 15 per cent bump by the end of 2024.

Relevant stakeholders in Western Australia would do well to observe how this dispute plays out.

As has previously been reported, all the state’s universities are due to come to the table for negotiations this year, with four of NTEU’s five state branches having logged claims for the same pay rise.

It mirrors demands made in recent months by other branches, such as the one servicing RMIT, for either a flat 15 per cent increase or 5 per cent per year over three years.

While the argument for such a pay increase may be sound from a cost-of-living perspective, not least of all given inflation is above 7 per cent in Perth for the relevant period, the capacity for public universities to deliver it may prove miniscule as all, bar ECU, shed staff in 2020 in a bid to contain employee-related expenses.

The opposing argument is that, even without international students and additional federal support, every university in the state was profitable in 2021.

That’s in addition to salary outlays for senior officers from as low as $640,000 per year at Curtin and as much as $1 million at Murdoch.

Jason Clare, who’s been doing media rounds after his surprise elevation as federal education minister, has already said industrial relations will rate a mention in the government’s long-touted universities accord.

Pressed on the subject by Michelle Grattan, from The Conversation, earlier this month, Mr Clare declined to be drawn on whether employing low-paid, highly casualised teaching staff negatively affected student outcomes, instead preferring to talk about casualisation as a systemic economic problem.

“Casualisation or insecure work creates a multitude of challenges for Australians who are employed on that basis, be it the ability to get a mortgage or the ability to pay the rent,” Mr Clare said.

“Getting that balance right, providing additional job security for Australians will be a key tenet of this … government.”