Notes+Stop+Work+Seminar+June+15

Notes from **Festival of good ideas** for employment at the University of Melbourne June 15 room 210 Alice Hoy

The seminar on June 15 covered a diversity of ideas for employment conditions and how the NTEU should move forward.

The following are notes only and may not reflect everything or even record all details in the way that was observed by others.

Please feel free to edit this page to make corrections, additions or totally new areas that need to also be raised. To edit click on edit tab above and then type in changes and press save at top or bottom of page. All earlier versions are kept so we can always check changes or roll back.

These notes may form the basis of working groups to be established to deal with these issues. They are divided into core areas of discussion.


 * A: Issues of Governance and a new managerialist audit culture**

Irregularities that are surfacing in relation to governance

Development of an audit culture at the University of Melbourne

Example is the **Faculty of Arts** where governance is being compromised in a number of ways The audit culture has become the protocol for measuring and rejecting or eliminating candidates for promotion, recruitment, and ongoing employment – but also the basis for mis-performance and therefore penalties for not reaching arbitrary and performance metric targets that are changed without notice
 * Excessive use of metrics
 * Metrics and data collection for metrics used as a coercive measure in relation to
 * performance workload and performance development processes.
 * Removal of committee and collegiate based decision making
 * No formal process where staff can be involved in decision making

Items that are being used as metrics are QOT and DEST points

There are similarities with the **engineering** where QOTs are used in a similar way but also no notice is paid to the inevitable reaction of students to difficult complex material to vent their feelings about the content by return negative QOTs – individual teachers of this content suffer in terms of promotion and employment security because the content is difficult not because of quality of teaching.

In engineering and possibly elsewhere- tutors are used to redirect these negative QOTs and therefore tutors are never able to be identified as successful applicants for more permanent positions and the cycle is reinforced and repeated

In engineering 9 staff are likely to be identified as unsatisfactory in a particular area where there are only 24 staff – these staff are likely to be put on PIP

University seems to be aspiring to a corporate model – using a discredited audit culture that favours a dominant top down communication approach and ignores or stifles more modern and accepted corporate practice of finding two way communication processes for performance and planning

PDF process: original consultation on PDF with union argued that PDF process was not to be used as a coercive process but a process of staff arriving at some sort of ownership and self directing of their work. Now the PDF process seems to be corrupted and largely about work measurement and meeting set criteria with outcomes related to loss of increments, or misperformance processes as the outcome – not performance improvement but penalties and disinclination and disincentives to make contributions outside strict targeted measures – no recognition of any other indicators strict discouragement and possible damage to University performance by adherence and focus on the limitations and arbitrary nature of imposed targets

Students are getting short changed by these strict auditing targets and only those things that can be measured are worth performing any assistance or additional work that does not have a DEST or QOT outcome will draw time away from achieving the measured targets and is therefore not valued and is done to the detriment of what is measured and logically should be avoided so as to maximize outcomes intensification of work in the targeted areas.

the new managerial structure for example includes service delivery managers who do not have sufficient staff to carry out the work that they are to “manage” the so called “delivery” of
 * IT services and library** are now flooded with managers top heavy managerial structure

Shift across the university to but especially in IT and library to managerialise all problems with a propensity to employ or appoint short term mangers of problems as “projects”. Support staff to do the actual work are insufficient but also usually are drawn away from other work by the short term projects where a manager is appointed.

Managerialism results in big slabs of employment budget being taken up by much larger salaries where work centres on project meetings and other salary budget is then drawn away from the employment of those that may be doing or expected to do the work required or being “managed”.

Some Faculties are being gutted of staff while at the same time large capital works are being undertaken – there is a discontinuity between budget allocation for capital as an indication of commitment to an area and the lack of expenditure on recurrent resourcing or staffing in order to properly support or make productive the capital expenditure.

There is now a lack of communication between professional staff and academic staff in faculties. This is actively being exacerbated by the sequestering of staff and the closing down of communications and processes for review and discussion within faculties. The only communication that is expanding is the bloated top tiers of senior management where communication seems to circulate and then stop at the management level down but become opaque or not available to levels below

One way management communication; has examples in relation to direct supervision of staff in for example relation to PDFs not now being a confidential relationship between the supervisor and the staff member but the one way movement of reporting of measurement metrics upwards and away from staff member to senior executive – staff member may not even be aware of metrics reported to seniors

Lack of consultation about the constantly changing goal posts for outcomes and measurement now

At the level of effect on staff an example of another one way communication is the use of PDFs as punitive in relation to metrics and all other alternative visions of the University are now excluded or specifically discouraged. Innovative practice and alternative views on how teaching or research might be done or even the content and direction of research and teaching is managed so that alternatives and other activities that cannot be measured are not to be included and therefore not wise to take up. There is therefore a tendency to conform to supervisor or senior executive whim and an outcome that tend to shape or limit performance to the safe practices that are recognised and can be counted and therefore makes for a shaping to sameness and mediocrity.

Public reaction and academic vision through University to media is shaped by message that is condoned or directed by managers – independent academic vision is managed or eliminated there is no opportunity or advancement of a perspective that can varies from the managed view – all alternatives stifled


 * HR** functions and oversight now or in the process of devolving or being broken up- becoming the responsibility like finances of the Faculties or divisions- so centralised employment relationship is broken and reduced recourse to a checks by central system- HR managers report to deans of heads and agenda of faculty becomes basis for employment relationship despite the employee being in the employ of the University and not just the Faculty

Managerialism and lack of university wide communication is again reinforced

Needs a response to responsible division management

A campaign to encourage effective management and identify the way that the University should be managed. A style that is inclusive, collegiate, involves open and two way communication and involves all staff at decision making level. Promote this style and highlight the disadvantages of the current aggressive, us verses them style that prevails.


 * B: NTEU communication**

Union newsletter as a hard copy

Different faculties are now working as separate entities

Need union to create a sense of a single university and provide channels of communication between the faculties so that staff can act or work in unison on employment issues that cross faculty boundaries

Identify effective ways to communicate to non-members

NTEU needs to respond to HR e-mails immediately

Union could take up role of seeking to provide feedback from staff to management as part of the now recognised corporate system of managers being subject to performance improvement not just from above but also from the staff teams they manage and are to work with.

Union should produce papers and messages for wider University community language and message needs to consider the audience and not just the tech


 * C: Indigenous employment**

Number of indigenous employees at University has fallen from 44 to now 28

Some Indigenous employment and indigenous education projects are or were externally funded some directly government funded but not recurrently and over time funding is shifting or has fallen or dried up – the units are left to fend for themselves or to self destruct because without ongoing commitment to projects from the University policy to continue support for indigenous employment is not guaranteed by an enforceable agreement (such as one that might be included in the collective agreement) - so various initiatives are weakened or collapse and we are left with the current circumstance of a reduced not ongoing commitment..