Teachers in RMIT’s vocational education area have held a solid 24-hour strike, their first in decades. The 8 October strike is part of an energetic enterprise agreement campaign which has also included work-bans and mass meetings. Staff have already defeated two ballots to approve a non-union agreement and union membership is growing rapidly.

In the hours before the strike, management hurried to make a new offer. But if the university was attempting to head-off the action, it failed miserably. The new offer is worse than the two already rejected.

On the question of pay, the offer remains below inflation. The proposed deal would also deliver improvements to just a small section of the total workforce. NTEU delegate Olga Lorenzo told Red Flag that teachers were outraged at the university’s desperate attempt at divide and conquer: “We said ‘no way, were not going to accept that, we will never leave our colleagues behind’”.

Management’s ham-fisted approach spurred on the teachers, with more than 50 gathering for early morning pickets across the campus and a loud march to the vice-chancellor’s building. “It was a fantastic turnout”, Olga said, “considering what a small contingent these teachers are … I’d estimate that about half the workforce was here [on the picket line]”.

The teachers were thrilled at the experience. As they marched through the centre of campus chanting “hey hey, ho ho, where does all the money go?”, students and NTEU comrades in other areas offered support.

“I’ve been teaching here for 20 years, I’ve never seen a strike before”, Olga said. “I was talking to another teacher who’s been teaching for 26 years, he said he had never seen a strike either.”

Since the start of this year, the RMIT NTEU branch has recruited over 150 vocational education teachers. They have good reason to fight. As branch president Mel Slee noted in her address to strikers: “It used to be that the only places paying below award wages were the greasy takeaway shops flogging stale chico rolls from a lukewarm bain-marie.

“But now RMIT University, with its billion dollar a year revenue, has teachers earning below award wages … And we have some staff on less than half the super of their colleagues … The NTEU fights to win. We won’t stop until every RMIT employee has equality.”

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Liam Ward is an RMIT NTEU branch committee member.