A platform
for renewal
We love our university – and we are ambitious for what it could be.
We also believe that for the good university we need decent conditions and a strong, sensible union. It is only by working together we can make our work and our world a better place.
We also recognise things could be much better.
For over four decades managers have been centralising power at the expense of academics, professional staff, students and the community.
Simultaneously university executive salaries and senior managerial numbers have exploded, student-staff ratios have deteriorated, workloads continuously risen and casual forms of employment proliferated. Management inflicts wave after wave of dysfunctional ‘change initiatives’. It is time to stop the rot.
Our union is rising to these challenges.
NTEU Renewal and other non-aligned progressive unionists have led our union since 2024.
Our achievements include:
Blunting a number of aggressive management driven change initiatives (eg Professional Services Review now in abeyance and no retrenchments guaranteed, no retrenchments in Business School restructure and no confidence vote in the Dean.)
Engaging with the Parliamentary Committee reviewing NSW universities. We are now elaborating ideas on how to improve Uni operations by having the USyd Act nurture collaboration and not managerial domination.
Laying the foundations for a more welcoming union culture and stronger workplace representation to support members – resulting in rising membership levels (up 8% in 18 months).
Vote for NTEU Renewal
For the many, not the few
Our aims
Change needs to happen on many issues – but for us there are three priorities.
Expand each section to read full details.
-
Management increases our workloads year after year. New IT systems ‘automate’ systems of management control and increase our working time. Teaching and professional staff workloads rise remorselessly.
EBA decasualisation initiatives are hijacked by management to minimise long-term casuals’ prospects of actually getting decent work. The current EBA negotiations give us a chance to improve things.
Only a strong union can achieve better pay and conditions. With your support that’s what we plan to do.
-
Management’s top down control of working life corrodes the functioning of a good university.
Only strong, collective action by the organised workforce can counter these incursions and provide the foundations for a collegial, dynamic university. The NSW Legislative Council is investigating how to nurture more collaborative ways of running universities. It is vital our Union has an effective voice in the forthcoming changes in the University Acts: the framework that defines how universities are run.
NTEU Renewal officials and allies have provided the leadership so far – with your support we will continue this campaign over the next two years.
-
Improving our working lives won’t come from nice words to management or resolutions from union bodies. It requires effective union organisation. We need more members and we need more local delegates.
Our Union, however, still has weak workplace structures. We’ve begun to nurture and consolidate deep roots in some faculties, schools and PSUs. If elected we’ll continue to build this capacity.
Without improvements at the grassroots it will be impossible to get a step change in membership levels and improvements in job quality, change processes and pay.
If you don’t fight you lose
We all know major changes are sweeping through our sector. We also know our Union is shaping the agenda and providing concrete ways to make things better.
The opportunities opening up in the next two years are greater than at any time in the last forty.