NTEU UC Bargaining Update

Member Meeting, 18 February 2026, 12.30pm – Room 2B07 (RSVP here) and online (register if attending via Zoom)

Members welcome, and UC staff yet to join can join prior at www.nteu.au/join

Red flags in discussions on redundancy, organisational change

Here's the latest info on bargaining, and our proposed cost-of-living pay rise.

Cost-of-Living Pay Rise

As you’ll see in the video update, members have told us they need a pay rise and can’t wait until next January. With CPI at 3.8% and the recent rise in interest rates, union members are keen to push to ensure their real wages don’t go backwards after January’s 2.4% salary increase a few weeks ago.

That’s why we’ll be bringing a motion for debate at our next Member Meeting, which will also update on the progress of bargaining so far. You can find out more on that motion and the cost-of-living pay rise here.

Bargaining Update

Yesterday was Meeting 5, and unfortunately there are a few red flags – particularly around organisational change and redundancy.

Organisational Change

Members expressed very clearly through our collective consultation on our bargaining claims that there needs to be serious changes to the way organisational change works at UC.

We raised the need for protections in relation to organisational change on the following issues:

• Prevent sacking higher levels to create roles at lower levels (e.g. sacking Level D academics to replace with Level B in the same discipline)

• Prohibiting damaging spill-and-fill processes

• Ensuring that all consultation feedback is read by humans, rather than relying on AI to collate, theme or aggregate in lieu of human review

• Ensuring that staff have transparent access to all relevant information informing change proposals

We also want to see more, including consideration of workload implications, but thus far we do not believe we have seen enough engagement with necessary changes from University Management.

Redundancy

Redundancy is also a huge issue.

We all want a better process, but the net effect of what UC has proposed is that, in future, academics will be able to be sacked far more cheaply. While there are legacy protections for existing staff, they could also be taken away in a future agreement. A slight increase for professional staff is certainly a positive, but the cuts on the academic staff side far outweigh the additional benefits. We’ll explain this in more detail at our next member meeting.

Redundancy entitlements are a job security measure – as well as ensuring staff have the means to support themselves while finding another job, they also act as a deterrent for universities pursuing redundancies unless absolutely necessary. This job security concern for continuing staff adds to job security concerns around the proposed removal of fixed-term and casual conversion clauses.

Not all bad news – your efforts are helping to win improvements

While there are big concerns, we’re also working effectively to progress areas of agreement. Issues like academic freedom and freedom of speech (in which we’ve expanded professional staff protections), reclassification (for professional staff), disputes, and other clauses are either agreed in principle or close to it.

We’ll have more to say on the overall state of progress at our next meeting, so make sure you’re there! It is a members-only meeting but please feel free to let your colleagues know they can come provided they first join the union at www.nteu.au/join. All UC staff - professional or academic, continuing, fixed-term or casual, are eligible to join the NTEU.

We look forward to seeing you next week!

In solidarity,

NTEU UC Bargaining Team

Lachlan, Craig, Bethany, Katie, Denise and Luke

Meeting 5: 11 February 2026

Members will vote on pursuing immediate cost-of-living pay rise