The Guardian 24 August, 2005
New threats to tertiary education
Peter Mac
The Howard government’s new "Skilling Australia’s Workforce" bills have passed, almost unnoticed, through the Senate. These new laws offer an insight into the very nasty "brave new world" that awaits secondary education under the Howard government.
Under this legislation, Australia’s technical and further education (TAFE) colleges will now be required to "offer" their employees Australian Workplace Agreements (individual contracts) and performance-based pay. In effect, the colleges will be required to pressure employees to sign individual work contracts or to accept casual employment, with the intention of forcing down pay and conditions, and eliminating employee unionisation.
Permanent employment will be drastically reduced, and for permanent positions the option of employment under collective workplace agreements will not be offered.
Institutions that refuse to co-operate face losing their federal funding. The ACTU National Secretary, Greg Combet, recently commented: "The government plans to cut funding to universities by $280 million and cut TAFE funding by $1.2 billion unless they adopt hard line workplace relations policies that include offering all staff individual contracts with inferior conditions and introducing more casual employment.
"Thousands of long-serving education staff including porters, cleaners, gardeners, teachers and lecturers face the prospect of being made a casual worker and losing their job security.
"Already there are huge numbers of people working in our education system who are effectively laid off over the Christmas break period — receiving no pay until the next teaching semester starts.
"The government’s changes are not about providing employees with greater choice, they are about driving down pay and conditions and reducing job security for large numbers of hard working people."
The nation’s technical colleges, which train more than 1.3 million students each year, are singled out for this treatment in the new "Skilling Australia’s Workforce" bills. Over the last ten years, TAFE staff reductions and massive funding cuts have led to loss of student places (more than 50,000 last year), loss of higher level courses, loss of traineeships, bigger class sizes, reduced choice of subjects, cuts to student services, more casual employment, closure of certain facilities and steep fee increases. However, the "Skilling Australia" legislation now stipulates that funding is to be cut even further.
This slow crippling of the states’ TAFE education systems is accompanied by the government moves to establish 24 regional technical colleges, under another new law known as the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Skills Needs) Bill 2005. These new institutions will meet all the requirements that the Howard government is attempting to force on the state institutions and their employees and students, as noted above. But they will come under federal (not state) jurisdiction, will be private and in direct competition with public TAFE colleges.
Moreover, rather than giving students a broad education, the range of subject choice will be limited and training closely tailored to the requirements of specific local businesses. As the federal minister noted, "The colleges will promote a career path in trade occupations in key industries …"
This will provide employers with a workforce skilled at work required by that business, and therefore well able to boost its profit level, but offers the employee a reduced range of skills and more limited employment opportunities.
These colleges would in practice be controlled by the favoured industries. Although much lip-service has been given to assuring the autonomy of college principals, the bill is aimed at "establishing an industry-led governing body for each Australian technical college which sets out its strategic directions and performance objectives, and selects the college principal…"
The government has, quite rightly, spoken of the need to break down employment barriers posed by the different regulations of employment qualifications of the Australian states. This was addressed by the Labor government with the establishment in 1992 of the Australian National Training Authority (ANTA), which the Howard government now wants to abolish.
However, in the name of pursuing national education and training, the Howard government is now overriding the rights and interests of the states, and is effectively crushing the rights of young Australian students and apprentices in favour of employers.
The new funding arrangements will give the Federal Education Minister the ability to reach into our universities and TAFE system and dictate the details of individual job contracts regardless of the fact that most staff and management in these institutions want to negotiate collectively.
As Greg Combet noted:
"…The government plan threatens academic freedom, the independence of public universities and the integrity of our TAFE system…. The government’s plans are a dangerous step backwards for staff and students."