The strike at the Australian National University and the University of Canberra is showing that enterprise bargaining is not a very satisfactory method of industrial relations at non-profit, public institutions. It is a fall-out from government policies that have attempted to impose private-sector methods far too widely in the public sector. Efficiency drives in, and privatisation of, commercial elements of the public sector have been laudable … banks, airlines, telecommunications and so on. But to apply the methods of industry universally through the public sector, is ludicrous. Enterprise bargaining belongs in enterprises. A university is not an enterprise, despite the wishes of purist economic rationalists. Performance pay, user pays and productivity-based pay are also follies when applied to educational institutions. Some functions in society are better done in the public sector and applying the public-sector ethos of service and equity. Typically these functions require very large outlays and yield returns only in the very long term or yield returns that are not measurable in dollars. Or they are policy functions.
The universities have been put in an invidious position. They have virtually no control over their income and therefore nothing to bargain with. They are not like an enterprise which can increase prices. Enterprises can make a balanced commercial decision about the risk of passing on the costs of pay rises on to consumers, a university cannot.
The workers have been put in an invidious position. There is little scope for them in a non-enterprise to bargain effectively by trading off productivity gains for pay rises. The result is an impasse.
The workers say their wages have been eroded by inflation. The universities say that the Government has not given them enough money to meet any more than a 2 per cent rise without job losses. That has given rise to unions looking at every aspect of university expenditure and asserting that their pay rise is more deserving than many of the expenditure items listed in university budgets. They are not particularly skilled at determining expenditure priorities needed to keep the universities at the cutting edge of teaching and research to ensure they can continue to engage in national and international exchanges of knowledge.
Conversely the university “”managements” are not particularly skilled at dealing with industrial disputes of the kind seen in commercial enterprises. In fact they have been utterly inept. Fancy tolerating the inconvenience of bans which have closed many university functions and yet still pay the workers who have imposed them. Under this strategy the bans will go on indefinitely. The universities should technically dismiss all those engaging in bans, thereby at least saving the wages until there is a settlement. Or it could call the unions’ bluff and give the 8 per cent on condition that the staff size shrink by a comparable amount.
It would be better, of course, if the Government was negotiating and if the dispute were before an independent tribunal. That form of industrial relations, while utterly inappropriate for the bulk of Australian industry, is a better way for those institutions which are quintessentially public in nature.