©Commonwealth of Australia 1998
ISBN 0 642 23775 1
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process without permission from AusInfo. Requests and inquiries concerning reproduction and rights should be addressed to the Manager, Legislative Services, AusInfo, GPO Box 84, Canberra ACT 2601.
This report is funded under the Evaluation and Investigations Programme of the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs.
The views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs.
Executive Summary
The actual and potential overlap between the functions of academic and general staff had been raised in the context of the opportunities provided by enterprise bargaining. The project involved an investigation of current practices and options for changing work practices in the context of enterprise bargaining. The research method involved:
- a laboratory in a traditional university where the work of professional officers and laboratory technicians included ‘teaching’ functions,
- a curriculum development and support units in an amalgamated university based on a former college of advanced education, and
- a ‘greenfield’ site where an enterprise agreement covered both ‘academic’ and ‘general’ staff.
The Formal Distinction between ‘Academic’ and ‘General’ Staff
The formal distinction between academic and general staff is based upon the functions of ‘teaching’ and ‘research’.
Academic staff (either permanent or contract) are formally defined by the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs (1995, p. 37) as:
. . . those members of staff employed to perform the function of teaching-only, research-only or teaching-and-research, even though their remuneration is not subject to the determination of the Industrial Relations Department or the Remuneration Tribunal . . .
There are, in addition, some inclusions of administrative positions (such as deans) where those positions are achieved from a substantiative academic position.
In general, however:
if a member of staff is one of the three types referred to above, they are classed as having an academic classification. This convention applies even if the member of staff has a salary which is related to or tied to those of staff in an academic classification (which may occur, for instance, for registrars and librarians) . . . (and) . . . Excludes members of staff appointed wholly or principally to support the three types of members of staff referred to above.
General staff are defined by exclusion from the ‘teaching and research’ functions so that if they are
. . . not one of the three types specified for the academic classification, they are classed as having a non-academic classification. This convention applies even if the member of staff has a salary which is related to tied to those of academic staff (which may occur for instance, for registrars and librarians).
(Department of Employment, Education and Training 1995)
It is apparent from the above that the distinction has both:
The embedding of the distinction in the award arrangements has been reproduced in subsequent enterprise agreements, with the single exception of the (as yet unregistered) agreement studied in this investigation.
Issues Raised in the Consultations
The consultations strongly stressed that the significant changes in higher education have affected the relationship between academic and general staff and the operation of universities. Broadly, there was a view that:
In addition, there was an underlying feeling—particularly from general staff unions—that the current relationship disadvantaged general staff in those areas in which an ‘overlap’ had been suggested.
Industrial Relations and the Changes in Higher Education
There have been a great number of reviews of higher education conducted since the second world war as the university sector was forced to adapt to social change.
Initially, universities were funded under state arrangements and employment conditions were characterised by practices of ‘grace and favour’. The introduction of Commonwealth funding, and the commencement of mass education in the 1960s drew universities into the industrial system.
The 1957 Murray Committee recommended the establishment of a Commonwealth funded Universities Grants Commission, and took the first steps towards a national salary scheme for higher education. The report set the pattern for industrial regulation which lasted until the introduction of enterprise bargaining in 1993.
The 1960 Martin Report focused on academic salary levels and the Commonwealth provided additional funding to the states for tertiary education. Concern that increased student numbers might dilute the quality of tertiary education led to recommendations that an alternative college system offering sub-degree courses with a strong technological and vocational emphasis be developed. The Martin Committee oversaw an ‘equal but different’ approach from which the colleges of advanced education developed. This ‘binary system’ lasted until the Dawkin’s Green and White Papers of the late 1980s.
The teaching and research areas had remained fairly ‘award free’ over this period. The 1973 Inquiry into Academic Salaries, chaired by W.B. Campbell recommended the establishment of a permanent salary review mechanism separate from existing Commonwealth mechanisms as university work ‘was not defined as employment within an industry’. In addition, there was resistance from academics to ‘industrialism’ and ‘unionism’. Under this system the Academic Salaries Tribunal in 1976 abandoned the principal of parity between college and university academics.
The tertiary sector was nonetheless drawn into the industrial regulatory system as a result of the 1983 Social Welfare Case which enabled the federal registration of academic staff awards. In 1987 following registration of employer and academic representative organisations, the (then) Conciliation and Arbitration Commission in granted the Australian Universities Academic and Related Staff (Salaries) Award.
The 1987 Green and 1988 White Papers signalled the end of almost twenty years of the ‘binary system’ and established the ‘unified national system’ The new system was intended to be more responsive to economic imperatives and to introduce cost efficiency through amalgamations to produce fewer but larger tertiary institutions.
The Green and White Papers also commented that a range of academic employment practices ( such as ‘tenure’) were not consistent with its stated efficiency principles. Although they concentrated on issues relating to academic staff they noted that ‘similar principles and objectives apply equally to general and support staff’ although acknowledging that differing industrial arrangements meant that the Commonwealth could not easily directly intervene in negotiations with general staff as it could in the federal jurisdiction which covered academic staff.
An important distinction was also drawn between academic labour markets where ‘academics are considered "sui generis" and thus have no direct comparator for industrial purposes’, and general and support staff who were considered to belong to the general labour market.
Enterprise Bargaining and the Tertiary Sector
The Evatt Foundation’s 1994 report, A Degree of Difficulty, identified enterprise bargaining as having the potential to bring both academic and non-academic staff into questions of work organisation.
However, enterprise bargaining in universities has followed the previous pattern where separate agreements and negotiations occur for both groups.
In general, the issues bargained over are the traditional ones associated with pay rates and conditions. Management approaches reflect those in the broader industrial relations environment with a concentration on achieving overall cost efficiencies.
Many agreements have attempted to address the community responsibilities of universities and include broad-ranging ‘vision statements’; however, with the exception of one ‘greenfield’ site (not yet registered), there have been limited attempts to integrate the functions of academic and general staff within the one document.
Overlaps between Academic and General Staff
Site visits and consultations revealed areas of overlap in the functions of persons classified as ‘academic’ and ‘general’ staff:
However, the greatest areas of overlap found were in specialist research institutes and in areas associated with laboratory and demonstration work.
In specialist centres/institutes mainly or partially dependent on (often intermittent and uncertain) external funding academically qualified staff were sometimes employed under general staff classifications on a short-term basis, in many cases for reasons of administrative convenience.
In laboratory areas professional officers were being increasingly called upon to undertake tutoring and/or lecturing at the undergraduate and, at times, postgraduate level. This change in roles was seen as a result of:
However, work organisation arrangements differed according to local management practice. Some areas adopted recruitment and personnel development strategies intended to increase the qualification levels and expand the duties of those classified as general staff, others retained policies of recruiting of staff with lesser qualification and associated lower salary ranges.
Although it was assumed that ‘general staff’ might wish to obtain ‘academic’ classifications, when questioned, most professional officers preferred the certainty of standard hours, holidays and pay rates (including overtime potential) to what were seen as less defined ‘academic conditions’.
The major issue which arose from the research was that staff were less concerned about actual or potential overlap between classifications, and much more concerned about an increase in uncertainty of employment as a result of a significant increase in contract and sessional work, which affected both academic staff and professionally qualified general staff.
Professional level general staff who were affected by the move towards forms of short term contract employment were found in support areas associated with the core university functions of teaching and research rather than in strictly administrative positions.
The literature, consultations, award and agreement reviews and the case studies all indicated that there were identifiable and increasing areas of overlap of ‘academic’ and ‘general staff’ work. These were concentrated at the professional level and were associated with ‘core functions’ of teaching/research.
Distinctions which were apparent in awards had generally been reproduced under the practices of enterprise bargaining. It was apparent that some could be reduced with an approach which concentrated all parties on the core functions of the tertiary sector, although cost pressures were stated to encourage management to address cost efficiency questions rather than quality issues.
However, the significant issue that arose in this project was less the reported ‘overlaps’ between academic and general staff classifications and much more the rapid move towards non-standard and contract work in both academic and professional level general staff classifications associated with teaching/research.
On the evidence of this project this major change in the labour market is likely to be of greater significance to areas of effectiveness and equity in the tertiary sector than the question of ‘overlap’ between classifications.
Addressing the issues of the impact on the quality of teaching and research of changes in both the ‘academic’ and ‘professional’ labour markets would appear to offer greater long-term challenges to the parties than the more limited (albeit important) question of overlaps in function in some sectors of higher education.
[Return to top] [Download Full Report]
| Please note: | To download the full report you must first have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer. |
