The NTEU UQ Branch Newsletter Issue 7

JUNE 1 2026

Bargaining Update Wednesday 27th May 2026

On Wednesday your union’s bargaining team met with management to go through the last outstanding issues in our from our Log of Claims.

What happened this week in bargaining?

Good news first

It looks like management will agree to our claim to have staff at UQ College covered by the new Enterprise Agreement! Teachers and admin staff who really have been UQ employees all along will receive the benefits we all enjoy. There will be some administrative steps, but this is a great win.

Management will issue another Notice of Employee Representational Rights (NERR) but have verbally committed to no delay to bargaining. You can expect an email from management on this, but don’t worry, you won’t need to reply or take action, the NTEU and your bargaining team have you covered.

Less positive news on the workloads front

We received feedback on our plans for improving Professional Staff workload regulation:
Benchmarking – No!
Independent review – No!
Appeal process – No!

Same story with Academic workloads

Preventing marking burnout – No!
Local working parties to review workload models – No!
Recognising work required for teaching qualifications – We got a ‘maybe’ in response to Deanne’s excellent presentation.

Management refused to accept our arguments that workloads were a significant psychosocial hazard despite Kelly providing compelling evidence.

Consideration for highly skilled professionals? Nope

Management expressed no interest in our proposal to reward HEW staff stuck at the top of their Level, despite Mark’s excellent presentation.

In response to our request for casual staff to be provided with reasons if they didn’t get hours in a course they have previously taught, management proposed a ‘right to request feedback’.

Management finally tabled some of their claims

Management proposed a number of changes to leave provisions, with the majority undermining existing conditions for staff:
-Requiring staff to apply for annual leave with at least one month’s notice.
-No requirement for managers to respond when not re-employing casual academics
-Staff will continue to be disadvantaged when a public holiday falls on their rostered day off.

One particularly alarming management claim

On top of the claims mentioned above, management tabled one especially worrying claim. They want workers to be required to submit the details of the illness or injury whenever they take personal leave longer than 3 days. This is completely unreasonable and would be a real step backwards in our rights as workers.

Bhavik’s HR Nightmare

A dedicated IT officer, Bhavik Shah, has been all but ignored by HR.

Bhavik Shah is an ITS Desktop Support Team member in a continuing position. Bhavik has been in constant communication with UQ HR requesting an Employee Nomination (subclass 186) - Direct Entry Scheme, since August 2025.
The Employee Nomination (subclass 186) is a permanent residency visa for skilled workers.

At no point has UQ HR appropriately addressed his request. Instead, they have consistently and continually declined to provide sponsorship. Nomination and sponsorship are very different schemes. Sponsorship puts a considerable burden on the sponsor (UQ in this scenario). Nomination creates little to no burden on UQ as it is a one-off nomination and not an ongoing sponsorship arrangement.

Bhavik has on multiple occasions outlined the differences between Employer Nomination and Sponsorship for HR. He has conducted extensive research on both visas, creating presentations clearly outlining the differences, and providing links to federal government resources in the hope that HR would realise their error. Despite Bhavik’s efforts, HR has continued to only reference Employer Sponsorship and completely ignore Bhavik’s numerous attempts to point out that sponsorship and nomination are different schemes.

To date, Bhavik has received only generic responses about sponsorship which clearly demonstrate that HR has not understood and considered Bhavik’s very reasonable request. The only meaningful consideration given to the request was when his senior manager was asked to write a business case supporting retaining Bhavik instead of recruiting a new worker. Despite this, the decision did not shift and the same response of “We won’t sponsor Bhavik” with no justification was received.

Since August 2025, Bhavik, his team leader, his manager, and his senior manager have provided clear evidence that they have these two, very different, schemes confused- 60 emails, numerous meetings and countless hours writing & researching, but HR are constantly disregarding their efforts and appear to prefer to remain uninformed on this issue.

Sydney University, Queensland Health and Queensland Education all have policies outlining the requirements for Employer Nomination under the 186 direct entry scheme. Bhavik, and his supervisors, have provided more than enough to satisfy the government’s requirements.

You can find further resources outlining the subclass 186 scheme at the federal government website linked below
Dept Home Affairs - 186 Visa
Dept Home Affairs - 186 Visa - Direct Entry Stream

Sign the petition to get Bhavik’s voice hear here:
Bhavik's HR Issues – Fill out form

What is Industrial Action?

We hear this term Industrial Action thrown around but what does it mean? Striking like a coal miner in Thatcher’s Britain? Building a barricade Les Mis-style? Refusing to write a script like the 2023 SAG-AFTRA writer’s strike that stopped Hollywood? And who can take Industrial action?

In Australia the rules around Industrial Action are governed by the Fair Work Act which states who, and how people can withhold their labour. Industrial action can be completely withholding your labour - going on strike, and not working at all - or partially doing this for only some work activities - like not attending meetings with managers, working-to-rule, or replying to certain types of emails. And industrial action can range in span from short periods like an hour or two, to indefinitely. Importantly, the Fair Work Act states that only Union members can take Industrial Action, and only agreed actions approved by a Protection Action Ballot Order (PABO) can be undertaken. This means those actions are Protected Industrial Actions by law, and you cannot be targeted or punished for undertaking them. But you can only undertake them if you are a member of the Union, since they are your bargaining representatives. So, to take effective Industrial Action, we need as many UQ people to be NTEU members and to take action when the time comes.

Industrial Action has historically been needed to get UQ Senior Management to start to take Bargaining seriously. There is a direct correlation between how strong and visible the industrial action is, and how effective it is in achieving our bargaining goals, which are your pay rises and future work conditions.

Organising a PABO takes time, as it’s a properly conducted democratic vote, and needs to be checked and ratified with the Fair Work Commission, so we need to be ready to think through our options for a PABO sooner rather than later in this Bargaining round.

So what Industrial Actions are on the cards for this round of bargaining? Well thats up to you, the NTEU members and we’ll be asking you for your ideas and preferences soon, so we can be ready for a PABO, and then to use our leverage to get the best possible bargain for us all. Stopping work is just one thing we can do, but there are lots of others…see here for some ideas: https://www.australianunions.org.au/factsheet/industrial-action/

Who else has taken Industrial Action recently?
We are in good company: Rail workers, Qld Teachers, Victorian Teachers