Our Voice: The General Staff Manifesto

Last week I attended the launch of the Our Voice: The General Staff Manifesto at Canterbury. The manifesto itself is a great summary of the issues that general staff currently face, both as workers in universities but also as members of a union alongside their academic colleagues. Meetings last year to discuss the manifesto were well-attended and fed into the development of the manifesto, which was co-ordinated by General Staff Vice President, Cate Wartho.

AUS is aiming to address the issues identified at those meetings (such as access to professional development and non-academic career paths in universities, and equitable participation in university governance for general staff) through the Universities Tripartite Forum. But general staff members are already expressing concerns that we are looking at another year of differential pay settlements for academic and general staff.

The argument has been made many times that general staff pay has improved in recent years because of the link to academic increases. The point that is made less often, however, is that academic union members have benefited greatly from the energy and activism of general staff AUS members. Our collective voice would be so much stronger if academics attended meetings with the strength of numbers general staff brought to the manifesto process.

Undoubtedly, these issues will need to be confronted by the union over the coming years. If we are to continue to work alongside each other in the union to acheive gains for both or either, general and academic members will need to know that all of us have an equal say in the union, and that the AUS has professional and industrial strategies that can deliver for all members.