Work bans at Monash University have been lifted and intensive negotiations have finally begun over enterprise bargaining. Management have been intransigent from the start, seeking to place outrageous conditions on the union and offering only a guaranteed salary increase of 7%. The agreed rate at almost every other institution has been 11-12.5% without strings attached to how much money the institution makes.

The NTEU placed a ban on the transmission of Semester 1 results and some headway was made over process and frameworks - there will be a single outcome for the whole university and the NTEU is the sole representative of staff.

Management revised their offer to 9% guaranteed. This still wasn't good enough. As the ban on results was about to affect students' HECS liability, stop work meetings of members on August 20 voted to replace the ban with six others.

Later, the Vice-Chancellor met with two union negotiators and indicated that the academic board was eager for a resolution to the dispute. He advised them that ALL aspects of the offer were now open for negotiation, including a non-contingent pay rise of 11%.

General meetings of members did not wish to lift the bans without a clear signal from management that an 11% non-contingent increase was achievable. However, they placed the decision as to when to lift bans in the hands of the branch committee which subsequently voted to lift the work bans and commence intensive negotiations over all aspects of the agreement. Several members have expressed disappointment that the union has accepted the wording of this statement and are apprehensive about the 'trade-offs' mentioned in the clause. They also feel that a non-contingent salary increase of more than 11% was probably attainable. However, the branch committee is fully aware that these problems exist, and is not willing to trade conditions in return for only 11%. It was decided to dive into the bulk of the offer rather than remain stalled over the salary component. Most of the offer has not even been presented in detail, with only headlines being provided about things such as 'streamlining academic redundancy', 'performance management systems' and the like. It now seems possible that close to an 11% non-contingent increase will be offered, whether or not there is a contingent component over and above this remains to be seen. Other sticking points are likely to be the length of the agreement and the dates of implementation of each of the salary instalments.

There is still a very long way to go in this dispute, and new bans or other forms of industrial action are possible. Management is also quite likely to go to an all staff ballot as soon as negotiations have weeded out some of the nastier elements of the offer. Militant has been calling for faculty-based delegate structures to be set up immediately, with regular meetings to co-ordinate the campaign and consider strategies. Militant has also called for the national office to provide a full-time co-ordinator for the campaign. A state division council meeting has endorsed the call for a full-time organiser but pressure from members and from the branch committee are still needed to see that this happens.