David Allen

Running with NTEU Fightback, I’m a professional staff member working in External Relations; a Health & Safety Rep, I’m also on the NTEU Cases and Campaign committees.

With the cost-of-living soaring, staff deserve a pay rise above inflation. It’s poor form to let hundreds of staff go while earning a $1.05 billion profit during a pandemic, essentially tossing our friends and comrades overboard. But sacrificing our hard-won pay and conditions through the form of a Jobs Protection Framework will not save our skins either. Instead, what we need is to value, invest in, and trust staff on the ground who are the heart of the University and fundamental to its success, because without them the profits made by the University will be a thing of the past.

As a Health & Safety Rep, compromising on workplace health and safety in the name of returning to normal won’t make covid go away. That’s why staff should be allowed to continue to work from home; with the onus on managers, not workers, to prove why it’s not possible.

We also need to be actively involved in decision making so we can fix the structural problems that create vulnerability for our colleagues, such as the casualisation and short-term contracting that weakens our ability to organise and fight for better conditions.

In addition, all staff need to feel culturally safe at work. After so much inertia, it’s about time our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander comrades were equally represented in employment at the University.

I’d like to be a part of a union that fights for those on the ground, unafraid to deploy our most effective tool, striking, to ensure we can achieve these things and more.

NTEU Fightback is a crew of the staunchest, most dedicated unionists: Alma Torlakovic, Jeremy Heathcote, Jennifer Huch-Hoogvliet, Catherine Sutton-Brady, Nicole MacDougall, Lucy Nicolls and David Allen.

A vote for Fightback is a vote for real action:

• A real pay rise: above inflation.
• First nations rights.
• Protect permanent jobs and 40/40/20.
• Workplace flexibility and a right to WFH.
• Strike to win!