Working from home under threat at Deakin and what you can do about it

For professional staff, working from home during the pandemic improved workplace morale, productivity, and work-life balance. The success of Deakin’s performance during two years of rolling lockdowns is a testament to staff flexibly adapting to remote and digital ways of working.

It was not unreasonable for staff to expect their working lives, after lockdowns, to involve fair and ongoing work-from-home arrangements. Professional staff over the last two years demonstrated they could perform their work, support students and academic staff, while also improving their productivity and well-being, with clear and fairly allocated remote working arrangements. It’s why the NTEU is arguing for improved and enforceable work-from-home rights for professional staff during the current round of bargaining.

Deakin management, it seems, has other ideas.

Letter to management

On Monday 20 March 2023, the DPSN wrote to Deakin’s Chief People and Culture Officer, Stacey Walton and Director of People and Partnering Solutions, Tom Slack, informing them of Deakin’s patchwork of inconsistent practices, confused communication, and unfair and unsafe treatment of professional staff in relation to working from home and forcing staff to work on campus.

The present lack of clarity from Deakin on this issue could be readily and simply resolved by adopting our proposals for work from home arrangements presented in the current bargaining process.

What we could gain in our current bargaining with your help

The NTEU is currently in EB negotiations with most universities. The table below summarises the work-from-home rights already won. We could have sector-leading rights to work from home. Just look at the clauses won at ACU and WSU. We can achieve this or maybe better at Deakin!

Help us win these rights at Deakin

The first and most important thing you can do right now is VOTE YES in the upcoming Protected Action Ballot (PABO). 

Deakin management have not only rejected our claim for WFH rights but are likely to enforce a default ‘work from campus’ policy in the coming weeks. We need the option to take industrial action and force management back to bargaining table on WFH and other issues.

Our working conditions need to keep pace with other universities.

It’s 2023. Working-from-home is part of the contemporary working world and enforceable rights to remote work are a low-cost improvement to our working lives, the lives of our students and the academic staff we support. WFH is a win-win for staff and management.