UTS staff will see a well-deserved reward for all our hard work in recent years.

Pay rises include 4.5% in 2023, 3.5% in 2024, 3% in 2025 in the usual twice-yearly cycle.

 In total, staff will receive 14.75% over the life of the new agreement. 

Job security is key to working together to build a fair and productive workplace. A university that values its staff does not subject them to the stress and uncertainty of permanent insecurity.

New limits on casual employment

The new EBA contains a new definition of casual work which will provide more secure work for staff performing ongoing work.

A reduction in the casual academic workforce of at least 20% and 110 new jobs for casual academics.

There is also a a strengthened professional staff casual conversion measure.

Strong fixed-term contract conversion

UTS now has the strongest fixed-term conversion provisions so far achieved in our sector. For staff on fixed-term contracts now have a right to convert to continuing employment after 2 years.

Improved redundancy protections

Under the new EBA, retrenchment will be a last resort.

There is also a new, strengthened, definition of redundancy, and new review provisions on whether a redundancy is genuine. Importantly, there are also new protections during workplace change.

Hours limitations on Academic workloads

Our new strengthened clause ensured that Faculty Workload Guidelines will reflect the time taken to complete the work. The guidelines will be developed in a new collegial process and will include limitations measured in hours for teaching, student consultation, marking and other tasks.

The agreement will regulate  Education-Focused profiles, and introduce a limit of 70% education and education-related work.

Protections for Professional Staff

The agreement introduces new workload protections for Professional staff. It will ensure allocated workloads can be completed within an average of 140 hours in a four-week cycle. Supervisors are required to ensure staff do not perform work they are not paid for and to provide staff with the opportunity to have their workload reviewed.

Numeric employment target

The agreement has a new, numeric Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment target of 3% of full-time equivalent (FTE) continuing and fixed-term staff, which is at least 100 FTE continuing and fixed-term staff.

New conditions

There are also new employment conditions such as the introduction of paid language allowances, recognition of cultural load and three additional days personal leave.

Improved cultural leave

We have also won an increase to 10 paid days of cultural leave per year.

New Gender Affirmation Leave

To help create a safe, positive and inclusive workplace for transgender staff, a continuing or fixed-term staff member who is a transgender person, and is transitioning, is entitled to 20 days’ paid gender affirmation leave per calendar  year during the life of the Agreement.  This leave is in addition to all other leave entitlements available.

Domestic Violence leave for casual staff

Domestic violence leave is now extended to those employed on casual contracts. There is a new entitlement of 10 days paid domestic or sexual violence leave per calendar year for casual staff. 

A healthy work/life balance requires more than just work-from-home provisions. We need to stop our work seeping into our personal and family time.

A new right to disconnect

Under the new Agreement, staff will not be expected to respond to telephone, email or similar contact outside of their ordinary hours of work in the case of professional staff and prescribed hours in the case of academic staff.