On Thursday 27 August, the University of Melbourne’s branch of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) conducted a half-day strike.

Both professional and teaching staff rallied beneath the John Medley Building where they were joined by NTEU representatives, the President of UMSU, and many students. Members of the Victorian College of the Arts marched from University of Melbourne’s Southbank campus to join the rally. 

UMSU President, Lushy Chinganya, addressed the striking staff: “we see you, we stand with you, and we are so proud to be in this fight alongside you”.

Negotiations over a new enterprise agreement between the NTEU and the University began in November 2025. The NTEU is primarily focused on reducing workloads, as well as increasing wages, improving job security for casual staff, and introducing a four-day work week for professional staff.

A motion that was voted on by NTEU members at the rally added a new bargaining claim which aims to give staff members a say in major changes and restructures to the University. This comes in response to plans to demolish the John Medley Building to make space for more classrooms.

“Academic departments are one of the most high-risk workplaces for psycho-social hazards, almost twice as dangerous as the average workplace… because of the over-work and the stress,” said incoming NTEU University of Melbourne Branch President, Dr Elizabeth “Liz” Strakosh.

The NTEU’s solution to this issue is to establish an academic workload committee which will oversee and ensure the democratic allocation of workloads.

More than half of this proposed committee’s members will be academic staff without managerial roles to ensure that the delegation of work is done so with a more accurate understanding of work duties and the time and effort they require.

Dr Strakosh described the current method of workload allocation: “at the moment, workloads are set either by the faculty or someone further up, and there’s no consultation, […] we know they undercount teaching massively.”

Rory, University of Melbourne librarian and NTEU member, told Farrago “the University is a fabulously wealthy institution, it is only wealthy because of its staff, who are in these positions and have the knowledge on how to do their jobs”.

NTEU members have characterised the University as uncooperative throughout the bargaining process.

“We’ve just heard basically nothing [from the University] on most of our major issues,” Dr Carla Winston, Lecturer and NTEU bargaining lead, told Farrago at the rally. 

According to Dr Strakosh, upon receiving the proposal for the academic workload committee early on in negotiations, the University offered to instate workload models for each faculty, yet these models would be set by faculty managers, without consultation with teaching staff.

Since calling the strike, the University has offered to add consultation to the workload model, yet the NTEU is not satisfied with the University’s response and is preparing for further industrial action.

“We do not expect a half day strike to move management,” said DrStrakosh, “this is the first of […] a series of actions.”

There will be a staff forum held in a week’s time from the strike, where the next few months of industrial action strategy will be discussed. The NTEU is considering a range of actions, including strikes and teaching bans, where teaching staff stop only the teaching portion of their work.

When NTEU’s University of Melbourne branch members last went on strike in 2023, an agreement was only made at the end of a two week-long strike, the longest in NTEU history.

When asked about the impact that strikes will have on student learning, NTEU members expressed concern yet remained confident in the necessity of industrial action.

Dr Winston said the strike was “a temporary inconvenience [...] but it is in pursuit of a much greater cause. We think that the students are mostly with us”.