Hundreds of university academics around Australia vote to take unprotected strike action

University staff across the country have voted to prepare for unprotected industrial action as they protest widespread job cuts, a lack of federal government funding, and the government’s changes to degrees.

A group of hundreds of academic staff, called the National Higher Education Action Network, voted on Monday afternoon to endorse a plan of protests “with the goal of making democratically planned unprotected industrial action possible”

This year the University of Melbourne and the University of New South Wales have announced job cuts as they face billions of dollars of lost revenue due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Public universities are not eligible for jobkeeper and in June the education minister, Dan Tehan, announced sweeping changes that would cut the overall government funding for degrees.

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