Melbourne professional staff seek four-day week

Professional staff at Australia’s top-ranked university would work 20 per cent fewer days for 20 per cent more pay, while academic staff would take control of their own workload allocations, under a log of claims lodged with management.

The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) has asked the University of Melbourne to award administrative staff a four-day working week on full pay, citing “remarkably consistent” evidence that an extra day off delivers better staff retention and less absenteeism without adversely affecting productivity.

The union also wants power over academic workloads to be assumed by new committees that would be established in each work area, drawing more than half of their members from the area’s non-managerial academic staff.

The committees would resolve workload compliance issues and set workloads using “evidence-based models”, in consultation with staff. Broader workload changes would “require staff approval by ballot”.

The claims are part of the NTEU branch’s opening salvo in negotiations to replace the university’s current enterprise agreement, which expires on 10 April. The branch has also demanded a 20 per cent pay rise for all staff, better leave provisions, improved job security and protection from the “adverse effects of artificial intelligence systems”, among other things.

The university said it was pleased to have received the union’s claims and promised a “substantive” response. “Negotiations to date have been productive and…we look forward to making further progress with the aim of reaching in-principle agreement on a total package that can be put to a staff vote later this year.”

NTEU branch president David Gonzalez said members had spent about nine months developing the log of claims. “Staff have done the work to develop serious proposals. Now it’s time for management to engage constructively on a plan to make the university work better for staff, students and the community.”

He said that although the union wanted “a quick round of bargaining”, he expected the discussions to drag on well past the current agreement’s expiry date. Australian university enterprise agreements are routinely extended for months or even years as their replacements are negotiated.

Gonzalez said consultations had revealed that academic and professional staff had “very different” desires around workload, with the former wanting more control over their work and the latter wanting shorter hours.

His branch is far from alone in pushing for a four-day working week. The Australian Services Union, which represents some 135,000 workers across industries including transport, local government and community services, has called for four-day weeks to become standardised across the workforce.

The Senate’s Select Committee on Work and Care has recommended that the federal government trial four-day weeks in “diverse sectors and geographical locations”. Hundreds of companies across dozens of countries are already doing so under a campaign run by Auckland-based advocacy group 4 Day Week Global, which says organisations that have made the transition benefit from “increases in productivity, higher talent attraction and retention, deeper customer engagement and improved employee health”.

Melbourne Historian Sean Scalmer, whose 2025 book A Fair Day’s Work traces the history of campaigns to reduce Australian working hours, is a member of the NTEU branch’s bargaining team. “The University of Melbourne prides itself on being evidence-led,” Gonzalez said. “It’s time to apply that to its own working conditions.”

The branch’s claims also include an extra two days of paid leave during the end-of-year “closedown” period, up to 10 days’ annual “trade union” leave for all NTEU members, paid sick leave for casual staff, stand-alone rights to “reproductive health” leave, and an unspecified enhancement of the current annual entitlement of 30 days’ paid “gender affirmation leave”.

The log also includes a claim for provisions to protect staff from AI. Gonzalez said the branch had been “deliberately broad” about what those provisions might be. “We understand it’s a new space,” he said. “We want to leave it open to discussions with management.”

Professional staff are thought to be particularly vulnerable to AI-induced job disruption. The newly merged Adelaide University has included AI protections in a “heads of agreement” that dictates the main terms for its forthcoming enterprise agreement.

The Adelaide accord requires the university’s management to take reasonable steps to ensure its use of AI systems is ethical, transparent and subject to human oversight. If AI is used in decisions that impact employees’ working conditions, its role must be disclosed from the outset.

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com