Sydney University students threatened with disciplinary action after “Zoom Picketing”

Online tutorials across Sydney University have been disrupted as staff and students continue to protest staff working conditions. Alongside blocking entrances to the university, protestors joined online tutorials en masse to disrupt teaching after the university announced that many tutorials would be moved online.

The Australian university, which jumped four places in this year’s Times Higher Education Rankings, released a statement in response to the National Tertiary Education Union’s fourth industrial action of the year. They said: “Strikes have not to date and will not in future affect the university’s bargaining position but will result in more loss of pay for participants.”

However, many believe that the university is not doing enough with Damien Cahill, who is the NSW Secretary of the NTEU, saying: “It’s the hard work of staff that carried Sydney University through the pandemic and led to its jump in international rankings, including thousands of unpaid hours by an army of casuals”.

Since bargaining began 15 months ago, the university has agreed to more flexible working agreements, more awareness and training for mental health, alongside the hiring of more than 300 academic staff. NTEU’s president Nick Riemer doesn’t believe this is enough, however, and the protests aim to negotiate a pay rise above inflation, protect academics’ right to a fixed proportion of research, and end casualisation. This comes just a year after Sydney University admitted they had underpaid staff by more than $12 million over a 13-year period.

The university announced that due to the protests, many of this week’s tutorials would be moved online in order to avoid disruptions. The use of Zoom has been popularised during the Covid pandemic and similar tools were used to deliver online lessons across the world.

One protestor said that this move to online tutorials in reaction to the protests was just “so they can jump over it” with Dani Cotton a branch representative of the NTEU saying “we haven’t chosen to be creative, we’ve been forced to”.

Cotton added: “A lot of sacrifice went into assisting students to have quality teaching online. To have that weaponised against us … which was uncompensated at the time, to exert our democratic right to fight, is really atrocious.”

In response to this use of online disruption, Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Annamarie Jargose claimed that disrupting “online classes is not protected action and is unlawful” and a spokesperson for the University of Sydney said: “We have offered an agreement that maintains and enhances our sector-leading conditions … and will continue to engage in good faith to work through and resolve outstanding matters”.