A Branch Led Approach to Building Union Power

A Combined Industrial and Organising Strategy

Our Approach

The NTEU in Victoria is beginning to show what is possible when industrial strategy, organising, bargaining, and delegate development are treated as part of the same project.

In recent years, NTEU members across higher education in Victoria have won major improvements in secure work, paid parental leave, gender affirmation leave, workload protections, Indigenous employment initiatives and stronger union rights. At the same time, our branches have grown stronger, more organised, and more ambitious.

These gains came from members organising collectively in workplaces and branches building power over time.

The next step is to bring this work together into a clear industrial strategy for the Victorian Division.

Our Vision

We believe bargaining should do more than negotiate wages and conditions.

It should:

• grow union membership and delegate structures

• develop workplace leaders

• strengthen collective action

• establish stronger sector-wide standards

• shape the future of higher education in the interests of workers and students

Our goal is to help build majority union workplaces across Victorian universities.

The strongest agreements are won because workers are organised, connected, and prepared to act collectively.

Linking Organising and Bargaining

Industrial strategy and organising strategy should never be separated.

We will continue building bargaining campaigns that:

• recruit and develop new delegates

• increase union density

• involve members directly in workplace organising and decision making

• build long-term workplace power beyond a single bargaining round

Winning a good agreement matters. Building a stronger union while winning it matters even more.

Our Priorities

Stronger Sector Standards

We will work to establish stronger common standards across Victorian universities, including:

• secure jobs and pathways out of casual work

• enforceable workload protections

• reduced working hours and better work-life balance

• stronger union and delegate rights

• protections around AI and workplace surveillance

• Indigenous employment and cultural workload recognition

• family violence, reproductive, and gender affirmation leave

Victories won at one university should help lift standards across the sector.

Building Union Power Through Organising

Strong branches are the foundation of a strong union. The Branches Lead team believes that the future strength of the Victorian Division depends on dramatically increasing the density and effectiveness of union membership across our campuses and workplaces.

We are proud of the recent successes of the state organising strategy, particularly at La Trobe University and Victoria University, where targeted organising work has helped grow membership, develop workplace leaders, and rebuild confidence in collective action.

These achievements stand alongside Wage Theft campaigns and the effective Enterprise Bargaining campaigns at branches including the University of Melbourne and Monash who have the highest remunerated staff in Victoria.

Taken together, the work of the Victorian Division has helped transform the union’s approach to organising and demonstrated what is possible when members are mobilised around clear workplace issues and collective power. This experience has given us a strong foundation. But if we are serious about taking this approach to scale across Victoria, we must broaden who gets to lead and shape our organising work.

As the Victorian Division grows, it will need an organising workforce that better reflects the diversity of the people who make up our universities and our union. That means creating pathways into leadership and organising roles for more professional staff, women, First Nations members, international staff, People of Colour, members living with disability and others whose experiences remain underrepresented within our structures.

The future of organising in higher education will not be built by a single generation or a single type of organiser. It will be built by developing a deep pipeline of workplace delegates, activists and professional organisers who understand the realities of contemporary university work and who can connect meaningfully with the breadth of our membership.

Branches Lead supports:

• Investing in delegate development and workplace leadership training

• Creating clearer pathways from delegate activism into professional organising roles

• Expanding recruitment and mentoring practices to diversify organising staff

• Supporting organisers and delegates with lived experience across the full diversity of our sector

• Building branch-led organising models that empower members locally rather than centralising decision-making

• Ensuring organising remains focused on collective workplace power, not transactional service delivery

A stronger, more diverse organising culture will make our union more representative, more resilient, and more capable of winning the changes higher education workers need.

Developing Workplace Leaders

The future strength of our union depends on developing more workplace leaders from across the sector.

We will support:

• delegate training and development

• member-led campaign structures

• stronger pathways into union leadership

• greater participation by professional staff, women, First Nations members, casuals, international staff, workers with disability and culturally diverse workers

Planning for the Future of Work

Universities and the sector are changing rapidly.

AI, surveillance technologies, restructures, and workload intensification are reshaping higher education.

Workers must have a say in how these changes occur because university leaders demonstrably prioritise profit over education, knowledge, and the staff actually delivering this core work.

We will pursue protections that ensure technology is used to support workers, not undermine jobs, workloads, or professional autonomy.

Building a Stronger Victorian Division

Victoria has some of the strongest and most active branches in the country.

We believe the Division should play a stronger role in:

• building a stronger collective voice across Victorian higher education

• coordinating industrial strategy

• sharing bargaining knowledge and research

• developing model clauses and resources

• helping branches learn from each other’s wins

Because industrial victories are strongest when they leave behind a stronger, more organised union.