Becoming ‘Unionate’? From Staff Association to National Union:

The ‘Industrialisation’ of University Staff 1983-1993

By John O’Brien

Traces the history of the major unions that covered Australian academic staff

from the registration of the Federation of Australian University Staff and the Union of Australian College Academics in the federal industrial jurisdiction in the mid-1980s to the formation of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) as an 'industry union' incorporating general staffing 1983. It builds on work done on the collective organisation of academic staff from 1949 to 1983. The paper discusses the notion of 'unionateness' and argues that the emergence of the NTEU is a product of changes in state policy, both in terms of industrial relations and in the structural adjustment of higher education.

(Journal of Industrial Relations; vol. 45, no. 1, March 2003)