Comments | splintax: Voluntary student unionism

splintax

Voluntary student unionism

Mar 10, 2009 17:07

The UWA Student Guild and the National Union of Students are pretty strongly opposed to voluntary student unionism, or VSU: the result of amendments to the Higher Education Support Act 2003 which took effect in 2006.

Essentially, VSU means that Australian universities cannot require their students to be a member of a student guild or pay fees for ( Read more... )

Comments 8

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ext_3201 March 10 2009, 09:34:41 UTC

Yeah, UWA is very much a special case in that the Guild generally doesn't go beyond incompetent (as opposed to a certain other Perth university who strayed into criminal fraud territory), provides pretty good services, and doesn't charge a huge fee.

splintax March 10 2009, 10:03:51 UTC

My belief is that any necessary services should be provided by the University itself, and not the Guild.

Why is it the Guild's responsibility to deal with sexual harassment? Sexual harassment is against the law. Surely it's up to the University and the police to stop it.

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Thread 5

ext_3201 March 10 2009, 09:38:21 UTC

I wrote http://zanchey.ucc.asn.au/archives/00000070.html in 2005, although I'm not really sure how right I was at the time. Guild publicity campaigns do tend to smack of hyperbole (e.g. the current End Student Poverty thing) and I think one of the things that they try and imply is that Student Services == Guild, which is not really true. As far as I know people like the counsellors are employed by the University, not by the Guild.

splintax March 10 2009, 10:11:48 UTC

Unfortunately, because Student Services is located in the Guild Village, I doubt many students realise that Student Services is separately-funded.

Seems to me that the Guild is deliberately misleading students in order to try and increase support for a proposal that provides the Guild with more funding at the expense of the student body. What's good for the Guild is ostensibly good for the student body, but promoting Guild interests by misleading students makes me feel a little doubtful about that.

ext_2025 March 10 2009, 10:02:17 UTC

ProgSoc had an interestesting thread about VSU: http://lists.progsoc.org/progsoc/2009-March/000714.html - note that UTS has the Union, which everyone (including staff?) used to join, and the Student Association, which is more like our guild. I've heard the guild/unions at smaller unis basically went to the wall after VSU came in, and I suspect that's where the argument has some weight.

Personally, I'm far more interested in NUS' instant rejection of vouchers for higher education instead of government allocated places.

splintax March 10 2009, 10:21:20 UTC

I've heard the guild/unions at smaller unis basically went to the wall after VSU came in, and I suspect that's where the argument has some weight.My view is that essential services should be provided by the University, not the Guild. I also believe that a fee is not, or at least should not, be necessary to ensure that students interests' are represented in the University community ( ... )

dannipenguin March 10 2009, 11:46:18 UTC

So it's important to understand that UWA was less adversely affected by the introduction of VSU than other universities around Australia, but as a member of NUS, it campaigned on the same message ( ... )