Stop Medicare Privatisation

http://www.cpsu.org.au/campaigns/stop-medicare-sell-off

NATSEM: UWA model would lift uni debt for women, disadvantaged

By Ben Phillips, University of Canberra and Stephen Parker, University of Canberra

The University of Western Australia recently announced its proposed post-deregulation price structure. UWA’s new fee is a flat fee of A$16,000 per year for undergraduate courses, which is significantly higher than existing fees.
UWA is the first university in Australia to provide guidance on actual fee increases. NATSEM has modelled what these fee increases would mean for students if such fees were to become standard across Australian universities.
Shortly after the announcement of the Coalition’s policy, NATSEM modelled a range of pricing scenarios at the University of Canberra. These scenarios included “cost recovery” and a number of larger price-increase scenarios up to 50% beyond cost recovery. Underlying the modelling was the future income graduates could expect to earn through their career and a new higher interest rate (Treasury bond rate) applied to student debt.
The previous NATSEM modelling focused on a selection of University of Canberra courses – nursing, teaching, business and science. The UWA fee structure would represent a significant increase in the cost of studying all these courses, particularly nursing and teaching (roughly A$10,000 more each year). Business and science would increase in cost by around A$6,000 and A$7,000 per year.
Like our previous work, the UWA prices impact lower-pay graduate occupations such as nursing and education. For all courses the impacts are larger for females due to their lower wages and hours worked compared to males. For some degrees with high postgraduate incomes the impact is more modest.
The typical repayment period for a four-year teaching-trained female graduate would increase from an expected 9.2 years (8.8 for males) to 26.5 years (17.7 for males). For a female graduate the total repayments more than quadruple from around A$32,000 to A$143,000.
For nursing graduates, the repayment period for a three-year course would increase from 8.3 years to 24.3 years for a female (7.9 to 15.5 for a male). Increases in repayment periods and total dollar repayments are not quite as significant for science or business graduates.

Author provided

A further implication for (mostly) female students will be that under such a pricing structure their repayments for popular courses such as nursing and teaching will mean they will still be paying off their degrees well into their forties rather than completing repayments at around 30. For many women the extra repayments will compound the already very high effective tax rates that they face from the combined impact of personal income taxation, child-care costs and the loss of government benefits as they return to work after having children.
The recent AMP.NATSEM report Child Care Affordability in Australia estimated that in transitioning back to a full-time job the typical woman only keeps around 40 cents in the dollar of her gross wage. Continuing to pay off a university debt while juggling work with children will push this down by up to a further 8 cents in the dollar, making work less financially attractive.
In spite of the likelihood of large fee increases and longer repayment times, the payoff from university degrees should be expected to remain higher than the costs for many graduates. However, for women in lower-paid careers such as nursing and teaching, particularly where the mother is a single parent or takes long breaks from full-time employment, the benefits of a university education are likely to be severely diminished from a purely financial perspective.
UWA does not provide teaching or nursing undergraduate courses; these fields are offered through postgraduate studies. Given the lower income profiles of nursing and teaching compared to other fields of study (around 10 to 15%), it is quite likely that such courses would never be paid off. By the end of a five-year study period (undergraduate plus masters) the student will have an accumulated debt approaching A$100,000. For relatively low -paid nursing and teaching graduates this debt will likely continue to grow for many years since the interest on that debt will outpace legislated HELP repayments.
Setting fees as high as A$16,000 per year will mean that debt will take many more years to pay off. Groups most likely to be impacted by these fee increases with significantly larger debts and repayment periods (possibly never repaying) include women in lower-paid professions such as nursing and teaching, those undertaking postgraduate studies, parents working part-time while raising children, and mature-age students.

Stephen Parker is Vice-Chancellor of the University of Canberra, which will be affected by changes to higher education.
Ben Phillips does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

World Day for Decent Work. Make the Thunderclap work

To help raise awareness of the problem of precarious work, IndustriALL Global Union has launched a Thunderclap for the World Day for Decent Work on 7 October.

A Thunder-what?

I'm guessing you've never heard of Thunderclap, so here's the official explanation:

"Thunderclap is the first-ever crowdspeaking platform that helps people be heard by saying something together. It allows a single message to be mass-shared, flash mob-style, so it rises above the noise of your social networks. By boosting the signal at the same time, Thunderclap helps a single person create action and change like never before."

Is that clear?  Maybe not.  Thunderclap allows us to allow send out the same message on the same day and at the same time, automatically, to our friends and followers on social networks including Facebook and Twitter.

IndustriALL Global Union wants trade unionists and trade unions to sign up to their Thunderclap message on precarious work.  The message is due to go out on 7 October, the World Day for Decent Work.

Their message reads:

"STOP Precarious Work! Defend your rights to a secure job. Join the global action on 7 October".

You can support this campaign by clicking here:



( Don't see a link? Click on this: https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/16472-stop-precarious-work )

If you've never done this sort of thing before, you'll see that you need to be logged into Facebook, Twitter  or Tumblr (ideally, all three).  And you'll need to give the Thunderclap app permission to send out the IndustriALL message to your friends and followers at a specified day and time.  

IndustriALL needs at least 250 of us to agree to go along with this.  Otherwise, the Thunderclap won't happen.

Among those who've already signed up are the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the Trades Union Congress (UK), and LabourStart.  

I've signed up and I hope you will too.  Thank you.


Eric Lee

Whatever the name - Goverment agenda is anti-worker ACTU

Abbott and the Federal goverment want unfair individual contracts

Tony Abbott is trying to rush through laws that introduce new unfair individual contracts that cut take home pay, give more power to employers in bargaining and make it harder for workers to access their union. But to do all this he needs the crucial votes of at least six cross-bench senators.
We can stop Abbott’s attack dead in its tracks if just three cross-bench senators vote against the bill. It looks like the vote will take place this Wednesday so we need to act fast and we need everyone to play their part.Click here to ask the cross-bench senators to vote against Tony Abbott’s unfair anti-worker amendments: http://www.australianunions.org.au/stop_tony_abbotts_anti_worker_lawsTony Abbott’s new laws bring back some of the worst parts of Workchoices. Among other things, the bill:

• Reintroduces unfair individual contracts that can cut take home pay including weekend and penalty rates

• Gives employers a veto over industrial action.

• Allows employers to not pay-out some annual leave if you’re sacked or leave a job.

• Gives mining and construction employers a special deal that allows them to write their own Enterprise Agreements.

• Reduces the rights of workers to talk to their union at work if they need help.

These laws are part of the Abbott attack on the Australian way of life. Let’s make sure that the cross-bench senators know this.
Click here and ask the senators to vote against Tony Abbott’s horrible laws: http://www.australianunions.org.au/stop_tony_abbotts_anti_worker_lawsWe’ve shown before that by standing together we can help put the brakes on Tony Abbott’s radical and unfair agenda. It is going to take a big effort to knock off these laws but, together, I think we have it in us.
Let’s get one over Tony Abbott and his radical anti-worker agenda.

Now more than ever it is vital for UTS Professional staff to join together to stand up for your rights, if you are not already a member join today (https://membership.psa.asn.au/join/)