August 20th 2013: Today at midday, at the time I would normally be introducing my students to the mysteries of the apostrophe and how to write a clear, simple sentence, I was standing in a bitterly cold Bourke street in Melbourne with some university colleagues.We were on strike and protesting the lack of progress on our Enterprise Bargaining Agreement.After almost a year of bargaining with senior management we still have not achieved a new collective agreement.

Any sense of enthusiasm I should have been feeling was missing. I felt guilty about abandoning my students and angry too that my fellow tutors had readily agreed to cover my tutorials, thus minimising disruption to management of the university – as well as pocketing my wage, thank you very much!

Our union, the NTEU (National Tertiary Education Union) remains concerned about other unresolved claims including the removal of overtime for many general staff by changing the span of hours, the removal of some staff from the protections of the agreement altogether and derisory allowance rates for on-call staff and worst of all senior management won’t budge on their 3% salary offer.

There were about 80 of us gathered today with our banners and our chants and the police paddy wagon, earlier parked at the nearby kerb, soon moved away seeking better entertainment. The police hadn’t even bothered to get out of the van to face the freezing wind. A few aging university staff were hardly a threat to security.

These days it doesn’t seem very fashionable to be an active union member.Is union activiity I wonder an outmoded tactic to force change? But despite the bad press that some unions have quite rightly been copping lately, I believe it is still a sharp tool to affect workplace change.We’d be worse off without them.

As we waved our banners about and stamped our feet to keep warm, many besuited professionals sped by, glancing only momentarily at our antics before racing on to the next stage in their careers.But without well funded education and properly resourced teaching staff, the future besuited ones have poorer prospects.

My mood lifted a couple of hours later when we shifted to Swanston Street to focus attention on Labor’s $4billion cuts to higher education funding in the last 3 years, which with Coalition support translates into cuts of $600 of investment for each student between now and 2015.Underfunding means the ratio of students to staff has almost doubled since the last generation was at university.

Suddenly Swanston Street traffic was drowned out by the arrival of a crowd of rowdy,angry students from various universities. The national union of students (nus) and the council of australian postgraduate associations (capa) had come together for the national day of action to champion the cause of publicly-funded and properly-funded higher education in the lead-up to the Federal election.

‘Kevin Rudd fuck you, we deserve a future too’ and ‘no more cuts to education’ they shouted, advancing up the steps of the State Library, threatening to blow the bronze statue of Redmond Barry off his platform, which was ironic given his relationship to that non-conformist, Ned Kelly. This was more like it. Here was a crowd of young students who really meant what they were chanting and the energy was instantly exhilarating. We aging Trotskyities could only look on admiringly.

Jeannie Rea, National President of the nteu has said that “higher education in Australia stands at a tipping point. Over the past three years, the Labor government has slashed over $4 billion from higher education with the complicity of the Coalition.” She belives that “his cannot go on. Properly funded universities and properly supported students are essential for a smart future for Australia.”

Rea says that “when we call for education for all – we mean from early childhood to higher degrees, higher education should be available regardless of background or circumstance, but the costs of education keep increasing.”

The Labor government’s so-called $2.3 billion ‘efficiency dividend’ in April was already leading to staff job losses, course cuts, more crowded classes, and less help for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.It has been said that the replacement of the student start-up scholarships with a loan will add to the unreasonable debt many students already face upon graduation. The Coalition pledged to support these cuts and is looking to students to pay for the funding gap like they did the last time they were in power. No wonder these students are angry.

As I leave the city and catch my train back to Geelong I’m enthused by the thought that these students are on the warpath to the office of the Minister for Higher Education, Kim Carr in Carlton to reprimand the government for its mindless policy.