Hundreds of university staff were stationed at picket lines, calling for stronger protections around the use of AI
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The same week union members at the University of Sydney agreed to a 24-hour strike, staff received the results of an internal survey.
In the faculty of arts and social sciences, 0% agreed with the statement: “I trust the University of Sydney to act in the best interests of staff, students and the broader community.”
It was the issue of trust, alongside longstanding concerns over staff protections from artificial intelligence, workload fairness and job security, that saw about 2,000 members to walk off the job on Wednesday.
From 7am, about 500 people were stationed at picket lines at each of the inner Sydney campus’s entrances, armed with flags, banners and megaphones.
The University of Sydney advised students “almost all” scheduled classes would move online as a result of the strike, while others were rescheduled or cancelled.
Peter Chen, the branch president of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) at the University of Sydney, said management had rebuffed the union “at every opportunity” to enforce appropriate protections around the use of AI.
“Higher education is the canary in the coalmine,” he said. “Where we go on AI … will travel through the rest of the economy.”
The New South Wales division secretary of the NTEU, Vince Caughley, said the University of Sydney’s own green paper advised AI was the most “fundamental transformation” education had seen, pointing to AI chatbots that were already being used to help teach online-only classes at other universities.
“We are asking for best practice, we are asking for due diligence,” he said. “Not their own commercialisation aims and certainly not the interest of venture capital.”
The union was confident it would reach an agreement with management within the year but had concerns over the lack of senior leadership at the table, including the provost, Prof Annamarie Jagose. The last bargaining process represented the longest running industrial action at an Australian university, and the prospect of future strikes remained active.
A spokesperson for the University of Sydney said it was “continuing to engage” with the union and maintained industrial action was “premature”.
“We agree using AI ethically requires a human-centred approach, and our … principles and guardrails that govern use have been developed in consultation with our community,” they said.
