Future Fund saved the market? The share market collapsed 5.5% yesterday before investors pounced on bargains. We hear the Future Fund was among them, launching a massive share buyback to help arrest the falls.

Labor’s fortunes are sick. According to one very worried Labor figure: “If GFC Mark 2 happens, the only Labor person trusted by Australians to respond to it is in hospital in Brisbane.” Are things that sick — for the economy and Labor?

MPs living out of home. A bit of chatter over our item yesterday on Labor MP Mark Dreyfus still living in the Liberal stronghold of Higgins rather than his own electorate of Isaacs. He’s clearly not alone in preferring the surrounds of another electorate rather than the one he represents. Might even be worth a list. Is your MP living out of home? Drop us a line or you can tip us anonymously.

Minister and secretary are mates. The federal department secretary preparing to quit after an apparent feud with the minister? Nope, we’ve asked around and seems like rubbish to us.

Griffith teachers up in arms. Some staff are revolting at Griffith University in Brisbane. NTEU branch president Arthur Poropat fired off this email to fellow members:

Imagine how you’d feel if you’d agreed a clear performance plan with your supervisor, achieved all of your goals and had done so for years, and had every intention of continuing to work the long hours you do.

But then, out of the blue, you got told your performance is unsatisfactory.

Not because you hadn’t met your goals, but because you hadn’t complied with some standard or policy your supervisor never told you about.

So you won’t get that pay-rise.

You won’t get to take leave you’d been promised.

And you feel your whole career is on the line.

Think that couldn’t happen here?

Think again. Right across Griffith University, academic staff are being distressed or traumatised by this sort of experience, right now.

When challenged, Griffith’s Director, Human Resources Management Executive, told me that staff just should have known that their performance was unsatisfactory, even though they had been rated as satisfactory for years. As far as she is concerned, your performance plan is not a contract, even though both you and your supervisor agreed and signed it. In other words, the next time she focuses on some standard or policy you don’t know about, she feels it’s OK for management to not warn you, but to immediately find your performance unsatisfactory and threaten your career. Regardless of the hours you’ve worked, or whether you’ve done everything your supervisor asked you to do, and have done so for years.

And that attitude has led managers across the university to change supervisors’ reviews of staff performance to unsatisfactory. Even when the managers barely know the staff members involved. Even when there is no policy that allows them to do so.

How would you feel, if it were you?

Are the extra hours you put into work really worth it, if the bosses treat staff this way?

The NTEU is going to fight for the rights of our members who have been targeted. To the full extent we can, we’ll use the processes we’ve fought for to ensure you get treated fairly, especially when the Director, HRME has chosen something new to retrospectively attack staff with. We’re prepared to take this to Fair Work Australia, if we have to. And we will continue to campaign for management to demonstrate the same goodwill to staff that they demand from us.

If it happens to one of our members, we’ll be there for you. But you need to tell your friends, it could happen to them. And if you care about them, tell them they need to join the NTEU.

In solidarity

Arthur

Arthur Poropat
Branch President
NTEU Griffith University Branch

Back to school, Alumni. “Nothing makes me more proud of my alma mater,” says one Crikey reader, “than to see them spell “incumbent” wrong in an Alumni Network email not once but twice.”