Sydney students arrested in protest
RAW VISION : students clash with police at The University of Sydney during a staff strike over a new pay deal.
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Staff and students at the University of Sydney will resume a strike on Wednesday, a day after protesters were dragged from a lecture theatre by police and five people were arrested on campus.
One of the protesters was later charged with assaulting police and all five have been banned from the campus until Thursday.
Dispute: A demonstrating University of Sydney student is dragged from the lecture hall by police. Photo: @honi_soit
The staff union, the National Tertiary Education Union, has been locked in a dispute with management for seven months over pay and conditions, with concerns about what they claim is the increasing casualisation of teaching at the university and the erosion of working conditions.
The university has rejected those claims and vice-chancellor Michael Spence has defended the 2 per cent pay rise offered to staff by arguing Sydney is ''not a rich university''.
The altercation with police occurred after a group of protesters entered a hall about 10am on Tuesday to disrupt a lecture.
''Riot police came in the [back] and started dragging people out of the of the lecture hall,'' student Tom Raue said.
Mr Raue said the police actions were aggressive, but another student, Emily, told Fairfax Radio the protesters were fighting the police.
Police charged two of the protesters, a 31-year-old man from Stanmore and a 33-year-old woman from Newtown with resisting arrest, while the man was also charged with assaulting police. A third woman was issued with a field court attendance and the other two people were released without charge.
NTEU branch president Michael Thomson said the picket had been ''peaceful'' and would continue on Wednesday as planned.
The union said more than 40 per cent of teaching at the university was performed by casual staff.
But that claim has been rejected by the university, which says the percentage of casual academic staff has decreased by 4.8 per cent since 2001.
Dr Spence said the university was bargaining in good faith but the university's finances were not what they once were.
''We are not a rich university,'' he wrote in an open letter. ''We must find a salary settlement that allows us to meet the competing needs of staff for appropriate pay, conditions and facilities.''
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