The National Tertiary Education Union branch hopes to be able to achieve substantial improvements in the working conditions in negotiations.

The agreement expires in June.

NTEU Vice-President Craig Johnson said the union is already trying to lay the groundwork for a campaign.

The branch kicked off its effort in a meeting on Thursday night.

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Along with a union recruitment drive, branch leadership hopes to be able to poll as many employees as possible to direct their negotiating position.

Mr Johnson described it as a "really grassroots painstaking process". He said it would not only strengthen their negotiating position, but would also be a more democratic approach.

"We've got a new branch leadership," he said.

"We've always tried to take a sort of back to basics approach to organising. Bargaining is really the high-water mark of the union calendar.

"Our approach with bargaining is that, in essence, if university management doesn't think the union has broad support, if they don't think that we're capable of bringing people out, then they have no reason to really be that afraid of us. "

UNE shed about 15 per cent of its workforce in 2020, part of $20 million of costs cut during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The union doesn't want to "pre-figure" what the perspective of staff will be, Mr Johnstone said, but he predicted that workload issues and a lack of job security left over from the cuts will figure in the terms.

"For the branch, I think bargaining is important because it's a test of our abilities," he said.

"But also it is a very high-profile thing in which the union is really involved. For us it's an opportunity to Build our branch structures and also our way of doing business.

"We've committed ourselves to being really transparent and open through the bargaining process and we're actually going to try to get as many people at the table as we can."

The union and university must sit down for negotiations three months before the agreement runs out in June.

The NTEU claimed victory in a brief August skirmish after what it said was an attempt to shift four technical officer positions to fixed term contracts.

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