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PBRF reporting in danger at Auckland Uni

Over 250 academic TEU members attended a stopwork meeting at the University of Auckland last week and began a ballot on a campaign of escalating industrial action to retain important terms and conditions of employment in their collective employment agreement.

This action will cover a range of activities from writing individual letters to the chancellor and demonstrating at public events, to non-compliance with PBRF reporting.

The final ballot result will be known by Friday. However, cumulative results to date show an overwhelming majority of academic TEU members have voted in favour of industrial action.

The first public event to be targeted by academic staff will be the Alumni Awards Dinner on Friday evening.

Academics will invite alumni to ask the vice-chancellor why he is determined to remove the security of key academic conditions from their collective employment agreement and why he will not negotiate with TEU on these matters.

For many years the academics' employment agreement at the university has ensured that entitlements to research and study leave, the academic criteria for promotion, discipline procedures and outside professional activities can only be changed by mutual consent.

"We will be telling them that the vice-chancellor wants these conditions removed from the collective agreement in pursuit of 'administrative efficiencies' and put into policy where they could be changed without negotiation," said Professor Jane Kelsey. "We will share with them our deep concern that the removal of these conditions will adversely affect education and research at the university."

The vice-chancellor did not attempt to negotiate any changes to these conditions during six months of bargaining with the union from August 2010 to January 2011.

Instead, he made an offer to non-union members while bargaining was in progress (the offer included a 4 percent salary increase contingent upon the removal of the above key conditions). He then put that offer to the union and made it clear that it was not negotiable.

TEU has been forced to file legal proceedings with the Employment Relations Authority and to launch a campaign of escalating industrial action to encourage the vice-chancellor to negotiate genuinely with the union.

To find out more read why Professor Nigel Haworth calls the university's offer risible.

Also in Tertiary Update this week:

1. Tertiary education community rallies after earthquake


2. Weltec staff retain hours of work and win pay-rise


3. Interest-free student loans a victim of the quake?


4. Another attempt to increase SIS powers


5. Staff at Macquarie stop to for job security


6. Other news

Tertiary education community rallies after earthquake

The University of Canterbury will send up to 500 of its students to study at the University of Adelaide for the next four months because of the Christchurch earthquake, according to TVNZ.

University of Canterbury vice-chancellor Rod Carr has announced the university has accepted an offer from the University of Adelaide to accommodate up to 500 selected students for this semester.

It is expected that students will be able to travel to Adelaide as soon as this weekend.

The University of Adelaide has made the offer as part of an existing relationship it has with the University of Canterbury. Some University of Canterbury staff will be sent to provide academic and practical support. More details, including an application form, will be available soon on the university website.

Meanwhile tertiary education minister Steven Joyce says Christchurch's two universities are well-advanced with plans to re-open progressively following the earthquake.

Lincoln University aims to be fully operational by March 14. Lincoln opened for all staff yesterday and postgraduate research students are being encouraged to begin contacting their supervisors.

Mr Joyce said the situation for the Christchurch Polytechnic and Institute of Technology is more challenging given the bulk of its campus is within the cordon.

Officials were working with CPIT as well as other institutes of technology and PTEs in the city on options, including relocating within the city and temporarily hosting courses at other institutions, he said.

The minister has also relaxed enrolment caps at funded institutions outside of Christchurch to allow them to take on some students directly affected by the earthquake if required.

University of Otago has been assisting with the relocation of international students from Christchurch to Dunedin since last week.

Responding to a request from Canterbury for assistance with single semester study abroad and exchange students Otago has committed to taking more than 50 students - a number of them are already settling in and starting classes in Dunedin.

Otago is also one of three universities liaising with Canterbury about an exchange scheme initiative for other full-degree international students for this semester.

This scheme will see Canterbury students go to Otago for a single semester of study, after which they will return to Canterbury. The papers they pass at Otago will contribute to their University of Canterbury qualification.

Weltec staff retain hours of work and win pay-rise

Employment negotiations at Weltec, which began in June last year are nearly complete with union members to vote on a proposed settlement over the next few weeks.

The proposed settlement includes no loss of conditions and a 1.875 percent pay rise for 15 months. (1.875 for 15 months is the equivalent of 1.5 percent annualised for a year.) That pay increase will be backdated to June 2010.

TEU organiser Phil Dyhrberg said the negotiations were difficult and protracted, but members can now focus on the new academic year.

Initially Weltec employers had put forward 15 claims that proposed significant changes to employees' hours of work

The two sides have agreed instead to a working party that will look to enhance productivity across the entire institute rather than just through the collective employment agreement.

Mr Dyhrberg says TEU members are eager to begin work on this working party but that Weltec is understandably preoccupied at present with supporting its Christchurch campus through the repercussions of the earthquake.

Interest-free student loans a victim of the quake?

On Tuesday finance minister, Bill English said that the government would undertake a major review of government spending and debt levels as part of its response to the Christchurch earthquake. He refused to rule out possible cuts to Kiwisaver, Working for Families payments and interest-free student loans.

However, by Wednesday prime minister John Key told Newstalk ZB that  it was unlikely interest will be put on student loans but that increases to EQC levies are inevitable, and that 'there are aspects of Working for Families worth looking at'.

The Dominion Post's Vernon Small reports that cuts to Working for Families are likely to be limited to those on high incomes. Mr Small's highly placed Government source also said there could be further tightening of the eligibility criteria for the student loan scheme and an examination of ways to make it more affordable, though this would not see an end to interest-free loans.

Changes to a planned cut in business tax on April 1 had not been considered.

Mr English said it was early days in the assessment of the cost and extent of the damage and decisions would be made in the run-up to the May 19 Budget once more information was available.

TEU national present Sandra Grey says that the bill to pay for earthquake will be significant and the government will need to make choices.

"It’s important though that those choices don’t hurt people who are already suffering in a tough economic climate. Working for Families plays a crucial role in lifting people out of poverty and allowing them to find work.  Interest free student loans helps make the opportunity of tertiary education available for students from all backgrounds."

Another attempt to increase SIS powers

Another Security Intelligence Service (SIS) Amendment Bill is before Parliament. It is being heard by the Special Intelligence and Security Committee which is headed by the Prime Minister and has heads of other political parties on it. The Prime Minister reluctantly called for submissions but it is not yet clear whether they will be heard in person. The planned extension of powers are of concern to the Council of Trade Unions.

The SIS is the best known of the government spy agencies. While it has no enforcement powers, unions have always been concerned about the SIS because of its long record of spying on union members and there are examples in the submission of employers obtaining information from the SIS on "troublesome" employees. Its powers grew in the 1990s when the definition of security was widened to cover "New Zealand's economic well-being" which includes most of what unions do.

The bill confirms the SIS’s powers to intercept electronic communications using cellphones and computers. They can get a warrant to watch someone without even knowing who they are – just what username they use on a computer system for example.

The most dangerous increase in their powers centres on recruiting informants who have powers to break the law in order to break in, plant bugs, take material of interest, and in fact take "any reasonable action necessarily involved" in carrying out a warrant. At present, informants must be identified in the warrant which the SIS gets from the Prime Minister. Under the new bill, the SIS can recruit these people as it wishes. It runs the risk of an army of informants being recruited without any proper oversight.

Details of these concerns are in the CTU’s submission made to the Special Intelligence and Security Committee.

Staff at Macquarie stop to for job security

Australian National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) members at Macquarie University have just ended a four day strike for better job security and pay, with 24-hour stoppages in each of the university's faculties on separate days this week. The union and the university are due to hold a round of negotiations next week.

After more than 20 months of negotiations, NTEU National Assistant Secretary Matthew McGowan said "the issue that is standing most starkly as unresolved is that of job security."

"Over the five years from 2005 to 2010, we have seen a steady and unnecessary increase in the use of fixed term employment, from 26 percent to 36 percent of non-casual staff. If this rate of increase continues, the university will have a majority of its staff on short term contracts in around 7 years."

Mr McGowan says this growth in fixed term contracts is unnecessary as many of the contract positions are doing work that is ongoing and predictable. It leaves the staff involved without any security of employment, preventing them from getting home loans and planning their futures.

"Equally important is the corrosive effect this has upon academic freedom. Staff on insecure employment are likely to feel vulnerable to attack and are unlikely to engage in public discussion without fear or favour."

Other news

Aoraki Polytechnic's outdoor education programme has been saved. It got off to a rocky start when 40 second and third-year students arrived to find their four tutors on sick leave. But TEU, management and the council in a joint statement last week said: "[We] have worked together constructively to resolve concerns regarding the outdoor education programme. Aoraki Polytechnic is pleased to welcome the staff back. We know that our students enrolled on the outdoor education programme will have a productive year and achieve their desired qualifications." - Timaru Herald

The University of Canterbury will install an additional 8000 square metres of buildings on the University Oval within the next eight weeks to assist with the progressive restart of the university.The sixty 12 x 12 square metre open plan spaces will be available for lectures, seminars, study groups and open plan offices for staff - University of Canterbury

Tainted money, allegations of plagiarism and surrender to the demands of angry student occupiers: the London School of Economics’ links to Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of Libyan leader Mu’ammer Gaddafi, has become an ethical and public relations quagmire - Times Higher Education Supplement

 Meanwhile, As Libya’s dictator Muammar Ghadaffi continues to murder and terrorise his people in an attempt to cling onto power, surely Education Minister Anne Tolley will sometime soon – but don’t hold your breath – move to annul the deal she signed with the Ghaddafi regime last October, on behalf of the New Zealand government. This deal – reportedly worth $30 million annually – entails Libyan students coming here to study, and would make New Zealand one of only five countries accepting students officially selected and assisted by the Ghaddafi regime - Gordon Campbell

Ahead of sweeping changes to uncap the supply of government university places next year, Australia's tertiary education minister Chris Evans is warning universities to keep growth "sustainable" and ensure quality isn't sacrificed - The Australian

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TEU Tertiary Update is published weekly on Thursdays and distributed freely to members of the Tertiary Education Union and others. You can subscribe to Tertiary Update by email or feed reader. Back issues are available on the TEU website. Direct inquiries should be made to Stephen Day.

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