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ITP MECA saga goes back to court

The on-going saga around the ITP multi-employer collective agreement will head to court one more time.

TEU has applied to the Employment Court claiming it should not be required to continue to bargain with the six ex-ITP MECA employers (WITT, Bay of Plenty Polytechnic, Unitec, NorthTec, Whitireia and Wintec) for a new multi-employer agreement because its members have already voted in a ballot that they don't want such an agreement. In response, the six employers claim that TEU has illegally cross-initiated for six collective employment agreements, one at each of the institutions.

The Employment Relations Authority determined yesterday that the matter should proceed straight to the court, rather than being heard by the authority first.

The ITP MECA has been in turmoil for two years now while employers have tried to remove core conditions from union members. Union members have resisted these attempts but have missed pay rises and the chance to negotiate a timely agreement because of the employers' intransigence.

TEU members told Tertiary Update that they are astounded that these employers are continuing to push for a multi-employer collective agreement that nobody wants, and that they, the staff, just want to get on with negotiating a collective agreement at their own workplaces.

Also in Tertiary Update this week:

1. Canterbury staff should be excused from PBRF


2. Auckland VC's refusal to negotiate leads to PBRF strike


3. No place for would-be Otago students


4. Women's Day highlights growing pay gap


5. TEU tells govt it needs to change its policy 


6. Trade ministry too busy to answer questions


7. Other news

Canterbury staff should be excused from PBRF

TEU national president Dr Sandra Grey has written to the Tertiary Education Commission requesting it take University of Canterbury, Lincoln University, and CPIT out of the coming Performance Based Research Funding (PBRF) exercise

Dr Grey says she has also asked the commission to give to all other academic staff living in Canterbury, no matter what institution they work for, permission to opt out of the coming PBRF evaluation round if they so desire.

"In our view, staff who must care for families, rebuild homes, and re-organise their teaching and administrative responsibilities in order to ensure students continue to receive a quality education in adverse circumstances, should not be required to participate in PBRF which would add compliance costs and emotional energy that cannot be found at this stage. What is more, the allocation of funding in any PBRF exercise undertaken which includes academics in Canterbury would disadvantage both the institutions and the individuals involved, because they have lost valuable time and resources as a result of the earthquake."

TEU will be meeting with the commission on Monday next week to discuss this proposal.

Auckland VC's refusal to negotiate leads to PBRF strike

The University of Auckland's TEU branch co-president, Cerian Wagstaff, says the vice-chancellor Stuart McCutcheon is wrong to accuse TEU of jeopardising funding for the university. Rather she says, in a letter to the Herald, that the vice-chancellor is creating a crisis at the university by refusing to negotiate with the union.

Ms Wagstaff, who is a general staff member, says academic staff are making their stand; "because they know Dr McCutcheon's demands will decrease the quality of education at Auckland University and lead to the departure of many talented staff and students."

Ms Wagstaff's letter followed an earlier Herald story, which reported that union members were refusing to submit PBRF reports, which the university needs in order to get millions of dollars of funding each year.

In that story Dr McCutcheon threatened "if, through protesting, the union was to put revenue at risk then it would be putting jobs at risk and one would hope they would think carefully about that."

The PBRF strike was the most strongly supported action by TEU members in the industrial action ballot. They hope the action will pressure the university to negotiate with them, while affecting students as little as possible. The University of Auckland not only receives a large sum of money from its PBRF funding, it also claims significant prestige based on its performance in the exercise.

TEU members have now stopped entering their publications into Research Plus, which records their research outputs for the PBRF exercise. They are not validating publications when they are automatically entered and are not complying with the PBRF collection of data or participating in mock rounds.

No place for would-be Otago students

The Otago Daily Times reports that Otago Polytechnic is already "dramatically over" the student intake cap negotiated with the Tertiary Education Commission, and this problem would not "melt away".

Otago Polytechnic is urging the commission to release unused student places from other tertiary institutions as soon as possible and to allow Otago to increase its roll.

Otago Polytechnic officials have warned that if enrolment trends continue, the polytechnic could have at least 300 equivalent full-time students more than was allowed this year.

Chief xecutive Phil Ker attributed this high demand to high youth unemployment in Dunedin and Otago.

Polytechnic board chairwoman Kathy Grant and Mr Ker said in later interviews that the student roll issue - with its prospect of limiting training opportunities - was not one for the polytechnic alone, but for the wider community, given high youth unemployment in the city and the desirability of people gaining further training.

"We're a servant of this city and of this region," Mr Ker said.

"The polytechnic is funded for 3208 EFTS this year and is able to carry another 96 unfunded EFTS.

If the polytechnic could not secure additional places, it faced slashing its enrolment quota for the second semester by 40 percent," Mr Ker said.

"If that happened, the polytechnic would give priority to protecting those of its programmes and schools that relied on second semester enrolment for their future economic and educational viability".

Women's Day highlights growing pay gap

Tuesday was the centenary of the first celebrations of International Women’s Day. The theme for this year is ‘equal access to education, training and science and technology: Pathway to decent work for women’.

About 40 people from the Wellington Pay Equity Challenge Coalition, MPs, union activists and working women gathered at parliament to recognise the day. Beside the Sonja Davies Memorial in the grounds of the attendees and launched the pay equity pledge which so far seventy women leaders have signed pledging for pay equity. On the hundredth anniversary of International Women’s Day this raised  awareness of women’s equality issues which often came when young women sought their first job after school, training or during tertiary education.

The women gathered also donated money to the Women’s Refuge Christchurch Earthquake appeal.  

Meanwhile Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner, Dr Judy McGregor called for young new leaders to help campaign for pay equity.

"Youth unemployment, which is particularly high for Māori and Pacific women among 15-19 year olds, is hugely demoralising and a waste of potential talent," said Dr McGregor.

"Among those that do get work, young women are shocked to realise from the first day at work they will be getting anything up to several thousand dollars a year less as a starting salary than an equivalent male, despite their often considerable academic achievements."

The discovery of the gender pay gap is often the start of their awareness of gender inequality in the workplace.

"While we should celebrate International Women’s Day for the transformation of women’s lives over the past 100 years, women should not delude themselves that the battle is won," said Dr McGregor.

TEU tells govt it needs to change its policy  

TEU council has agreed to campaign to highlight the detrimental effect that the current government is having on public tertiary education.

"Virtually every major policy that this government has introduced in its two and half years of power has been bad for public tertiary education," Said TEU national president Dr Sandra Grey. "Funding has fallen, institutions have been consistently reorganised so they are in a constant state of flux, students have been excluded from decision-making, community representatives have been prevented from having a say in the governance of their local tertiary institutions and staff workloads are continuing to grow."

"New Zealand has a world-class tertiary education system with world-class people teaching and researching for it. But our tertiary education system should not have to withstand this onslaught."

"What we are saying to the public is that if you intend to vote for this government next election you need to tell it to change its tertiary education policy, because at the moment, good people are missing out on the chance to learn."

The union introduced at its last annual conference a public education policy against which it has been judging government and institution polices.

Trade ministry too busy to answer questions

Governments are being accused of being secretive and anti-democratic over the Transpacific Partnership Trade Agreement, with its secret texts that they refuse to disclose to the public, and investment protocols that could bind future governments from being able to protect public services or prevent multinational companies acting as they want.

So to find out more Tertiary Update contacted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs three times in the last eight weeks asking for information on how the Transpacific Partnership trade negotiations could affect tertiary education. The ministry has repeatedly responded by saying it will get back to us soon.

The questions we sought answers on back in January are:

• How is the agreement likely to impact on the ability of foreign private tertiary education providers to operate in New Zealand on a level playing field with providers based here in New Zealand?


• How will the new agreement distinguish between public and privately provided education – and/or will government procurement of education services be affected by this agreement?


• There has been lots of discussion in the media to date that relates to intellectual property rights. Academics have a keen interest in academic property rights -are those rights likely to be affected by this agreement?

Eight weeks later we have not had a response back to these questions, and the negotiations continue.

The ministry has concluded a fifth round of Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations in Santiago (between 14 to 18 February) and is preparing for a sixth round of negotiations to be held in Singapore in late March.  At the Singapore negotiations, negotiators will be exchanging initial offers for services and investment, and government procurement, both of which could affect tertiary education.

We will report back when or if the ministry answers our questions.

Other news

"This is a dispute that need not happen, should not happen. It baffles me, and I know it baffles people at all levels in the university as to why the CEO has taken this confrontational route. I hope, and so does the university community as a whole, that common sense prevails and we move on to the real challenges facing our university - Dr Haworth’s opinion piece in this morning’s New Zealand Herald.

The University of Canterbury believes it has lost only a few hundred enrolments as a result of last month's earthquake. Vice-chancellor Rod Carr says that so far the equivalent of 14,200 full-time students have enrolled for the year. Dr Carr expects the roll will be only 3% below normal - Radio NZ

Waikato University is again being criticised over art and social sciences faculty redundancies. The university has since disestablished 8.7 fulltime positions through voluntary redundancy and retirement, and is considering another 2.5 (two senior lecturers and one part-timer). The university said five positions originally proposed for redundancy had been taken off the table after "extensive consultation". But TEU says withdrawal of the five positions shows the university plans, by implication, went too far - Waikato Times

The battle between Republicans and labour unions in Ohio, Wisconsin and other states is ostensibly about public workers' pay, benefits and bargaining rights. What is really at stake, however, is not labour's income. It is labour's influence - not just in the American workplace but also in American politics - Washington Post

More universities in England could be put at risk of bankruptcy as a result of cuts and changes to funding, the National Audit Office (NAO) has warned - BBC

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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 emailor feed reader. Back issues are available on the TEU website. Direct inquiries should be made to Stephen Day.

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