Union Wants One Employment Agreement For Polytechs Despite Dissolution Of National Institute

Friday, 1 May 2026, 5:02 pm
Article: RNZ

John Gerritsen, Education Correspondent

The Tertiary Education Union (TEU) is trying to retain a single collective agreement for all polytechnics despite the dissolution of the national institute Te Pūkenga.

The union said talks would start on Friday for a multi-employer collective agreement (MECA) covering the polytechnics that left the National Institute of Skills and Technology at the start of this year and the few that remained in the organisation.

TEU bargaining team member, Steve McCabe, said the different institutes had a single collective under Te Pūkenga and the union wanted to keep that going.

"What we've initiated is a multi-employer collective agreement that will simply flow on from the existing agreement," he said.

McCabe said the union believed that all of the institutes were planning to turn up for the first day of bargaining.

He said a single agreement made sense for institutes even if they were based in different regions.

"There's a lot more to the collective agreement than simply salary. It's got everything from redundancy provisions to leave protection," he said.

"And the work that we're doing is remarkably similar, so to try and pit us against each other saying that the people in Whangarei need different terms and conditions from the people in Timaru for example doesn't really reflect the work that we do.

"We're all doing the same work, we're still doing vocational education and so we still think we should have similar terms and conditions as we do right now and as is working perfectly well right now."

McCabe said he understood the sector had previously had a multi-employer collective.

"We understand that different polytechnics may want to bargain alone, but we're saying this will only make you weaker as an institution. A MECA works for staff and employers because different institutions are not pitting staff wages against each other," he said.

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