Te Hautū Kahurangi | Tertiary Education Union is taking legal action against AUT that it hopes will curtail plans to make 170 staff members redundant.

Kaiwhakahaere | Organiser Jill Jones says “TEU’s preference is to resolve issues such as this without legal action but the union has been left with no option, due in part to Vice Chancellor Damon Salesa’s ongoing refusal to meaningfully engage with staff kanohi ki te kanohi | face to face.”

“AUT is truncating the processes set out in the collective agreement and is picking people to dismiss because they have not met teaching and research requirements they did not know they had to meet until it was too late.”

“During the Covid lockdowns, AUT managers had told staff to concentrate on the welfare of their students and putting courses online rapidly.”

“Now, as a redundancy criterion, AUT have decided that if some staff did not produce a certain number or type of research outputs during that time, or meet arbitrary teaching requirements, they will lose their jobs.”

“There is still time for the employer to do the right thing here and avoid the expense and disruption of a legal fight. The Vice Chancellor should front up, withdraw his proposal, and talk to the TEU about more constructive ways to make AUT a great university without breaching the collective agreement.”

© Scoop Media