Action Bulletin, 5 May

Kia ora koutou and welcome to Action Bulletin 3. You can now subscribe to receive Action Bulletin by email or feed reader. Please sign up and encourage fellow TEU members to join you.

MIT workload dispute

After a week of industrial action TEU and the Manukau Institute of Technology are scheduled to meet to discuss issues later this week. Big thanks from TEU members at MIT to the many people around the country who has supported them thus far. We will keep you updated on how things progress.

National bargaining for universities underway soon

TEU members have again endorsed a university bargaining strategy that seeks to combine twenty-one existing collective agreements across eight universities into just two: one for academic staff and one for general staff. National bargaining is TEU members saying investing in universities and their workers matters more than ever in economic times like these. It’s about university staff across NZ cooperating together for a quality tertiary education system. If you want to be involved in the campaign and can offer time, energy or skills contact your local organiser now.

Iraq: Teachers union faces repression

The Iraqi Teachers’ Union is under attack from the Iraqi Government. The government has authorized an official body to take over the union and demanded that the leadership of the union must hand over the keys to its headquarters along with membership and other records. The government attempts are illegitimate, unacceptable and a blatant violation and interference in the internal democratic affairs of the union. They also violate the Iraqi constitution which guarantees workers the right to organize. The Teachers’ Union leadership has refused to hand over the union and is ready to struggle to preserve the independence of the Teachers’ Union. Because of this, its leaders are under the threat of arrest. You can send a pre-written message to the Iraqi government supporting the teachers’ union.