Good afternoon and welcome to you all. A special welcome to Tangi Tipene, former National President of ASTE, and to Field Officers, Paul Haley and Jenny Chapman.

Noeline Lewis & Onny Holdaway have been the TEU Waiariki branch co-chairs for the last two years. Our branch has been lucky to have been operating in an overall positive atmosphere over the past year and this atmosphere was no more obvious than at Waiariki’s mid-year party. We would like to acknowledge the efforts of the CE, Pim Borren, and the Waiariki management staff who have “turned Waiariki around” and created a focused and productive place to work, with a lot of new opportunities for staff.

We are pleased to say that our branch has continued to enjoy open dialogue with our employer, represented by the HR Manager, Richard Bird. This has included meetings to share current issues and joint work on projects such as Health and Safety, T2 progression, pay equity and the upcoming Collective Agreement negotiations.

While there are a lot of positives at Waiariki, it is our duty to speak out where we see areas for improvement and during the year we have supported members through a variety of challenges including workload issues, working conditions, student complaints, pay equity matters, disciplinary matters, reviews and redundancies. Fortunately, these have been few, and I thank those people concerned for stepping forward and speaking out so that the issues have had less chance of being repeated.

Communications

Regular updates to members continue and the member’s list is updated.

The organizer, Paul Haley, is notifying of new members and branch exec are contacting.

Exec monthly meetings have continued and minutes are put on the e-campus site.

Notices from TEU National Office are on e-campus and urgent ones circulated.

A special TEU day and BBQ was held with branch exec, organizers and national president Tom Ryan, outgoing chair Sharon Stevens and UW organizer, Megan Morris.

Monthly liaison meetings with HR Director, Richard Bird and with the TEU Organizer(s) continue.

Quarterly liaison meetings continue with Waiariki Council reps. Thomas George and Mereheeni Hooker and with the CTU’s rep on Council, NZEI’s Rose Hallam.

Collective Agreement Negotiations

The claim underway.

T2 Progression Working Party

Talks have concluded with the new performance based pay scale for T2 increases.

Workload Working Party

No progress and this has been referred to the collective bargaining round.

PAEE Ministry of Education and Pay and Employment Equity Unit

In abeyance.

Health and Safety

A number of issues have been raised and acted upon, including staff facilities on two campuses and international student welfare.

Thank you

Thank you to the exec members who have worked hard on your behalf: Co-chair Noeline Lewis, Secretary and H&S Rep Rika Otto, Treasurer Yvonne Rika, Recruitment Officer Sandy Macdonald, Women’s rep Marie Hutchison, Te Uepu rep Bryce Murray, as well as all the school and campus reps. They have all contributed to raising the awareness of TEU and have brought your concerns and ideas to the table.”  Congratulations to the new Recruitment Rep, Juliet Lux.

I would like to express a special thank you to Paul Haley who is a wonderful support to us at Waiariki on all campuses in the absence of Jenny Chapman. Paul is an expert in the field of Health and Safety, and we are lucky to have him as our field officer.

Requests

We would like to encourage you all to speak to someone on your TEU branch exec or to Paul directly if there is something about your working conditions that does not seem right. Your union can only act on your behalf if you tell us what the problem is. This is particularly the case for workload issues.”  Also, please make sure any new staff members in your area have received a TEU enrolment pack or the TEU URL, and have filled their application form in.

To finish, our CE has said he aims for Waiariki to be the best ITP in the country with the best-paid staff. We are confident you are doing your best for Waiariki so we look forward to the completion of the negotiations. Good luck to the negotiating team!

Onny Holdaway

Co-chair, ASTE Waiariki Branch 2 September 2009