A large turnout of TEU members at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa have voted to ratify their new collective agreement and will now be entitled to an allowance when required to stay overnight delivering education programmes to tauira.

Prior to the negotiations an employment court decision had found that workers at IHC were eligible to be paid if they were required as part of their job to sleep overnight at their place of work.

Likewise many academic staff at the wānanga are required to stay overnight on noho. Teaching delivery often involves visits to marae that begin on Fridays and end on Sundays. Prior to these negotiations, and the employment court decision, employees had entitlements like time in lieu for noho. Now they will be paid a $125 allowance in addition to other entitlements for each night that they are required to stay at the noho.

TEU te pou tuarā, Lee Cooper, says the negotiations, which began in October last year, were markedly different from previous years, with the employers committing to treating TEU members equally to union members from the wānanga union, TUIA.

“Having TEU as an independent external union working to improve employment conditions at the wānanga is important for quality of education. Fairer working conditions means the wānanga can better recruit and retain its kaimahi, and that’s a benefit for both tauira and kaimahi.”