A film fundraiser organised by Northtec and its TEU branch has raised $1000 for Te Puna o te Aroha Whangarei (Māori Women’s Refuge).

Northtec and its TEU branch were proud to present Te Puna o te Aroha Whangarei with the donation just in time for Christmas.

The Northtec members of TEU were thrilled with the $1000 that they had raised during a film screening of Made in Dagenham, held at NorthTec’s Raumanga Campus earlier this year. In addition, NorthTec staff members donated grocery and gift items to the cause.

“Practical donations of basic food and grocery items are great,” said Stacey Pepene of Te Puna o te Aroha.

Christmas can be a difficult time for some families, with family violence statistics showing that the number of families affected can rise considerably over the festive season. Te Puna O Te Aroha does their best to help families over this difficult time, but can always use support like that given from Northtec and TEU.

“Other donations such as toiletries, sunblock, hats, kids’ and women’s clothing, basic furniture items and cash are also really appreciated,” said Ms Pepene.

Tertiary Update Vol 15 No 41

TEU members are holding protests and meetings at polytechnics around the country today to convince the government to put more money into foundation studies education at polytechnics. The protests coincide with media coverage (from Auckland’s New Zealand Herald to Dunedin’s Otago Daily Times) of the millions of dollars the government has stripped from polytechnics through its foundation studies funding experiment.

A government change to the way it funds foundation studies education has seen the funding for public polytechnics cut from $38 million this year to only about $6 million next year. As a result, thousands of students no longer have the opportunity to enrol for these courses at polytechnics, dozens of courses are threatened with closure and dozens of respected and qualified tutors stand to lose their jobs.

TEU national president Sandra Grey says the funding change is an ideological experiment by the minister for tertiary education that has gone horribly wrong.

“Public money should go to local public institutions that were built by, belong to and are committed to their communities.”

“We understand the Tertiary Education Commission is meeting tomorrow to consider funding allocations. We will be protesting and meeting publicly to let the government know that it cannot abandon our foundation studies students, our local regions and their long-standing polytechnics. It needs to put money back into polytechnics rather than diverting these funds into the private sector.”

TEU events planned so far at 14 different campuses include:

• WITT TEU is leafleting the community in New Plymouth at lunchtime
• EIT TEU Taradale and Tairawhiti campuses are holding lunchtime BBQs and handing out information to the public
• Waiariki TEU is doing a mobile message board about the importance of public education to send to the local National MP
• MIT TEU is going to cut a cake and hold a protest on the main road outside the institution at 2pm (the cake shows a bigger slice of funding going to private providers than polytechnics)
• NMIT TEU is going to have a lunchtime event and have a polystyrene headstone to signal the death of Level 1 and 2 funding
• UCOL TEU Whanganui and Palmerston North are holding lunchtime protests
• Otago Polytechnic TEU is holding a lunchtime meeting
• Unitec TEU is also going to cut a cake and then head out leafleting
• Northtec TEU will be holding activities for members to share information about why Level 1 and 2 funding is so important
• Weltec TEU will be leafleting and cutting a cake at 12noon
• The Open Polytechnic will be doing the same at 10.00am

Also in Tertiary Update this week:

1. Autonomy debate at University of Auckland
2. Mediation service at University of Auckland faces closure
3. Wisconsin to tie tertiary education funding to outcomes
4. TEU elections

Other news

UCOL union leader Tina Smith has called on the community to show its disappointment at funding cuts in the polytechnic sector. ”Under this national government the polytechnic sector has lost approximately $60 million in funding – the size of a small polytechnic,” she said – Manawatu Standard

Apprenticeships have become much scarcer since the global financial crisis hit four years ago, forcing many businesses to lay off experienced staff, never mind taking on trainees. Concerned by low completion rates, the Government has also pushed industry training organisations (ITOs) into culling trainees who were not making progress. Between them, the recession and the cull have slashed trainee numbers by nearly 50,000, from 133,303 in 2008 to 83,413 by the end of last year – New Zealand Herald

Mass student protest is returning to London this week for the first time since a succession of occasionally chaotic marches two years ago, with organisers saying they hope to send MPs of all parties a message about the need to act – not just on education funding, but on rampant unemployment among the young – The Guardian

There are now more New Zealanders with a tertiary qualification than without one. In 2011, the proportion with a tertiary qualification increased to 52 percent, up from 50 percent in 2010. The proportion of people without any qualification reduced, while the proportion with a bachelors or higher qualification continued its steady upwards path – Profile & Trends 2011: New Zealand’s Tertiary Education Sector

Data from the Tertiary Education Commission shows that government funding for metropolitan based polytechnics has fallen by 1 percent between 2010 and 2011, but it fell by a massive 11 percent, or $32 million, for regional polytechnics over the same period.

With the exception of Eastern Institute of Technology, which merged with Tairāwhiti Polytechnic last year, every polytechnic not based in one of New Zealand’s five largest cities lost at least $2 million of government grants in the last recorded financial years.

TEU’s national president Sandra Grey says the regional polytechnics are in an invidious spiral.

“Their task is to provide a broad diverse range of skills and knowledge to their local communities. But for several years they have taken the brunt of the government’s budget cuts, been told to compete with private providers who can cherry pick their students and take only the best, and have been asked to deliver more measurable outcomes with fewer resources. The commitment of polytechnics to the diverse needs of their local community means they cannot specialise and rationalise in the way other providers can. So they are punished for doing the job they were created to do – publicly providing all local people with skills and training they need in their own community. We should be rewarding these polytechnics for saving us from the worst effects of the global financial crisis, but instead we are punishing them.”

Minister for tertiary education, skills and employment, Steven Joyce, has continued to appoint people to multiple polytechnic councils.

Malcolm Inglis, who is the current deputy chair of UCOL council will now also take on the role of deputy chair of the WITT council for a four year term. Malcolm Inglis is a management consultant providing strategic, financial and organisational development advice. Previously he was the Crown Observer at WITT appointed to monitor risk associated with the institution. John Mote has been reappointed as a member of the CPIT council for a four year term. He is also a ministerial appointment to the Tai Poutini Polytechnic council and a council appointee to NorthTec.

Mary Bourke (WITT), Ross Butler (NMIT), Alan Barker (Open Polytechnic) and Barry Jones (Tai Poutini Polytechnic) were also all reappointed to their ministerial positions on their respective councils.

TEU national president Sandra Grey says that the move to have one councillor sitting on multiple councils makes it harder for those councillors to be spokespeople for the polytechnics’ local communities.

“While collaborating and cooperating is good, we are concerned the minister is centralising all the decision-making power in the hands of a few politically-appointed councillors. Local communities need a place where they can have their say rather than being a minority among political appointees.”

Tertiary Update Vol 15 No 21

Annual reports from twelve of the country’s 18 polytechnics show that the government is drastically cutting funding to polytechnics, and especially regional community polytechnics. Across the 12 polytechnics that have released their 2011 annual reports government grants fell 4.4 percent or $17 million.

The polytechnics that have been the worst hit by 2011 funding cuts were regional polytechnics such as Aoraki in Timaru, where the government grant fell by 19 percent or $4 million, Te Tai Poutini in Westport where the grant fell by 14 percent or $3 million, and NorthTec in Whangarei where the government grant fell by 13 percent or $4 million.

Three city-based polytechnics recorded an increase in their government grant: MIT, Wintec and CPIT.

Aoraki Polytechnic’s chief executive Kay Nelson blamed the institute’s first deficit in five years on government funding cuts, saying, “This had serious consequences for our financial position.”

TEU national president Sandra Grey said the government is denying people in regional communities the chance to train for jobs.

“People want the chance to learn, and they want that opportunity in their own local communities. Students in our regions should not see their polytechnics cut back and their learning opportunities diminished,” said Sandra Grey.

Sandra Grey says this problem is likely to get worse this year because the government budget now allows private for profit companies to compete for funding that previously went to regional polytechnics.

No report available yet: EIT, SIT, TOPNZ, UCOL, Unitec, Waiariki

Also in Tertiary Update this week:

1. Lincoln swaps commerce staff for casual students
2. Pastoral care should be specialist role, not add on
3. Minister opts for shared council appointments
4. Aussies want 2000 new permanent academic jobs

Other news

The government is under fire over its efforts to boost the number of tradespeople to help rebuild Christchurch. The news that some industries are still desperate for trained workers comes after revelations that only a fraction of the millions specifically allocated for the training of tradespeople has been spent - TVNZ

No single student over 24 is better off on a student loan than a student allowance. All will get less – and pay most of it back. This means all post graduate students who have to get government assistance to live will be worse off due to the government’s decision to scrap their student allowances – Dave Crampton does the maths on student allowance changes.

It’s good that job creation is at the top of the agenda at the G20 summit in Mexico. But young people need the right skills to do those jobs – and now they’re demanding that world leaders finally give serious attention to developing skills – Hans Botnen Eide at Education for All

More course closures are likely at Canterbury University as it tries to balance its books. University vice-chancellor Rod Carr said he did not know which courses would be axed next or when decisions would be made. The five colleges within the university were reviewing their operations to determine how they were going to “live within their means”, he said – The Press

Advocates of “open access” publishing in academia say a UK report that proposes spending £60 million a year to make all publicly-funded research free to access will protect the profits of publishers at the expense of scholarship. The British government has enlisted the services of Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales in a bid to support open access publishing for all scholarly work by UK researchers, regardless of whether it is also published in a subscription-only journal – The Conversation

A new US study has found that tuition at for-profit schools where students receive federal aid was 75 per cent higher than at comparable for-profit schools whose students do not receive any aid. The study’s authors warned their findings do not apply to public colleges and private non-profit schools, which they say are different because they are not motivated by profits and because their prices are largely determined by state funding and donations – The Wall Street Journal

Tertiary institutions are in a constant state of restructuring says TEU deputy secretary Nanette Cormack. Last week TEU’s national council heard that there are 59 reviews affecting 500 jobs currently underway across 17 different tertiary education institutions.

“500 members are about 5 percent of our membership. When one in twenty people are having their job changed or taken away from them we know we do not have a very stable environment for ensuring teaching and education.”

“But the worst part is that we seem to be in a state of never-ending reviews. TEU’s national council has been tracking reviews for a year now and they just keep coming,” said Ms Cormack.

New reviews have recently started at Manukau Institute of Technology, NorthTec, Wintec, University of Auckland, AUT, University of Canterbury, Massey University, University of Otago, University of Waikato and Te Wānanga o Aotearoa. Ms Cormack says TEU has recorded 49 confirmed redundancies because of those reviews via voluntary or compulsory severance so far.

“500 members is about five percent of our membership. When one in twenty people is having their job changed or taken away from them we know we do not have a very stable environment for good teaching and education.”

“In November last year we recorded 55 reviews at 12 institutions. In October 44 reviews at 17 institutions, in September 43 reviews at 18 institutions, in August 58 reviews at 20 institutions, in July 77 reviews at 24 institutions and so on,” said Ms Cormack.

TEU members at NorthTec will vote shortly on a new collective agreement to replace the one that expired in November 2010. Between then and now, all new staff at NorthTec have been covered by an individual agreement with lesser working conditions than the expired collective agreement.

The proposed new agreement will give union members a 2.05 percent pay rise for each of the two years the agreement runs , as well as a $1200 lump sum payment for members who were previously on the expired collective agreement.

Tertiary Update Vol 14 No 46

NorthTec is currently trying to cut working conditions and extend teaching hours for its staff, when most other polytechnics around the country have come to amicable settlements with their staff in the last two months.

NorthTec, one of only two remaining ex-MECA ITPs yet to settle with its TEU staff members, is seeking to remove all limits on timetabled teaching hours and maximum number of teaching days from staff working conditions, as well as reducing leave for new staff, so they can teach more.

NorthTec CEO Paul Binney told TEU negotiators that getting fewer staff doing more work wasn’t immediately underpinning his employment offer, but he added:

“Let’s not duck that topic. That has to be an objective going forward. We need to be more productive and efficient so need to do more for less.”

This has led to the situation where TEU members at NorthTec today begin a ballot for industrial action, at the same time that TEU members elsewhere around the country are holding ratification ballots.

“Given the settled environment elsewhere, we anticipate a concentrated effort at NorthTec next year”, said Organiser Chan Dixon, “although their employer’s unreasonable position is hardly the ‘ho ho ho’ that TEU members at NorthTec want as they head towards the summer break, especially after more than three years without an increase to their salary.”

Also in Tertiary Update this week:

1. Threatened boycott on advertised jobs at VUW
2. Student loan statistics get worse
3. OECD says invest in education to end inequality
4. Charter schools an unpleasant surprise
5. Have your say on Tertiary Update next year

Other news

Tertiary Education Union UCOL branch president Tina Smith voices her support for locked-out CMP workers at a protest near a McDonald’s outlet, in Palmerston North – Photo in the Manawatu Standard

Lincoln University has closed two buildings after a detailed engineering inspection. Vice-chancellor Roger Field said today the Hilgendorf Wing (including the TEU office) and the Student Union building would be shut until further notice – The Press

The University of Canterbury will rely on its implicit Government guarantee to meet payments to investors on its unrated 10-year bonds after the earthquakes scared off students – TVNZ

New Zealand has really done little more than keep up with inflation until the last three years when expenditure has started to increase, but even now we are probably still at 60 to 70 percent of what appears to be an international consensus on the appropriate level of public expenditure  committed to research by other small advanced nations. There is evidence that private sector spending only starts to increase when a critical mass of activity flows from the public sector – Sir Peter Gluckman, the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor.

Many workers with caring responsibilities want flexible working arrangements and/or part-time hours. But there is no evidence to suggest these workers want casual work. Research suggests they are forced to accept casual work or other types of insecure work because they are unable to access quality on-going part-time work – The University of South Australia and the Workplace Research Centre debunk five myths about insecure work.

The employers at the five Ready2Go polytechnics (Whitireia, Wintec, BOPP, Unitec and NorthTec) have now finally agreed that they are indeed ‘ready to go’ and have agreed dates to negotiate with their respective TEU members. The first, Whitireia begins negotiations tomorrow (Friday) and the last gets underway on 3 August. Weltec has joined these five polytechnics in employing outside consultancy company Martin Jenkins and Associates to negotiate on its behalf. We wonder why these institutions employ human resources staff?

The University of Canterbury has reached the midpoint of its three-year collective agreement and is negotiating to make variations to that collective agreement on issues not involving pay or money. The university has agreed to TEU claims to extend coverage to a larger group of general staff. It seems likely that the CPI adjusted pay rise for TEU members at the university will be five percent. (TEU members agreed that their pay rise for the second and third years of their three-year collective agreement would be based on CPI.)

TEU members at CPIT are disappointed by claims from their employer to ‘buy’ their discretionary leave and their workload limit on duty weeks off them with an offer of 4 percent and 2 percent over two years. Negotiations are continuing there.

TEU members at Weltec are also facing claims to remove their discretionary leave. Their employer wants to phase out discretionary leave by 2014, remove it entirely from all new staff employed before 2014 and, remove quarterly timetabled teaching hour limits and some entitlements to professional development. In return, Weltec is offering its TEU members 1.5 and 1.5 percent for two years. Staff are discussing, among other things, whether to take industrial action in response to the employer’s offer.

Academics at the University of Auckland have all been moved onto individual agreements on 30 June after their collective agreement expired over a year ago. Those 954 members will now be meeting on Wednesday 27 July to consider their employer’s latest offer and the TEU’s counter offer, and to decide whether to send the employer’s offer to ratification. In the meantime, industrial action and picketing continues at the university.

Negotiations are also underway or about to start at NMIT and Te Wānanga o Aotearoa and Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi, Massey University and Auckland University of Technology. TEU has initiated for its first ever allied (general) staff collective agreement at AUT.

7^th July 2011

Office of the Ombudsman

PO Box 10 -152

The Terrace

Wellington

Dear Sir/Madam

On 6^th May 2011 the TEU wrote to chief executives at five institutes of technology/polytechnics with whom we have been engaged in bargaining for a multi-employer collective agreement [Northtec Polytechnic, UNITEC, Bay of Plenty Polytechnic, Winted and Whitireia Community Polytechnic].  Our correspondence requested information about consultancy fees paid to Martin Jenkins and Associates (for the period 1^st March 2009 to 30 November 2010) and legal fees paid to Buddle Findlay (for the period 1^st February 2010 to 30^th April 2011).  Both firms were used to provide services during bargaining.

The institutions have responded indicating that they will not release this information, citing sections 9(2)(b)(ii) of the Act.

In addition the union requested information from the 2009 and 2010 institution budget allocation for salary increases that were not spent, due to there being no percentage increase negotiated in these years (excluding a $700 lump sum payment to TEU members in December 2010).

The institutions have also declined to provide information for this part of our request and have indicated the reason for this is because of the need to carry out commercial activities or industrial negotiations without prejudice or disadvantage (citing sections 9(2)(i) and 9(2)(j)of the Act).

We would like your office to review this refusal to disclose information.  In relation to our request for information about consultancy and legal fees paid for services during bargaining, our view is that as publicly funded institutions, the ITPs are required to be accountable for expenditure in relation to this funding, and therefore that these figures should be publicly available.

Regarding the second part of our request (information about budget savings as a result of no salary increase), our view is that this request will not prejudice or disadvantage the process of bargaining, but again simply ensures the institutions are being accountable for use of public funds.

We look forward to your response in regards to this matter.

Yours sincerely,

Irena Brorens

National industrial officer

Email: irena.brorens@teu.ac.nz

Attached:

TEU letter to Whitireia Polytechnic ITP 6^th May 2011

Bay of Plenty Polytechnic response to TEU 2^nd June 2011

Tertiary Update Vol 14 No 23

The five polytechnics that have, until last week, refused to negotiate site-based collective agreements with their staff members have also so far refused official information requests to disclose how much money they are spending on legal fees and consultants in their efforts to avoid negotiations.

However, recently printed annual reports at two of the smaller polytechnics, Whitireia and Northtec, suggest that the amount could be significant.

NorthTec’s 2010 annual report shows that it spent over $500,000 more on consultants and legal fees than it did in 2009 – up 195 percent from $286,000 to $844,000. Meanwhile the 2010 Whitireia annual report shows an increase in consultants and legal fees of $52,000, up 18 percent on 2009.

Neither report details how much, if any, of that amount related the polytechnics respective on-going dispute with their own staff.

Northtec’s report shows that it spent $269,000 less on salaries for its academic staff in 2010 than it did in 2009 but it also spent an extra $650,000 on redundancy payments (up 340 percent from $188,000 to $834,000).

The result is academic staff numbers have fallen for the third year in a row. So, as the annual report itself notes, payroll savings of $1.1 million have been offset by the added expense of third party contractors, additional redundancies and early retirement expenses due to major restructuring during 2010.

TEU national secretary Sharn Riggs says NorthTec has not saved any money but it has lost skilled staff.

“For Northland this means many skilled academic staff are now either out of work, or have not had a pay rise of any significance for over three years. Unsurprisingly, NorthTec taught fewer students last year than it did in 2009; which is shame, given the need for young people to be learning trades and helping solve the current skills shortage in Northland.”

Last week after the Court of Appeal has ruled the five polytechnics must bargain separate collective agreements, they announced that, despite all already having their own internal human resources teams, they would all be hiring the same external consultant, MartinJenkins and Associates, to negotiate on their behalf.

Also in Tertiary Update this week

1. Ministry of Education told it lacks ‘shape’
2. University of Auckland proffers its ‘best offer’
3. PM hawks education in India
4. Victoria cuts technology education again

Other news

In 1978 and 1981 a government was elected despite getting fewer votes than its main political opponent. No wonder we switched to MMP. It’s fairer – YouTube

Following comments last week by Employers and Manufacturers Association (EMA) chief executive Alastair Thompson, the CTU is now inviting union members to email the EMA directly asking it if it is serious about the pay gap between men and women, and what it intends to do about it – CTU

NorthTec and Te Wananga o Aotearoa (TWoA) have signed a lease that will see TWoA shifting its base of operations in Whangarei onto NorthTec’s Raumanga campus. The tertiary institutes also signed a memorandum of understanding that will allow TWoA students to move into NorthTec courses once their own courses have finished – The Northern Advocate

The requirement of a perfect score – 100 percent – to get admission into one of India’s leading colleges for commerce has highlighted the severe shortage of good quality higher education institutions in the country - University World News

England will move to a higher education system that is 25 per cent demand-driven and favours the brightest students and the cheapest providers, under proposals in a white paper released yesterday – The Australian

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TEU Tertiary Update is published weekly on Thursdays and distributed freely to members of the Tertiary Education Union and others. You can subscribe to Tertiary Update by email or feed reader. Back issues are available on the TEU website. Direct inquiries should be made to Stephen Day.

Tertiary Update Vol 14 No 22

The Court of Appeal ruled yesterday that five polytechnics must bargain site-based collective agreements with their staff members who are union members. The five polytechnics – NorthTec, Unitec, Wintec, Bay of Plenty Polytechnic and Whitireia – had refused to bargain site-based agreements after union members voted in February that was the type of collective agreement they wanted, and not a multi-employer agreement as the employers wanted.

The decision is another major legal victory for TEU members, who have been vindicated by the courts virtually every time they have had to contest a point of law with these five employers.

TEU national secretary Sharn Riggs said belonging to a large national union means these members are able employ the best possible legal representation and to take their employers in the highest courts.

“We have been able to do that” she said, “but it begs the question as to how these employers can justify the use of significant amounts of tax payers’ money on legal fees pursuing this issue.”

“The decision confirms what TEU members had always believed – that they should not be made to negotiate a collective agreement in a form that they did not want. ”

“Our members can finally get on with the important business of negotiating a collective agreement. They just want what members at WITT recently got – a fair pay rise and no loss of core working conditions.”

TEU members are continuing to sign a petition, already signed by over 500, calling on the employers at the five polytechnics to put aside their costly legal challenges and negotiate a collective employment agreement on their site.

Also in Tertiary Update this week:

1. Public tertiary institutions employ private lobbyist
2. Tertiary education costs rise dramatically
3. Engineers needed to build ultra-fast broadband
4. Commission sets research targets

Other news

The Pay Equity Challenge, a coalition of business and community groups and unions, is welcoming Catherine Delahunty’s new Equal Pay Bill as an effective  way of dealing to the wage gap between men’s and women’s pay. “This bill modernises our approach to equal pay, and will help to give women the information they need to ensure that they are being paid fairly,” said coalition spokesperson Rebecca Matthews.

Massey University has decided not to appeal an Employment Court ruling that requires it to share information with staff whom it chooses to dismiss or make redundant during a restructuring process.

About 14,000 final-year students from across New Zealand’s eight universities will be surveyed this year – and again in two, five and 10 years’ time. Commissioned by Universities New Zealand and supported by government funding, the study aims to determine the ongoing impact of a tertiary education on graduates’ lives – Universities New Zealand.

When South Korea’s governing party revived a plan to “halve” tuition fees and supply extra public funding for students, it might have expected a warm welcome from an education-focused society with one of the highest university participation rates in the world. Instead, it served only to exacerbate existing discontent over high fees. Students from about 400 institutions joined a strike last week, taking to the streets instead of attending classes – Time Higher Education Supplement.

A European university group has unleashed a damning assessment of the most popular university rankings, claiming they ignore up to 99 per cent of the world’s 17,000-odd universities and incite some to manipulate or even misrepresent data. It says the best-known global rankings discourage diversity, with the top 500 place getters essentially pre-determined – The Australian.

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TEU Tertiary Update is published weekly on Thursdays and distributed freely to members of the Tertiary Education Union and others. You can subscribe to Tertiary Update by email or feed reader. Back issues are available on the TEU website. Direct inquiries should be made to Stephen Day.

Industry training standards body ETITO and the engineers’ union EPMU are both questioning the country’s supply of skilled workers to service and maintain the government’s planned fibre optic networks. ETITO, which sets the qualification standards for telecommunications workers, says that industry needs to think about training people now rather than waiting until they are needed.

Ironically, in the last year, a number of polytechnics around New Zealand have made electrical engineering tutors redundant including NorthTec, MIT, Weltec and SIT.

“We can’t quantify the inevitable spike in demand for cablers and cable-jointers until start hiring and training,” ETITO corporate relations manager Michael Frampton told the New Zealand Herald, “but certainly anecdotal feedback from training providers indicates that the industry is very much relying on its ability to train people quickly when the demand presents.”

However, Communications Minister Steven Joyce said there was no immediate skill shortage and funding for more training could be made available by the Tertiary Education Commission if required.

The ultra-fast broadband scheme and rural broadband initiative are to be rolled out over the next eight years and will need to be built and upgraded by engineers with a specialised knowledge of fibre optic cables.

EPMU national secretary Andrew Little is concerned that without an adequate supply of trained workers Telecom through its maintenance arm Chorus will recruit cheap, foreign labour to build its planned fibre optic networks. Chorus has won the first contracts to build the networks.

“This kind of project is a great opportunity to create jobs for New Zealand workers and invest in our local skills base”, said Mr Little. “Any sensible government would want to make sure that this expertise stays in New Zealand.”

Telecom’s lines arm, Chorus, will build most of the network but refused to tell the New Zealand Herald if it had enough skilled workers to roll out the fibre cables.

Thanks to Dan Chace @ Flickr for the photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/zebraman/430328206/in/photostream/

Media Release
Tertiary Education Union
22 June 2011

The Court of Appeal ruled today that five polytechnics must bargain site-based collective agreements with their staff members who are union members. The five polytechnics – NorthTec, Unitec, Wintec, Bay of Plenty Polytechnic and Whitireia – had refused to bargain site-based agreements after union members voted in February that was the type of collective agreement they wanted, and not a multi-employer agreement as the employers wanted.

The five chief executives refused to bargain the form of agreement union members had voted for, with legal challenges first at the Employment Court and then the Court of Appeal.

TEU members, whose collective agreement expired in November 2010 and have not received a pay rise of any significance for over three years, are delighted that this latest legal victory means they can now begin negotiations.

TEU national secretary Sharn Riggs said the decision confirmed what TEU members had always believed – that they should not be made to negotiate a collective agreement in a form that they did not want.

“This means our members can finally get on with the important business of negotiating a collective agreement that gives them a fair pay rise and no loss of core working conditions.”

Over 500 TEU members have signed a petition in the last week calling on the employers at the five polytechnics to put aside the costly legal challenges and negotiate a collective employment agreement on their site.

For more information:

Sharn Riggs, TEU national secretary, 027 443 8768 or 04 801 5098
Stephen Day, TEU communications officer, 021 2900 734 or 04 801 4792
http://www.teu.ac.nz