The vice-chancellor at the University of Auckland does not have the right to review academic staff promotions criteria without involving TEU members, is the outcome of an important Employment Relations Authority decision this week.

TEU won its authority case against the vice-chancellor on Wednesday, when the authority found that the vice-chancellor engaged in a review of promotions criteria before he informed the union, and that he was obliged to inform the union of his intention to review policies.

The case revolved around the 2010-11 collective agreement negotiations during which a stalemate between TEU members and the vice-chancellor broke when both sides agreed to take important employment policies relating to promotion criteria, research and study leave, and outside activities out of the collective agreement. They replaced those policies with clauses requiring the participation of TEU members in any process to review the policies.

Following that agreement the vice-chancellor continued a review already in process of the university’s academic promotions criteria. He consulted overseas universities and his deputies and deans (VCDD) for several months before notifying TEU. In 2012, he told TEU branch co-president Paul Taillon that he did not want to start a fresh analysis of the current policy and that his preference was “for the review to seek feedback on and consider a proposal that I have developed in collaboration with the deans.”

The review proceeded on the vice-chancellor’s terms, and without any TEU involvement. TEU challenged the process by which the vice-chancellor developed his new policy and advised its members that they were still covered by the old policy not the vice-chancellor’s new one, which the union considered illegitimate.

The authority found that the collective agreement binds the vice-chancellor to inform TEU of his intent to review a policy, and that obligation arises prior to any review commencing. It also found that is not what the vice-chancellor did.

Paul Taillon says the decision defends important employment rights for TEU members.

“The clauses we negotiated into our collective agreement in 2011 say just what we believed they said when we drafted them. Those clauses give our members at the University of Auckland real assurance that employment policies cannot be changed without their participation in the whole process.”

Paul Taillon says the decision means that all TEU members are and always have been covered by the existing Academic Grades-Standards and Criteria policy.

“However, as an issue yet to be decided, non-members who are not covered by the collective agreement may not be afforded that privilege.”

The Government now proposes to change the law, not only to overturn this employment court decision but to make it even harder for workers to access their own personal employment information. The effect will be to shut down employees’ opportunity to comment on their employer’s proposal to make them redundant.

In the 2011 case two academics involved in a restructuring, contested a reduced number of positions along with several other candidates. Both were unsuccessful and both applied for information about the decision (including scoring sheets for all candidates).

The Employment Court found that, while much of the information was confidential, an employer cannot withhold important information about employees from those employees simply by saying it is confidential. Giving workers the best possible opportunity to have meaningful input leads to better decisions.

The government’s Employment Relations Amendment Bill, which is currently before the industrial relations select committee and open to public submission, will change employers’ duty of good faith so that they are no longer required to share significant information about why they are making an employee redundant.

TEU members and others can make submissions on the Bill here.

The survey is part of a wider campaign to limit the use of casual employment agreements in tertiary education says TEU national president Lesley Francey.

“At this stage we know anecdotally that many people are doing what should be classified as permanent jobs but are missing important employment rights that permanent staff get because they are on casual or insecure employment agreements instead of permanent agreements. What we do not know though is exactly how widespread the problem is. This survey will help us quantify the problem.”

The survey, which was launched earlier this week, has so far had over 1500 responses and has also attracted comment from many staff in permanent positions. For instance, a permanent employee at Auckland University of Technology wrote to say several of her colleagues are repeatedly employed on rolling hourly paid agreements. One works many extra hours  and gets no additional pay for it. She knows two women who are employed each semester at short notice to teach classes.

“They’re on short term hourly agreements every time, only paid by the hour for their teaching but still expected to show up to staff meetings and other departmental meetings for which they are not paid.”

She also is aware of a postgraduate student at the University of Auckland who has been employed on a rolling casual contract for four years in a specific role with specialised duties. He is on call on the weekends and works evenings for a casual contract hourly rate and never knows from week to week how much work he might be asked to do.

If TEU members want to complete the survey and have not done so they can do so online until 1 July

Jami Lee-Ross’ Employment Relations (Continuity of Labour) Amendment Bill would overturn section 97 of the Employment Relations Act, which prevents the use of volunteers, contractors or other casual employees during strikes and lockouts. Since the Bill emerged from the parliamentary ballot both the Māori Party and Peter Dunne have stated that they will not support it, joining the Greens, Mana and Labour’s opposition to the bill. That means that Jami Lee-Ross now needs the support of opposition party New Zealand First if his bill is to progress.

NZ First leader Winston Peters told the New Zealand Herald his party would discuss the bill at its caucus next Tuesday. He said the party sometimes supported bills to get to select committees so the public could have their say.

CTU Secretary Peter Conway noted that there are very few strikes in New Zealand and there is no need for a law change.

“In 2011, the latest data available, there, were only 12 work stoppages. This is the lowest number since the series began in 1986.”

Meanwhile CTU president Helen Kelly is warning that union members need to be more concerned about the strike breaking power of the government’s Employment Relations Amendment Bill than this private member’s bill.

“Don’t get distracted by the Jami Lee-Ross Bill, it is serious too but if you can’t strike at all – the issue of replacement labour becomes the sideshow in this larger debate about the future of work in New Zealand.”

A proposed new employment law is likely to drive down the wages of workers in sectors that are particularly vulnerable to exploitation: all cleaning and food services plus caretaking, orderly and laundry services in certain sectors such as health, aged care and education.

Universities and polytechnics that tender out cleaning or food services could use these new laws to force down tender offers from contractors, and thus force down the wages of their cleaners.
Under the current law, when these services are contracted out, the workers have the right to transfer to the new employer with their existing terms and conditions of employment.

The new law proposes that incoming employers with less than 20 employees should be exempt from all these requirements. There is a big incentive for employers to form companies with 19 employees, since they can undercut other tenderers for contracts by telling the workers: ‘take these lower rates or get another job.’

TEU deputy secretary Nanette Cormack says employers that use this law to pay their workers less, win a race to the bottom on workers’ pay and rights. They will be able to employ everyone on 90-day no rights trial periods if they like.

Some employer groups have also expressed concern that the law change will drive down pay and reward ‘cowboy’ employers rather than good employers. For instance Patrick Lee-Lo, president of Building Services Contractors New Zealand, which represents cleaning contractors, says the law changes will lead to low-paid workers being replaced by cheaper contractors, or having their pay and conditions reduced for the same job, when a contract is re-tendered or a company changes hands.

“This will play into irresponsible operators’ hands and make cleaning staff even more vulnerable, which works against what the legislation was designed to do.”

Parliament’s industrial relations select committee will probably see the government’s proposed new employment law for the first time today, and will schedule a date for the public to make submissions on the bill.

Also in Tertiary Update this week:

1. Student: staff ratios climb slightly
2. Younger women take growing role in workforce
3. Wānanga boss meets TEU
4. Massey students say money pressures affect their diet

Other news

Trade unionists have labelled a suggestion by the Employers and Manufacturers’ Association to double the current 90-day trial period for employees as “disgraceful” – Stuff

IRD is running an advertising campaign telling parents to do something about their adult kids who are overseas and are not paying back their student loans fast enough – TEU Facebook

Britain should revive polytechnics in a bid to solve its technical skills deficit and offer a pathway to industry for students not suited to academic university courses, experts have urged. Polytechnic status was abolished by John Major’s Conservative government in 1992 when all higher education institutions were given the green light to become universities – The BBC

Oxford University’s willingness to accept donations and form partnerships with people and businesses that are mired in controversy puts it at the bottom of the ethical league table – The Guardian

TEU national president Lesley Francey says nineteen or twenty students to each academic is too high, and puts pressure on people trying to teach and assess.

“Polytechnic trades tutors trying to teach practical skills such as plumbing don’t just stand in front of a full class and lecture. They need to get around their students, talk to them, and help them. With that number of students it’s impossible to deliver the quality of teaching that our members want to deliver. Meanwhile we hear stories of some tutors in universities with tutorials of 60 or more students. That’s not a tutorial, that’s a lecture.”

The ministry derives its statistics from information that tertiary education institutions provided to it in August last year. Surprisingly the results differ from similar statistics derived from the institutions’ own 2011 annual reports, in which universities and polytechnics report having more academics and thus lower student:staff ratios.

“What this data shows,” says TEU women’s vice president Cat Pausé, “is that women, and especially younger women, are playing an increasingly important role in the public tertiary education workforce. The ministry counts 36,000 people working in public tertiary education and over 20,000 of them are women.”

“We need to make sure we are meeting the employment needs of these women.  We need to look far more seriously at issues of pay and employment equity, parental leave, career pathways and job security, especially for part-time and casual workers.”

Since 1999 the number of women have grown from 44 percent of the total academic workforce in public tertiary institutions to 50 percent.

Cat Pausé says individual institutions need plans to meet the working needs of diverse groups of women, with different ethnicities, economic wealth, sexualities and cultural backgrounds.

“Women comprise the majority of workers on campuses now because we are so diverse.”

Women employed in all jobs in public tertiary education institutions are much more likely to be in part-time work than their male peers. Two out of every five women are in part-time work.

Women employees are also younger on average than men.  There are nearly 4000 more women under the age of fifty working in public tertiary institutions than there are men under fifty.

TEU is working to set up a young women’s network.  Anyone interested in joining should contact TEU women’s officer Suzanne McNabb.

Early in February, collective agreement negotiations had stalled on a pay offer from the wānanga of just 0.5 percent. Based on preliminary figures,  last year the wānanga made a surplus of $7.7 million. That is a net surplus ratio of 5 percent – the maximum that a tertiary provider should return based on the Tertiary Education Commission’s guidelines.

TEU members wrote to the wānanga’s human resources manager asking to meet with the pouhere to discuss both this pay offer and the wānanga’s propensity for offering different terms and conditions to employees depending on which union they chose to belong to – TEU or TUIA.

Initially a meeting was arranged for March, then cancelled while Bentham Ohia travelled overseas. TEU’s negotiation team contacted the wānanga’s human resources manager in March, April and May by email and phone trying to arrange an alternative date.

TEU advocate Dean Scott said it is unfortunate that Bentham Ohia’s departure is unfortunate and his contribution, commitment, and legacy is exemplary and commendable. However, after four months, it was frustrating that wānanga management had not been willing to put aside even an hour to meet with the representatives of 112 staff to resolve the outstanding issues in employment negotiations.

Following a further letter in last week, the pouhere has agreed to meet TEU’s team before he departs. The members hope the meeting will ‘facilitate and expedite’ the stalled negotiations.

Palmerston North charity free food store Just Zilch is feeding a growing number of students alongside homeless people and families in desperate situations, director Rebecca Culver told the Manawatu Standard.

The study also found that 40 percent of students admitted finances are a significant source of worry and hassle for them. 11.5 percent said they struggle to make ends meet with 4.1 percent saying they had serious money problems.

One in ten students said they could not manage on a day-to-day basis without borrowing money.

Fin-Ed Centre director Dr Pushpa Wood says the centre plans to run financial health checks for the next few years and the data collected will help inform the centre’s future work.

“Our longitudinal study’s preliminary findings show that young New Zealanders often know the key elements of good financial management, but may not put this knowledge into practice. This is consistent with the findings of the student financial health check where we found positive attitudes towards saving, yet more than a third said their finances had led to changed eating habits,” said Pushpa Wood.

“Kauae runga, kauae raro – together we create the whole

Wednesday 3 July 2013

General/Allied/Professional Staff Day celebrates the contribution general/allied/professional staff members make to the union and to their workplace.  The day is also an opportunity to introduce the TEU to potential new members, and to highlight issues that may affect general/allied/professional staff.

The theme this year is “Kauae runga, kauae raro – together we create the whole”.  This refers to the importance of recognising the interrelationship between general/allied/professional staff roles and academic staff roles – both are needed to ensure that our institutions and our union flourish.

At a very practical level, one of the important elements to ensuring the success of the day will be involvement from both general/allied/professional and academic members.  This is particularly so for our ITP branches, where general/allied/professional staff numbers are smaller.

As with previous years, there are probably two ways of shaping the activities and focus for the day (or a combination of the two) – a celebratory approach and a campaigning approach.

A celebratory approach

This would focus on celebrating the contributions of general/allied/professional staff to the union and the institution, through a range of activities.  These activities could highlight how general/allied/professional staff members contribute to the TEU, and what the union is doing to progress general/allied/professional staff issues (locally and/or nationally).

A campaigning approach

Branches may want to emphasise a particular local or national issue on the day and incorporate this into their recruitment activities and events.  A very topical campaign that branches may want to focus on is the “Living Wage” campaign. TEU is an active supporter of this campaign.

*Some institutions use the term “allied staff” or “professional staff” – the publicity material that TEU national office sends to branches can be tailored to reflect whichever terminology is appropriate for your institution.

Resources

Below are resources that branches can use to prepare for their activities. To download any of them right click on the hyperlink and and choose “save target as” (Internet Explorer) or “save link as” (Chrome or Firefox)