We will update this page over the next few days with TEU’s analysis and comment on Budget 2012, as well as links to coverage of tertiary education-related and employment-related Budget news.

TEU Commentary

Budget 2012 preview

Finance minister Bill English will unveil an austere ‘zero’ 2012 budget next week. The zero, budget (meaning there will be no overall increase in spending, even to account for inflation) is being preceded by several pre-budget announcements highlighting some areas that will see increased spending as well as preparing voters for some of the less popular cuts. [Read more]

No more money in budget, just shuffling and cuts

The prime minister, John Key, and the minister of tertiary education skills and employment, Steven Joyce, this week foreshadowed several tertiary education budget initiatives. Mr Joyce told Radio New Zealand that he would be shifting funding away from humanities and commerce towards maths, science, engineering and technology. [Read more]

Govt signals another austerity budget

The minister of finance, Bill English, announced this week that he will spend $800 million less in this year’s budget than the Prime Minister John Key was forecasting only six weeks ago. That could be ominous for tertiary education come next month’s budget warns TEU national president Dr Sandra Grey. [Read more]

Media coverage

Overpressure in education – an inevitable consequence of payment by results. A protest and a warning to parents.

A Victoria University TEU member sent this to us a few weeks ago – it seems particularly pertinent today given Minister Hekia Parata’s recent call for performance pay for teachers!

It seems Mr Taylor may have been ahead of his time – or perhaps Ms Parata a few years late?

Labour Minister Kate Wilkinson is proposing extensivechanges to employment law, which include allowing employers to walk away from collective agreement negotiations. Cabinet approved the changes this week and they will likely go before Parliament this year.

TEU national secretary Sharn Riggs says the changes will have a huge impact upon people working in tertiary education.

“Removing the employer’s duty to conclude bargaining is among the worst of the changes – it would mean that we would probably not now have collective agreements in place at the ex ITP-MECA branches – Wintec, NorthTec, Unitec, Whitireia, and Bay of Plenty Polytechnic. It may also have prevented us resolving the long-running dispute at Auckland University last year. Under these changes the employers would have simply been able to say that they had tried their best but could not reach agreement. The effect of that would be that all our members would be sitting on individual agreements with no ability to collectively negotiate a pay increase or changes to their conditions.”

The government also intends to remove a provision that guarantees all new employees will be employed on the terms and conditions of the collective agreement for the first 30 days of their employment.

Ms Riggs says this will mean that new workers (who may not know or be told that there is a collective agreement in place at their institution) could be offered any employment conditions at all.

“We know now that employees usually stay on the conditions to which they are first appointed. If those are no longer the union negotiated conditions then new employees could be appointed on conditions that undermine the union conditions. This will enable the employer by default to introduce new conditions into the workplace – for example they could slowly erode timetabled teaching hours.”

The minister, Ms Wilkinson says that the changes are modest and pragmatic, and will increase productivity, and help create higher paying jobs.

However, the Council of Trade Unions says the changes being considered are the worst attack on workers’ rights since the 1990s and will give employees few options. The CTU says the changes would have enabled Ports of Auckland employer to walk away from collective agreement negotiations and proceed with redundancy plans.

Ms Riggs agrees.

“These law changes threaten to de-unionise tertiary education employees, and drive down pay and employment conditions. They are bad for productivity and worse for any vision New Zealand has of being a high-wage economy.”

Also in Tertiary Update this week:

1. Petition to keep university councils democratic
2. MIT nixes fundraising BBQ
3. Budget 2012 preview
4. Commission agrees with TEU’s PBRF advice

Other news

Tomorrow is Pink Shirt Day, an international campaign aimed to raise awareness about the power to prevent bullying. Pink Shirt Day aims to reduce bullying by celebrating diversity and promoting the development of positive social relationships.

Canterbury University students are plan to hand a petition against the proposed closure of three arts courses to vice-chancellor Rod Carr tomorrow and say they will not leave his office until he receives the document. You Are UC student group spokesperson Morgan Hodgson said that on Friday the group would hold a “petition crawl” at the university, ending up at Carr’s office - The Press

Australian National University management has backed away from its plans to ”spill” the positions of 32 of its tenured and permanent academic and administrative staff at the School of Music, bowing to union pressure to use formal redundancy provisions instead. The decision came as 1000 music-lovers crowded into ANU’s Union Court yesterday to protest against the proposed cuts in one of the biggest and loudest rallies in the university’s history -Canberra Times

Contrary to the Heraldeditorial, the biggest factor in the University of Auckland’s slip in world rankings is not student numbers. From 2006 to 2012, Auckland’s THE ranking fell from 46th to 82nd, yet student numbers increased only nine percent. At the same time, Government funding slowed to below the rate of inflation. Without proper investment, New Zealand academics will continue to move overseas for higher wages, research cannot be adequately carried out and students cannot receive the best tuition - Arena Williams and Sam Bookman

The University of Canterbury’s school of music is in crisis and needs to rapidly reverse a student decline to survive, a new report says. To fund a wages’ bill of $1.4 million, the school needed more than 180 fulltime-equivalent students. It had 85 this year. The university said yesterday there was no possibility the music school would close. “This city lives and breathes music and we know the school of music is a critical part of the music community,” pro-vice-chancellor Ed Adelson said -The Press

The minister, Mr Joyce, last week said he wants to reform university councils, and that they currently are large and unwieldy.

In 2009 the government pushed through similar changes for polytechnic councils. Those changes reduced councils down to eight members, four of whom are directly appointed by the minister and the first four choose the remaining four. The minister appoints the chairperson and gives her or him the casting vote. Council members may also sit on multiple councils. Staff representatives, student representatives, union representatives and iwi representatives all lost their seats on the new councils.

TEU’s petition argues that imposing similar rules on universities would threaten their independence and academic freedom as it has done in the ITP sector.

TEU national president Sandra Grey says it is a myth that good business leaders make good leaders of public institutions such as universities and polytechnics:

“And it is even more of a myth that just because someone is a business leader they are good at governing – we need look no further than the global financial crisis to see what a good job publicly governed democratic and representative university councils have been doing compared to so called entrepreneurial and streamlined business directors.”

“Universities have a legal duty to challenge received wisdom and be the critic and conscience of society – including challenging government. How can they do that when the majority of their council owe their seats to the minister who appointed them?” asked Dr Grey.

So instead, TEU members at MIT will use their lunchtime to travel to see the locked-out union members and their families to ‘shout’ them lunch directly.

The Talleys’-owned AFFCO meatworks company has locked out over 1000 of its workers after  bargaining with union members for only 10 hours. Most have been locked out now for nearly three months. The workers have been without pay since the lockout started and their union, MWU, estimates that 5000 children are affected by the lockout.

TEU organiser Chan Dixon says MIT’s TEU members are simply trying to support workers in their local community.

“The on-going lockout of AFFCO workers by Talleys is one of the most brutal attacks on working people. We just want to give the workers a chance to feed their families and protect their jobs,” said Ms Dixon.

The zero, budget (meaning there will be no overall increase in spending, even to account for inflation) is being preceded by several pre-budget announcements highlighting  some areas that will see increased spending as well as preparing voters for some of the less popular cuts.

Within tertiary education, Treasury forecasts from December indicated that tertiary education funding for 2013 will fall to be nearly $400 million below 2009 levels and will continue to fall until 2015. It also shows that numbers of funded full-time equivalent students will reach a record level this year (244,000) and will remain significantly above 2009 levels until at least 2016.

Within the confines of a ‘zero’ budget, the minister of tertiary education has already signalled that funding for degree-level science, maths, technology and engineering will be up but that funding for humanities and commerce may be down. Funding for PBRF research will be up, but funding for level and 1 and 2 courses may be down.

The budget’s big news story within tertiary education is likely to be restrictions on student allowances to four years of study, and the requirements to pay back loans more quickly. TEU views both these changes as an attack on equity and accessibility. There is no doubt that limiting people’s access to allowances, and increasing the financial burden that loans place on some people (especially low income earners, or those from low income families) will prevent some people from studying.

However, the other important equity issue is the gradual shift in funding from level 1 and 2 courses to degree and postgraduate study and research. All levels of study are important but the government is choosing to sacrifice the opportunities of first-time learners who are trying to get basic skills so that it can fund high-end research and study.

The other issue of note is that the Mr English appears only to be looking at the expenses side of the ledger in an attempt to balance future budgets (with the exception being he is not re-examining the 2009 tax cuts for New Zealand’s wealthiest earners, which took an estimated $2 billion out of our economy). He is not looking at investing in areas that can create more jobs, more skills and more opportunities – all of which would lead to more tax revenue and less expense for the government. Tertiary education has a critical role to play in solving New Zealand’s financial problems, but it needs support and resources to do it.

TEU’s written submission told the commission staff whose institutions had targeted them in this way suffered limited career progression opportunities and, in some instances, in redundancy.  It supported processes that offer the better protection against using PBRF performance as a rationale for making changes to employment conditions.

Meanwhile, Otago unviersity’s branch co-president Dr Brent Lovelock today told the Otago Daily Times people were losing their jobs because universities were “desperately trying to maintain or improve” their positions on PBRF tables.

“The PBRF process … has put alot of stress on staff and resulted inthe largest number of redundancies,in terms of academic staff, in my memory and I have been here for 12 years,” he said.

Associate editor of the New Zealand Journal of Psychology Associate Prof Neville Blampied told theOtago Daily Times PBRF was distorting research by discouraging some academics away from studying local issues.

“[Some may] have chosen to study something that is a hot topic internationally … and not to study stuff which is of very local interest but isn’t likely to sell internationally,” Prof Blampied told the paper.

In 2009 the government pushed through similar changes for polytechnic councils. Those changes reduced councils down to eight members, four of whom are directly appointed by the minister and the remaining four are chosen by the first four. The minister appoints the chairperson and gives her or him the casting vote. Council members may also sit on multiple councils. Staff representatives, student representatives, union representatives and iwi representatives all lost their seats on the new councils.

Imposing similar rules on universities would harm their independence and academic freedom. Sign our petition and let Mr Joyce know he should not take away the chance for staff, students and local communities to have a say in the governance of their universities.

Latest Signatures

More information:

• Reform eyes cuts to university councils – The Press
• University council reforms will incur unneeded cost - TEU media release
• You can’t fix what is not broken – no need to change university councils  - TEU guest post on the Standard
• Joyce wants less representation on university councils – Tertiary Update story
• Tertiary governance changes suspect – Otago Daily Times TEU opinion piece
• Petition to keep university councils democratic - Tertiary Update story

Inside, the US has chopped the already minimalist ‘stakeholder presentations’. The US Trade Representative (the Trade Minister), a former Dallas Mayor, turned receipt of a petition of 24,000 people demanding release of the TPPA text into evidence of their openness to ‘stakeholders’ views’! He dismissed a letter from 30 law professors demanding an end to the secrecy, saying there has been an unprecedented level of openness.

Critics registered as stakeholders are using the limited space to  challenge the agressive demands on the table, mainly from the US, and provide increasingly wary negotiators with analyses and proposals to help them to resist these demands. The rally was streamed live into the room of ‘stakeholder’ tables and onto a big screen!

Open Letter from Lawyers says ‘No Investor- Enforcement in TPP’

More than 100 jurists from NZ and other countries involved in the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, including eminent judges Sir Ted Thomas and Sir Owen Woodhouse, and former Speaker of the House Margaret Wilson, sent an open letter to the negotiators calling for the right of investors to sue governments directly to be excluded from the TPP.  Lawyers can still sign on. A specialist website has been created with background information. There was lots of media, including Bryan Gould in the NZ Herald, Jane Kelsey on TV3 and, with Bill Rosenberg, on Court Report. The Herald followed with a bizarre editorial. The mainstream media debate has begun!

Hikoi, Asset Sales and TPPA

The Aotearoa Not for Sale Hikoi stopped in Johnsonville on 3 May to visit the electorate office of Peter Dunne, who holds the key vote on the energy asset sales bill. The Ohariu-Belmont group is keeping the pressure on him, but he doesn’t seem inclined to bow to this. The next day the hikoi was joined by a crowd of over 5000 as they marched to Parliament. After representatives from Labour, NZ First, Green and Mana parties spoke to the crowd, a series of women spoke very eloquently, including Francie, a previously silent immigrant of 20 years, who has been galvanised by the Johnsonville campaign.

Protests Continue in Wellington

Zombies danced outside the Wellington Stock Exchange on Thursday May 10 drawing attention to privatisations, asset sales and the TPP. A very long anti-TPP banner imitated the rolling stock exchange neon information that circles the building endlessly.

Asset Sales Petition

The petition against asset sales is available everywhere. Links were clearly made to the TPPA at the launch at Turnbull House, Wellington on 10 May. Make sure you sign. You could volunteer to help with signatures.

SOE Minister Guarantees no Investor-State disputes in TPPA

In a Radio NZ interview Tony Ryall said “you can be quite sure that the government is not going to agree to provisions that mean any foreign company can come and litigate everyday governing decisions by the New Zealand government to the detriment of the people of New Zealand. Why would you agree to that?”. So we now expect him to join the campaign to against investor-state disputes in the TPPA and all other FTAs …

TPPA on Intellectual Property threatens Sovereignty

A blog by Susan Chalmers of Internet NZ, from the TPPA negotiations in Dallas, took issue with the trade-off John Key outlined at the NZ-US Council: if NZ gets better access to US dairy and meat markets, the US gets to change NZ’s intellectual property laws to suit, namely, the film and music industries. NZ is then effectively stripped of its sovereignty when it comes to shaping aspects of its own IP policy.

NZ-US Council Conference Downplays Prospects for TPPA

The NZ-US Council’s 10^th anniversary conference at the Sky City Casino was dominated by the TPP negotiations – not surprising, as it was formed to push for a NZ-US FTA. A report that the TPPA would boost the NZ economy by $2 billion wasn’t taken seriously. An American business lobbyist gave a sober assessment of progress in the TPP talks, citing a ”chasm” between leaders’ ambitions and their negotiators’ positions and asking ”How can any product, service or core rule be excluded from the final package by one or more countries without the house of cards falling? We do not believe it can.” John Key talked down the supposed benefits and timeline. Former Labour Trade Minister Phil Goff was still pushing his old pro-FTA line. Seems a bit out of touch.

What next? – Lots of people are asking what they can do to spread awareness and  mobilise more people. That is great! We know people need information and resources, but we also want to encourage people to think about what they and their networks can do and how we can support them.

Please share TPP activities or good articles: contact Mary Ellen oconstance@gmail.com (the bulletin) and/or Hannah tppwatch@gmail.com (the website); Facebook page, Stop Stealing New Zealand and websites www.tppwatch.org and tppdigest.org

Thanks! Mary-Ellen O’Connor and Jane Kelsey on behalf of TPPWatch

–
TPP Watch
www.tppwatch.org

 The purpose of General Staff Day is to celebrate the contribution general staff members make to the union and to their workplace.  The day is also an opportunity to introduce TEU to potential new members, and to highlight issues that may affect general staff.

Theme

In 2012, the union as a whole has made recruitment across our branches a priority.  In response to this, the general staff sector group has sought support from council and branches for an additional focus on recruitment of general staff in the institutes of technology/polytechnic (ITPs) sector.

General Staff Day is an excellent opportunity to showcase the TEU to potential new members.  The general staff sector group and the branch president’s forum have therefore agreed that the focus for this year’s activities should be recruitment, including a specific focus on some ITP branches (mainly where we already have some general staff members and/or a general staff collective agreement).  One of the very important elements to ensuring the success of the day is involvement from both general and academic members.  This is particularly so for our ITP branches, where general staff numbers are smaller.

Ideas for activities

Wherever you can, try to think of ways that the event can be used to encourage non-members to participate – and have plenty of TEU membership forms on hand to sign new members up on the day.  “Bring a non-union friend” is a great way to involve prospective members in the day’s activities.