The Taranaki Daily Newsreports that student enrolments at WITT are up by 50 percent compared to this time last year and chief executive Richard Handley is attributing PEI’s demise to part of that increase.

PEI announced its closure last month after it failed to secure significant funding from the Tertiary Education Commission because of its below par course completion rates.

Mr Handley told the Daily News that there would be would be teaching jobs at WITT available for many of the staff at PEI who lost their jobs last month.

“PEI staff are now being identified by WITT as internal staff when they apply for jobs so there is more opportunity for them to be employed.”

He said many teaching jobs were only advertised internally if there were skills within WITT to cover the position and under the changes that would include former PEI staff.

“We have advertised seven jobs externally and extended the application closure date to allow PEI staff time to apply and we also have about five internal jobs they will be able to apply for.”

Mr Handley said he welcomed all interest from PEI staff and students and where appropriate PEI staff were encouraging their students to enrol with WITT.

TEU national secretary Sharn Riggs said there were real benefits for ex-PEI teachers who found jobs at WITT, because they would now have the choice of belonging to a union that offered a collective agreement that protected working conditions and pay.

“Those staff have been through a lot but now, hopefully, with the chance to belong to a strong national union they will have greater job security and protection.”

She also applauded WITT’s CEO on his decision to treat these staff as internal applicants.

Academic staff who are members of TEU will be voting on a new collective agreement over the next two weeks after their negotiating team reached an agreement with the vice-chancellor today.

Academics at the university are currently all on individual employment agreements, after their collective agreement expired earlier this year. Academics had to undertake a sustained and determined campaign of industrial action over the past year. Three days of facilitated bargaining before the Employment Relations Authority earlier this month helped the two sides reach an agreement.

The new agreement will include a set of principles or “collars” to govern those issues that had been at the heart of the dispute between union members and university management -  policies on research and study leave, academic standards, grades and criteria, outside work, and a revised discipline procedure. If university management wishes to alter the existing policies, any new policy will have to comply with those principles. The overall effect is to remove some details regarding these policies from the agreement, but strengthen the principles that govern those policies.

The review of the research and study leave, academic standards, grades and criteria and outside work policies will be subject to a process that involves TEU. The vice-chancellor also recognises more generally in the settlement that the union has a role to play in the academic governance of the university and provides mechanisms by which TEU can exercise that role.

TEU members will also receive a 4 percent salary increase and a $2,000 (gross) lump sum payment, which will be in lieu of back pay. A further 2 percent salary increase will be paid from 1 February 2012. This is significant because that it is the first time in five years that a salary increase has been negotiated during bargaining by the union and not been announced by the vice-chancellor to non-members outside of the bargaining. Annual leave will increase to 5 weeks (inclusive of Easter Tuesday and the last weekday before Christmas).

Also in Tertiary Update this week:

1. Government’s new tertiary policy punishes failure
2. ‘The vandals at the gate’
3. Rally calls for education to be election issue
4. Two South Island polytechnics settle new collective agreements
5. Auckland general staff vote on new ‘fair’ pay model

Other news

Although good reasons can always be put forward for more bureaucratic requirements, university management must be wary of possible downsides on staff morale and effectiveness. All the time spent here can be time not spent researching and teaching – Otago Daily Times editorial

Minister for Tertiary Education, Steven Joyce, has confirmed the merger of Whitireia NZ and Wellington Institute of Technology (Weltec) councils. “It is an exciting development that will provide opportunities for the institutions to work more closely together for the benefit of students right across the Wellington region,” says Mr Joyce

Photos of Te Uepu hui on 20 November and TEU annual conference 21-22 November

The University of California chancellor has apologised to students for police use of pepper spray against campus protesters in a standoff captured by video and widely replayed on television and the internet. The pepper-spraying last week led to the suspensions of the campus police chief and two officers, and thrust the normally quiet, conservative and mostly apolitical UC Davis campus to the forefront of anti-Wall Street Occupy protests nationwide – The Guardian

“[University] Rankings are a lot like political polling and research in this respect – they can be a useful indicator of performance and add a sense of sporting competition to media coverage, but trouble emerges if they become the central motivator of decision makers,” Monash University vice chancellor Ed Byrne has warned – The Australian. 

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Authorised by Sharn Riggs, Tertiary Education Union, 8th Floor, Education House 178-182 Willis St, Wellington 6011.

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.

Statistics New Zealand attributed this rise to recently settled collective employment agreement increase for secondary school teachers.

Secondary teachers with a level 7 qualification and recognised teaching qualification now have a starting rate of $47,023 and a top rate of $71,000. By comparison, the starting rate for an adademic staff member at NorthTec, for example, is $41,649 and a senior academic staff member at NorthTec has a top rate of $68,521.

TEU national secretary Sharn Riggs says what the statistics show is that sectors that are highly unionised, such as in education, are getting more consistent, and higher, pay rises on average than other sectors.

“But there is still some way to go in the current environment where too many employers in tertiary education are using pressure from the State Services Commission as an excuse to keep pay rates low.”

More broadly, CTU economist Bill Rosenberg warns that the 2.0 percent increase in the Labour Cost Index for the year to September means that wages are still falling behind price increases. Prices increased 4.6 percent in the same period, including about 2.1 percent due to the GST increase.

Dr Rosenberg noted, “56 percent of people got pay rises in the last year. Those who did got a median rise of 3.0 percent and an average of 3.6 percent. So those people who got a rise didn’t keep up with the rise in prices.”

“Some people have had compensation for the rising prices from tax cuts, but this was heavily weighted to higher incomes. People on lower incomes will be feeling the effects of the price rises much more strongly,” said Dr Rosenberg.

Statistics New Zealand has noted that students who left tertiary education with level 5 to 7 certificates or diplomas earned 16 percent more than high school leavers did. Meanwhile leavers with level 4 certificates earned only four percent more.

However, TEU national secretary Sharn Riggs says it is important that Treasury recognise that the question is it raises is mostly one about New Zealand’s low wage economy.

“A comparatively high proportion New Zealand’s population have tertiary education qualifications compared to other OECD countries,” says Ms Riggs. But many of them are sub-degree level qualifications, and employers in New Zealand simply are not paying enough for the quality of teaching and learning that goes into those qualifications.

“What we do not want to see is Treasury blaming employers’ unwillingness to pay for people’s qualifications as a reflection on the quality of those qualifications or the people teaching them,” said Ms Riggs.

“Most countries that have low levels of private return on tertiary education tended to be with high levels of economic equality, such as Denmark, Sweden and Norway, so a low level of private benefit from tertiary education should not necessarily be a bad thing, because there are also massive public benefits from tertiary education. However, unlike those countries, it is not high overall wages and salaries that are driving a low level of private return on tertiary education, but low overall wages.”

“The solution lies with employers and politicians, not teachers,” said Ms Riggs.

Ms Kelly said “the policy meets New Zealand’s obligations to the International Labour Organisation.  Around the world, the reduction of the right to collective bargaining is directly correlated  with the growing gap between rich and poor and the decline in living standards for working people.”

“The policy announced today will give workers the genuine choice of being covered by a collective which will directly relate to the standard terms and conditions already established  in the industry and employers within an industry that use exploitative terms and conditions to compete with good employers, will no longer be able to do that,” said Ms Kelly.

TEU national secretary Sharn Riggs said the concept that every industry and sector has a set of minimum working conditions and basic working rights is “simple fairness” and will, at long last mean bad employers are not rewarded at the expense of good employers.

“It would have a positive impact in the tertiary education sector” Ms Riggs said.

Labour Party Leader Mr Goff said the current system is not working:

“The super wealthy have increased their wealth by $7 billion and top chief executives received pay rises well above inflation,” he said.

“But the vast majority of Kiwis were worse off than they were three years ago, with Statistics New Zealand indicating last week that inflation rose 9 per cent and incomes rose only 2.5 per cent in that period.”

This is one of the key issues TEU National President Sandra Grey and National Secretary Sharn Riggs are currently debating in South Africa’s Cape Town, at the Education International 6th World Congress.

Education International, the global body for education unions, believes that, in many cases, the profit motive means that resources move from the direct delivery of education to administration and marketing, and cost-reduction receives higher priority than quality improvement.

Dr Grey says vocational education and training is a vital component of any education system.

The congress will be affirming this week that VET should be available to students at all stages of life. It provides essential skills and equips individuals with the necessary technical expertise and broader competences to be successful in the labour market and to participate in civic life. VET may also provide pathways for those to pursue further and higher education opportunities.

Education International affiliates will be voting on a policy statement that asserts international agencies, governments and the trade union movement need to recognise the importance of VET. Education International will commit to lobbying and campaigning for the professional and trade union rights of VET teachers and for VET systems that are publicly funded, of high quality, accessible, and that promote equal opportunities for all.

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.

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.

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

Prime Minister John Key said yesterday that, if re-elected, a National-led Government would introduce further changes to employment law.

National Radio reported that the Prime Minister was reluctant to spell out what changes National might make to employment law, refusing to say whether they include further restrictions on collective bargaining. However, he says that trade unions will not be happy.

Journalists and unions are speculating that one likely post-election policy that a National-led government might introduce is their 2008 policy to enable workers to bargain collectively without having to belong to a union. After the 2008 election, the National-led government assured the Council of Trade Unions that it would not proceed with this policy during this term.

Peter Conway, CTU Secretary, said, “we have already seen a raft of changes including removal of appeal rights against unfair dismissal, restrictions on union access to workplaces and making the fourth week of annual leave tradable for cash. There is legislation in Parliament making meal and refreshment breaks negotiable and the ACC scheme is under sustained attack.”

“The Government should spell out the further changes they are planning so that voters have a clear understanding of what they are planning if re-elected.”

TEU national secretary Sharn Riggs says that the changes the government introduced last year are already encouraging some employers in the tertiary education sector to behave poorly towards their unionised employees.

“Some employers are already attempting to limit union members’ ability to meet with their union representatives. Some have refused to rule out using the 90 day fire at will provisions and some are trying to make it harder for unions to recruit new members.”

Also in Tertiary Update this week:

1. Overseas academics warned off University of Auckland
2. Aoraki go ahead for one compressed course only
3. Few women in industry training after school

Other news

Ready2Go campaign update: Te Toi Ahurangi and National Council sing their support for the Ready2Go campaigners, while TEU NorthTec members launch their Ready2Go campaign with a barbeque for students.

If New Zealand universities are going to take world rankings seriously, they do need to act on the parts of the ranking methodology which they can control. The most obvious and influential of these is the student:academic staff ratio. They need to tell the government, which currently seems fixated on export education rather than high quality domestic tertiary education. The best thing it can do to promote New Zealand education providers overseas is invest in staff, and thus reduce the student: staff ratios, so that our universities have a chance climb up the rankings again – Sandra Grey blogs for Education Directions

Staff at the University of Auckland are threatening to stop teaching some classes and withhold students’ exam results as part of an on-going industrial dispute. More than 900 academic staff have voted to step up industrial action if a mediation meeting planned for this month is not productive, alarming students who are worried about the implications – New Zealand Herald

The Australian National University had to boost security for nine climate change scientists and administration staff following death threats. Universities in Victoria and NSW have also acknowledged threats to staff involved in the climate area. Universities Australia strongly condemned the threats as a fundamental attack on intellectual inquiry and National Tertiary Education Union president Jeannie Rea said public figures needed to “recognise that the debate around climate science could easily veer into dangerous territory” - The Australian

The negotiations between the Government and the SFWU/PSA over a settlement of the sleepover minimum wage dispute are continuing while the Supreme Court has set 7 September for the final round in the legal battle - SFWU

Let us not forget that ACC is still frequently acclaimed as a world-beating innovation. Making Accident Compensation insurance contestable has long been an ideological holy grail for both the National Party and the business sector, so the decision to open the workers’ account to private insurers comes as no surprise. But it’s hard to think of a less appropriate time to create more uncertainty in the relationship between business, workers, the insurance sector and the Government – The Listener

The Australian government has dropped the contentious system of ranking academic journals and assessing academics based on their ability to publish in the top-ranked publications. Previously, journals were ranked either A*, A, B or C -The Conversation

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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.

Thanks to nznationalparty at Flickr for the photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/nznationalparty/2408460153/in/set-72157600490030671/