Sarah Hardman - Unitec.

I would be honored to represent women members on the Industrial and Professional Committee in 2024-2025.

In 2023, I have been a member of National Women’s Committee/ Te Kahurangi Māreikura, which has been a great experience. I’m currently the women’s representative at Unitec branch. I’m also a past branch president and in this role, I gained a thorough knowledge of our CA a well as participating in numerous negotiations through a very fraught period. There were many days in employment tribunals and the employment court as well as industrial action. We were part of our union’s first attempt to achieve a MECA and now, many years later, a national agreement for ITP (Te Puukenga) staff has been achieved, albeit with a whole raft of schedules. There will be a lot of work to be done on this in the next few years, and I would like to be able to contribute. In fact this is shaping up to be a time when we will need to draw on all our strength and collective wisdom and I hope that I can add to the sum of this,

I’ve been a lecturer at Unitec in Auckland since 1996, teaching in the languages department and in the Foundation/ Bridging programme. I’m a union representative on the Tamaki Makaurau regional skills leadership group, which is a government- backed committee that advises on skills training needs and planning. By the time you read this, the 15 RSLGs may be about to be abolished, if National wins the election and carries out their plan of cancelling ROVE. Regardless of who’s in Government after Oct 14, we know that in Te Puukenga and in the University sector there is an inexplicable (to me) campaign of job cuts and a more insidious “death by a thousand cuts” rollback on funding and resourcing tertiary education adequately. My membership of the RSLG since 2020 has been eye-opening because it has involved learning so much about “skills training” in so many different sectors and how it is viewed by a broad cross-section of the community. Our voice as educators and as union members very much needs to be heard in this space. I’ve come to see the value of the work that we do as educators. I think that our union stands for the respect that our work deserves.

Finally, I would like to say that in my view, what we do is important and how we do it is often what endures. It is important that we practice the four principles laid down in Te Koeke:

Tū Kotahi, tū kaha

Ngā piki, ngā heke

Awhi atu, awhi mai

Tātou, tatou e.

Thank you for your support.