TEU Award Winners.

Every year Te Hautū Kahurangi | Tertiary Education Union confers Awards of Excellence and Life Memberships at our conference dinner and last week was no different.

Victoria University’s Susan Ryall & Stephen Blumenfeld received a joint Award of Excellence for Professional Integrity, Canterbury University’s Warwick Anderson received Life Membership, as did Massey University’s Cat Pausé (posthumous).

Sue Ryall and Stephen Blumenfeld were honoured for their exemplary stewardship of CLEW – the Centre for Labour, Employment and Work. This mahi has contributed greatly to the labour movement in Aotearoa and internationally through their annual lectures on employment trends and their maintenance of an employment agreement database which is a phenomenal resource of great value to everyone who works in employment relations.

Sue and Stephen have together built CLEW to become the home of cross-party employment relations discourse in Aotearoa and thus helped to shape policy narratives and organisational employment and labour practices at a national level.

Strongly union, Warwick Anderson served on the branch committee of AUS (the Association of University Staff) at Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha | University of Canterbury before the formation of TEU in 2009, and he has been on the TEU branch committee largely ever since, taking the role of Branch Co-President in 2017 and 2018. He is currently a member of the TEU National Industrial and Professional Committee.

Warwick has been extremely active in, and an advocate for, the Te Kahukura | Rainbow community, both locally and nationally. He established the local Te Kahukura network and his story fills UC’s Equity and Diversity page. Warwick retires this year but will continue to be active and deal with challenges, albeit with rock climbing now. We honour Warwick’s steadfast work in the TEU with a Life Membership and wish him all the very best.

There’s not much left for us to say about Caitlin (Cat) Pausé that we haven’t already said.

A member of Te Hautū Kahurangi since her arrival in Aotearoa New Zealand in 2008, Cat was Vice President Women from 2014 to 2019 and a member of TEU Council in 2020 and 2021. During her time as the Vice President Women, Cat worked tirelessly to ensure strong youth representation throughout our structures, and she led work on privilege and decolonisation within the TEU.

As well as her contribution to the TEU nationally, Cat was active in her branch at Massey Palmerston North where she was a tireless supporter of local activists and union staff alike. And her awhi and activism extended to her co-leadership of the Women at Massey group, along with Ema Alter and her membership of the Massey University Pay and Employment Equity group.

It was only fitting that Cat be bestowed with this, one last honour from us.