TEU membership on the rise.

Te Hautū Kahurangi | Tertiary Education Union is growing fast! Over 2,000 new members have joined since the start of 2022, an almost 70% improvement on the same period last year.

While a proportion of this growth is a result of improvements made to the way we contact those new employees who have recently come into the tertiary education sector, Tumu Whakarae | National President Tina Smith says it’s also a great sign that our current messages and campaigns are hitting the mark.

“It’s heartening to see such an increased number of people coming aboard and signing up to what TEU stands for. We have been receiving lots of great feedback from both new and established members that the work we are doing to shape Te Pūkenga, improve pay and conditions, expose underspending on staff, push for pay equity, reform our rules, tackle workloads and show the public what staff in our sector really do, is resonating far and wide.”

One of TEU’s newest members, University of Auckland Graduate Teaching Assistant Joe Hendren, says he joined “to be part of something bigger than just myself.”

“For me it’s recognition of the terms and conditions that have been built up by the work of union members over the years. In the union I’m part of a movement rather than battling away on my own as I look towards the possibility of a career in academia.”

Hendren says “having been tutoring over the past year, it’s easy to see how important it is that people are represented. Insecure work is a major blight on tertiary education and will have longer term impacts on the sector. “

“There are people who rely on their income from GTA work to eat and keep a roof over their heads yet they don’t know from one semester to the next if they will have work or not and they are often working without things like annual leave and pay during inter semester breaks that permanent workers take for granted.”

TEU’s long running ‘Secure work = Better Futures’ campaign aims to advocate for precarious employees and attempt to shift as many people as possible into secure employment by offering free membership to those who are joining on short term employment agreements (6 months or less) and are earning less than $15,000 over the course of that employment agreement. Click here to join.