TEU Tertiary Update Vol 12 No 23

A PLETHORA OF REVIEWS

Over sixty reviews have taken place or been initiated in tertiary education institutions so far this year, affecting hundreds of jobs and resulting in dozens of redundancies.

That is the message TEU officials will be advising other unions at hui being held around the country over the next few weeks to develop a union-wide approach to redundancy.

While some of those redundancies have been compulsory, where redundant workers have had their jobs defined out of existence and no redeployment offered them, a significant number of job losses also have come about through voluntary redundancies, enhanced retirement packages, non-replacement of staff, and an increase in temporary and limited-term positions.

TEU president Tom Ryan says that tertiary education institutions often have no genuine grounds for undertaking such reviews:

“With the most recent cohort of baby-boomers now entering into tertiary education, and with many new students taking up study in response to the economic recession, we should be looking at ways of getting staff to help those students get an education. At the very least, redeployments and other workforce reorganisations might be justifiable.”

“Most people working in the tertiary education sector would identify current heavy workloads as the biggest barrier they face to providing high quality education. So it is bizarre that tertiary institutions are scratching around to find ways of cutting staffing levels, and thus increasing workloads for those remaining. Managerial irrationality is too often the order of the day.”

Dr Ryan says that these ongoing reviews form the background to the negotiation claim by union members at universities for an end to compulsory redundancies.

“Our impression is that people are accepting voluntary redundancies or early retirements because they know compulsory redundancy is often the only other likely option. We need to restore a sense of real choice to the process; otherwise good people will continue to lose their jobs without good reason,” concludes Dr Ryan.

ALSO IN TERTIARY UPDATE THIS WEEK:

1. Selene Mize wins supreme teaching award
2. MIT votes on settlement
3. UCOL may close arts and design
4. SSC hinders negotiations
5. Parents lose allowance to study
6. Canterbury to fine research inactive colleges

SELENE MIZE WINS SUPREME TEACHING AWARD

Selene Mize, senior lecturer in the faculty of law at University of Otago, was awarded the Prime Minister’s Supreme Award at this week’s Tertiary Teaching Excellence Awards. Ms Mize was present with the award during a parliamentary ceremony and dinner hosted by the Hon Anne Tolley, Minister for Tertiary Education.

The minister and the Tertiary Teaching Excellence Awards Committee commended Ms Mize for an exceptional portfolio that “highlighted her passion for law over a 20 year career, her contribution to the international reputation of New Zealand Law education, and an absolute and unstinting commitment to her students and their success.”

The awards are a celebration of New Zealand’s top tertiary teachers; highlighting their passionate commitment to teaching and contribution to the educational outcomes of their students.

A total of ten awards were presented this week - nine Sustained Excellence Awards, the winners of which were each presented with a cheque for $20,000, and the Prime Minister’s Supreme Award, worth $30,000.

The Tertiary Teaching Excellence Committee, led by newly appointed chair Emeritus Professor Noeline Alcorn, put the nominees’ portfolios through a stringent selection process before making their final recommendations to the minister in May.

Professor Alcorn considered the overall standard of applications to have been outstanding.

“The ten awardees in particular all demonstrated creativity and commitment in helping their students enjoy learning, and challenged them to achieve at a level higher than they ever imagined they could reach,” says Professor Alcorn.

MIT VOTES ON SETTLEMENT

After months of negotiations and several days of industrial action, TEU members at Manukau Institute of Technology are voting on a proposed collective employment agreement. The proposed settlement includes a 2.6 percent increase to salaries effective from 1 March this year, no cuts to existing conditions, an investigation into workload to be completed during the term of the agreement, and an assurance that the agreed terms and conditions will not be passed on to staff on individual contracts until three months after members on the collective agreement (i.e. from 1 June 2009).

The ballot for TEU members at MIT closes on Wednesday 29 July.

TEU advocate Chan Dixon says the workload investigation is an important achievement for the members. It will look at issues of equality of workload, how to define a reasonable quantum of workload, and transparency of how workload is allocated.

“It’s important we focus on excellence of teaching and learning as well as valuing research performance. Too much workload undermines all these things,” says Ms Dixon.

Despite the initial acrimony that marked negotiations at MIT, this agreement looks like it may be the first settlement reached in the tertiary education sector since the State Services Commission became involved in the bargaining process.

TEU national industrial officer Irena Brorens says that bargaining teams remain committed to resisting claw-backs of established employment conditions, and this stands in contradiction to the direction the SSC seems to be advocating to employers.

“Since the SSC started overseeing and advising on negotiations earlier this year, many employers seem unable to commit to fair pay increases, even where they know they are affordable and warranted. Generally they are also using the mantra of ‘increased productivity’ to try to remove important nationally-agreed working conditions. But how do you increase productivity when there is a cap on new students and your working conditions are being cut?” asked Ms Brorens.

UCOL MAY CLOSE ARTS AND DESIGN

The Wanganui Chronicle reported yesterday that arts and design courses at the Whanganui UCOL campus are among those that could be cut as a $3.4 million drop in the institution’s funding starts to bite. The paper describes those courses as once being ‘the jewel in the Whanganui UCOL crown.’

Whanganui UCOL principal Julia Pedley yesterday told the Chronicle that a number of reviews were under way across all UCOL’s campuses to identify savings and reassess course priorities, as a result of decisions announced in the government's 2009 budget. She said UCOL had noted students shifting from programmes related to design and the arts towards more clearly vocational programmes, such as nursing.

“Where programmes are not currently economically viable and educationally sound we will do an analysis aimed at reducing costs and increasing volumes. If this is not possible then programme closure is examined.”

Mrs Pedley said there were no plans to shift Whanganui programmes to the Palmerston North campus.

“There has been a $36 million investment in this superb campus and we want to ensure we keep on using it in the very best interests of the community, reflected in enrolments.

“We want to create a better future by ensuring our programmes and services are what the community wants.”

TEU president Tom Ryan says this situation highlights how, as predicted by TEU and so many other commentators, budget cuts imposed on polytechnics and institutes of technology are having the opposite effect to that which the government purports to want.

“Due to the funding cuts put in place by the recent budget, we are going to see fewer opportunities and less access for students generally, especially those in provincial areas. Now’s the time when we should be making it easier to study, not harder,” states Dr Ryan.

SSC HINDERS NEGOTIATIONS

Stopwork meetings that were to begin today at the six polytechnics covered by the ITP MECA have been postponed. Employment negotiations are now set to resume after the employers table a “comprehensive offer” for TEU members to consider.

Negotiations covering TEU members at Wintec, WITT, Unitec, Whitireia, NorthTec and BoPP have foundered on key claims from the employers that seek to achieve ‘more flexibility’ and ‘greater productivity’. They include a new clause stipulating that academic staff shall work such hours as may be reasonably required of them to professionally fulfill the requirements of the job, greater flexibility in the areas of timetabled teaching and duty hours, and changes to discretionary leave so that it is at the employer’s discretion rather than the employee’s.

Negotiations had come to a halt on 22 June when the TEU bargaining team decided that they had made too little progress. The employers had not made any salary offer and had stated that any offers would need to be linked to productivity gains. TEU informed the employers that it would be arranging a round of stopwork meetings from 23-30 July to report back and to vote on an industrial action ballot.

The employer representatives have made it clear that their chief executives are required to consult with the State Services Commission on any bargaining strategies or proposed settlements. This the first time since the 1990s that the SSC has featured as an important influence in tertiary education bargaining.

TEU advocate Irena Brorens says that the SSC’s involvement appears to be hindering bargaining.

“This approach from the SSC is a result of the current government’s broad approach towards salaries and terms and conditions for publicly funded organisations.”

PARENTS LOSE ALLOWANCE TO STUDY

The New Zealand Herald reported on Sunday that “hundreds of sole parents expecting to become teachers, nurses and other professionals have had their dreams dashed after the Government axed an allowance for sole parent beneficiaries going to university.”

Previously, domestic purposes beneficiaries, as well as those on invalids and widow’s benefits and emergency maintenance allowances, had been eligible for the Training Incentive Allowance (TIA) to help pay for some employment-related training costs, such as those covering course fees and materials, travel, and childcare.

According to the Herald, some of the disenfranchised parents had already passed pre-entry courses or been accepted into specific degrees. Several had moved their children to new schools so they could study for courses they now can no longer attend.

Social development minister Paula Bennett announced in May’s budget that the TIA - a key stepping stone off welfare for DPB and invalid beneficiaries since the late 1980s - would apply only to high school level or lower courses. But according to the Herald, universities and polytechnics knew nothing of the changes until students tried to enrol in the past few days.

Department of Work and Income figures show that at least 4500 beneficiaries a year are likely be affected. The change denies the allowance to anyone enrolled in courses at level 4 or above after May 28.

The Herald highlighted the irony that Ms Bennett, who gained a social work degree while on the DPB in the 1990s, was the minster to make the cuts.

A review of the TIA by the minister’s own department previously found that the programme had been very successful in enabling disadvantaged people to participate in education, training and employment. It helped people overcome financial barriers, allowed for flexible participation in a wide range of training and education programmes, and facilitated access to flexible high-quality childcare.

CANTERBURY TO FINE RESEARCH INACTIVE COLLEGES

The University of Canterbury’s proposal to fine underperforming colleges $40,000 a year, or $200,000 over five years, if they have more ‘research inactive’ staff in the 2012 PBRF round than planned for by college managers has drawn criticism from TEU deputy secretary Nanette Cormack.

She told the Press that the move was a “further worrying sign" that universities are misusing PBRF information:

“PBRF scores were designed and intended as tools for government funding allocation, not for universities to use to punish individual colleges and the staff within them.”

“If the university’s central focus becomes chasing research dollars, it needs to be very aware that it does not let its other role, teaching, suffer,” Ms Cormack said.

And she told National Radio’s Morning Report that the University of Canterbury’s approach could threaten academics’ jobs. In particular it could make finding work hard for new academics who have not yet built up an international research profile. The lead-in time for publication in many international journals is 12 months or more.

Vice Chancellor Rod Carr told Morning Report that the scheme was not a punishment but an incentive: “At the end of the day what we want is the research.”

TEU president Tom Ryan says that another issue that needs to be considered as universities strive to increase their PBRF funding is the workload impact PBRF has on general staff.

“General staff, and in particular the technical staff, provide significant support to academics in their research. Yet as universities ratchet up the competition for PBRF funding, they usually do not take into account the impact this has on the workload of general staff. Some better acknowledgement of their contributions needs to be factored in.”

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, email: stephen.day@teu.ac.nz

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