TEU Tertiary Update Vol 14 No 19

Unitec cuts pay for academics, but not management

Unitec's annual report shows that the total amount it paid its academic staff last year fell $160,000 from the previous year.

However, in the same period salaries and short-term employee benefits for key management personnel increased by nearly 3.5 percent, and the new slimmed down council accepted average pay increases of more than 100 percent.

The 15 councillors in 2009 received a total of $99,000 (an average of $6,600 each). The eight councillors in 2010, who were appointed by either the minister or the council itself, received $116,000 (an average of $14,500 each).

Incredibly, the report counts the fall in academic salaries as an achieved target and notes the increase in general (allied) staff salaries represents an un-achieved target. It also reports that the student: staff ratio has climbed from 16.8:1 to 17.1:1 and that the academic staff turnover rate was 12.5 percent, or one in eight staff in 2010.

TEU national secretary Sharn Riggs says that the falling overall pay for academic staff is the direct result of an institution that will not negotiate properly with its staff but instead was wasting public money on legal challenges over the collective agreement.

"It is simply unacceptable that Unitec management would let the overall rate of pay for its academics slide downwards because of its inability to negotiate a Unitec collective agreement with its academic staff."

For more information check out TEU's Ready2Go campaign on the website and Youtube.

Also in Tertiary Update this week:

1. Strike action intensifies at University of Auckland
2. Funding cuts are due to debt myth
3. ACC changes risky for tertiary institutions
4. CPIT helps launch trades academy
5. Other news

Strike action intensifies at University of Auckland

Academic staff at the University of Auckland have voted to escalate their industrial action to include possible lightning strikes and withholding exam marks. Meanwhile  PBRF strike action also continues, where many academic staff are refusing to submit their research portfolios in protest at the university's attempt to remove important academic working conditions from their collective agreement.

The union has sent the Deans letters outlining the numbers of staff in each faculty who have signed the pledge not to comply with PBRF-related activities. Academic members, with the support of general staff and members from AUT, MIT and Unitec, are continuing daily pickets outside the vice-chancellor's office.

TEU organiser Jane Adams says members will not be undertaking any additional strike action, despite the vote to escalate action, until after a high-level meeting with university management on 20 June. This meeting will involve the assistance of the Department of Labour's Mediation Service.

The union has also filed in the Employment Relations Authority to facilitate negotiations and is currently in mediation.

As part of the actions being taken TEU is also writing to international unions asking them to inform their members about the university’s attack on academic conditions and the two-tier pay and rewards structure at the university that discriminates against union members.

"Given that the university recruits approximately 50 percent of academic staff from overseas, it makes sense for us to inform unions in countries from which the majority of our academic recruits are drawn about our campaign," said Ms Adams. "There are implications for overseas academics thinking of joining the university."

Funding cuts are due to debt myth

The 2011 Budget, which cut tertiary education spending for the next four years, was a victory of story-line over needs according to CTU economist Dr Bill Rosenberg. The story was that the New Zealand government has a debt problem. When confronted with the fact that government debt is not a problem by world standards – one of the lowest in the OECD – the government acknowledges that the real problem is private overseas debt. However, it says ratings agencies "increasingly lump private and public debt together when looking at sovereign ratings".

"Maybe so", says Dr Rosenberg, "but that is a long-term issue."

Does it mean that the government should cut spending sharply when we have not yet got out of recessionary conditions? The question is not 'should we reduce debt?' but 'how soon?' and 'which debt – government or private?'"

"It is much too soon. As we said in our pre-Budget commentary, the biggest immediate danger to New Zealand as a whole is the ongoing recession" says Dr Rosenberg. "The government still has a vital responsibility to ensure through economic stimulus that the economy does not go downhill again and to bring down unemployment. The cuts the government has made to spending mean that the stimulus has suddenly been withdrawn, which risks continuing high unemployment and even return to recession.

ACC changes risky for tertiary institutions

The announcement by the government yesterday that it will be consulting on various options for the privatisation of ACC represents a major step backwards according to the ACC Futures Coalition.

"All the proposals under consultation will disadvantage New Zealand workers," said ACC Futures Coalition spokesperson Hazel Armstrong." The government is stressing that the proposals will introduce choice, but it is choice for employers only. The injured worker will not be the client any more and so the focus is likely to be on denying claims or forcing workers back to work before they are ready."

TEU national president Dr Sandra Grey says that luckily, accident compensation is not a significant issue for most staff at most tertiary institutions but it is an important safety net.

"Because they demand little of the current ACC system tertiary institutions may be targeted by some private insurers who think they can make a profit from the relatively low level of claims."

An independent report from Price Waterhouse Coopers in 2008 identified no benefits to the public from privatising ACC. Consultancy company Merrill Lynch previously advised the Australian insurance industry it would make a $200 million profit if ACC was privatised. Putting those two points together suggests that the $200 million would likely come from higher levies, lower benefits or poorer coverage.

CPIT helps launch trades academy

The first of eight trades academies to commence this year as part of the government's Youth Guarantees scheme opened yesterday in Christchurch.

Canterbury Tertiary College Trades Academy, which is offering vocational trades and technology training to up to 144 students, is a partnership between 14 local secondary schools, Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology (CPIT) and employers. It will let 16 and 17-year-olds earn NCEA credits and a tertiary qualification, free of charge, while gaining practical skills.

"It provides students with vocational pathways, allowing them to share their time between school and CPIT, and offers trades training in carpentry, mechanical engineering, the motor industry and electrical engineering," said Minister of Education, Anne Tolley.

Since the February earthquake, further programmes in masonry trades, plaster boarding, and painting and decorating have been added to help meet the expected trades demands in Canterbury.

Mrs Tolley says the government is investing $66.5 million over four years to ensure 4000 places will be available in trades academies by 2014.

Other news

Yesterday Massey University publicised this New Zealand Herald story, 'Taking breaks helps worker productivity'  by telling its Facebook fans "Take a break everyone - tell the boss I said it was ok ;)" Thanks Massey, we will make sure to pass that on to TEU members at your various campuses.

Legal action is about to begin against hundreds of New Zealand expats who have not made any effort to repay millions of dollars in outstanding student loans. From this week, authorities will start sending letters to Australia-based defaulters warning that legal action is being taken as a result of their on-going refusal to pay up - New Zealand Herald

A Wisconsin circuit-court judge has struck down a law stripping the state public-university system’s academic employees of their collective-bargaining rights after concluding that politicians violated open-meetings laws in passing the measure with too little public notice, the US Associated Press reports. The judge’s ruling is unlikely to resolve the matter, however, as the legal battle is likely to go to the state’s Supreme Court and lawmakers could opt to vote on the measure again.

The winners were announced today for a new fellowship that has sparked heated debate in academic circles for questioning the value of higher education and suggesting that some entrepreneurial students may be better off leaving college. Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal, will pay each of the 24 winners of his Thiel Fellowship $100,000 not to attend college for two years and to develop business ideas instead - The Chronicle of Higher Education

The U.S. National Labor Relations Board has ruled that a union practice of displaying a large inflatable rat balloon at an employer’s premises to protest the labour practices of its non-union contractor is not coercive, and so does not violate U.S. labour law. The Board found that the balloon display did not involve any confrontational conduct, unlike picketing. Nor was the display coercive in other ways, the majority found. It observed that the union agents involved in the display did not move, shout, impede access, or otherwise interfere with the hospital’s operations.  Rather, the rat balloon itself was symbolic speech.

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