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Surpluses at public institutions raise questions about priorities

Ministry of Education statistics show the average surplus as a percentage of revenue at public tertiary education providers climbing dramatically from 1.9 percent in 2006 to 5.2 percent last year.

In 2006 public tertiary education providers made a combined surplus of $66 million on revenue of $3.5 billion. Last year the same institutions made a combined surplus of $280 million on revenue of $4.4 billion.

Public tertiary institutions are supposed to meet a benchmark surplus of 3 percent of revenue each year. By exceeding that benchmark by a further 2.2 percent last year the institutions pocketed nearly $100 million dollars more than they were required to.

"The large surplus last year does not seem to be a one off aberration according to TEU National Secretary Sharn Riggs. "They have grown steadily each year since 2006."

The public institutions that have generated the largest surpluses as percentages of revenue include Waiariki (16 percent) Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi and SIT (13 percent each), WITT and UCOL (12 percent each), the Open Polytechnic, CPIT and Bay of Plenty Polytechnic (11 percent each).

"While we commend these institutions on careful and prudent management, we need to remember that surplus money is money that could have been spend saving jobs, teaching students and protecting quality education," said Ms Riggs. "Too many good people have lost their jobs, gone without pay rises or been told to turn away students because of tight fiscal circumstances. It is galling to see that those circumstances were not so tight after all."

Also in Tertiary Update this week

1. Negotiations across the nation
2. Voluntary student membership unlikely before election
3. Sleepover workers reject government offer
4. Other news

Negotiations across the nation

The employers at the five Ready2Go polytechnics (Whitireia, Wintec, BOPP, Unitec and NorthTec) have now finally agreed that they are indeed 'ready to go' and have agreed dates to negotiate with their respective TEU members. The first, Whitireia begins negotiations tomorrow (Friday) and the last gets underway on 3 August. Weltec has joined these five polytechnics in employing outside consultancy company Martin Jenkins and Associates to negotiate on its behalf. We wonder why these institutions employ human resources staff?

The University of Canterbury has reached the midpoint of its three-year collective agreement and is negotiating to make variations to that collective agreement on issues not involving pay or money. The university has agreed to TEU claims to extend coverage to a larger group of general staff. It seems likely that the CPI adjusted pay rise for TEU members at the university will be five percent. (TEU members agreed that their pay rise for the second and third years of their three-year collective agreement would be based on CPI.)

TEU members at CPIT are disappointed by claims from their employer to 'buy' their discretionary leave and their workload limit on duty weeks off them with an offer of 4 percent and 2 percent over two years. Negotiations are continuing there.

TEU members at Weltec are also facing claims to remove their discretionary leave. Their employer wants to phase out discretionary leave by 2014, remove it entirely from all new staff employed before 2014 and, remove quarterly timetabled teaching hour limits and some entitlements to professional development. In return, Weltec is offering its TEU members 1.5 and 1.5 percent for two years. Staff are discussing, among other things, whether to take industrial action in response to the employer's offer.

Academics at the University of Auckland have all been moved onto individual agreements on 30 June after their collective agreement expired over a year ago. Those 954 members will now be meeting on Wednesday 27 July to consider their employer's latest offer and the TEU's counter offer, and to decide whether to send the employer’s offer to ratification. In the meantime, industrial action and picketing continues at the university.

Negotiations are also underway or about to start at NMIT and Te Wānanga o Aotearoa and Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi, Massey University and Auckland University of Technology. TEU has initiated for its first ever allied (general) staff collective agreement at AUT.

Voluntary student membership unlikely before election

MP Heather Roy's bill to impose voluntary student membership on students’ associations now appears unlikely to pass before the general election. For several months the Labour Party has been filibustering (extending out the debate on other private members’ bills) to use up the remaining parliamentary debating time before parliament closes for the election.

The vice president of the Massey University Extramural Students’ Association, Dave Crampton, noted last week that because Ms Roy’s bill is a member’s bill, it can only be debated every second Wednesday, on allocated Members’ Days.

Sitting in a queue in front of Ms Roy's bill however "there is a bill called the Royal Society Amendment Bill which is taking up a lot of time. This bill has 21 clauses and they are up to clause 11. Each clause can be debated for an hour – so that’s around 10 more hours to be debated before the third reading, which itself would take a couple of hours – and then there are two more local bills due back from committee to take precedence on the Order Paper."

There is less time than that now available to debate private members’ bills before the election, even if the government does not take urgency over some of its own legislation, which it is widely expected to do.

The Labour Party and opponents of the voluntary student membership bill are hoping, that following Ms Roy's retirement from parliament after the election, either no other MP will be willing to sponsor her bill through its final stages, or that the numbers in parliament following the election result will make it harder for the bill to pass.

Sleepover workers reject government offer

Over 90 percent of PSA and SFWU union members have rejected an offer from government to settle their long-running sleepover case.

The unions started legal action in 2007 to seek the minimum wage for sleepovers. The sleepover cases are also seeking six years of backpay for thousands of union members who have worked sleepovers throughout New Zealand. This case could also have implications for TEU members who participate in noho marae as part of their employment.

Both unions have been meeting with their respective members throughout the country over the past month to consider and vote on the offer, in the lead up to the case being heard in the Supreme Court on 13 September. The meetings decided that the government offer is not good enough.

"It’s time to value the work disability support workers do by paying them the minimum wage for sleepovers and it’s time for the Government to get back to the negotiating table," said SFWU National Secretary John Ryall.

"This issue isn’t a surprise for the Government. Both the SFWU and the PSA have consistently raised the chronic underfunding issue of the disability sector. If the Government can afford over $4 billion in tax cuts that mostly benefit the better off, tens of millions of dollars in loans to a private media company and over a billion dollars to bail out a risky finance company, it can afford to pay workers properly". Both the Employment Court and the Court of Appeal ruled that sleepover shifts are work and should be paid at least the legal minimum wage.

Other news

"Wanted: casual teaching staff. Postgraduate qualifications essential, PhD preferred. Minimum three hours work per paid hour; hours to be advised. No office provided. Three months work available; chance of more next year, after four months unpaid break." Doesn't sound very enticing, does it? But such is the lot of the sessional tutor — 70,000 in Australia, the NTEU estimates - The Melbourne Age

Two-thirds of English universities will have a maximum fee level of £9,000 and a third of them will charge the full fee for all courses. UCU said today that it was not surprised that all universities' tuition fee hikes had been approved, leaving England as the most expensive country to study for a public degree – University and College Union

Almost a quarter of Australia's universities expect to be over-enrolled by more than 20 per cent this year. And more than two-thirds of institutions began the year planning to take on extra students without any federal teaching subsidy to offset the cost. Australian universities are jockeying for position in next year's demand-driven market. From next year, universities are promised teaching subsidies for every place they can fill – The Australian

Welsh ministers have been handed proposals for cutting the number of universities through mergers. A blueprint from the body that funds higher education would cut the number of universities in Wales from 11 to six. Education Minister Leighton Andrews, who last year said universities must "adapt or die", is backing the proposals - BBC

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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.

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