Te Hautū Kahurangi | Tertiary Education Union are lifting the lid on a clandestine campaign they have been quietly running over the past six weeks with the aim of changing public perceptions of university workers.

TEU members have been chalking pavements and putting up posters on campuses and other public locations simply containing the hashtag #WhatSocietyThinksIDo. Today’s reveal marks the start of a nationwide push to show the public what we actually do.

Te Pou Ahurei | National Secretary Sandra Grey says tertiary education staff go above and beyond every day to deliver quality education to Aotearoa’s future workers and leaders.

“Our members work long hours and their workloads were excessive before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. But since March 2020, when staff had 48 hours’ notice to transfer all courses online, and worked around the clock to do so, our members have had to do twice the work to deliver both online and in person while still finding time to do administration tasks as well as hit research targets.”

“And to top it all off, staff have had to bear the brunt of constant funding cuts that have left fewer and fewer people doing more and more work.”

With university pay settlements having fluctuated between 1% and 3% in recent years, university staff are gearing up for a big push to keep pace with Aotearoa’s 30-year high inflation rate.

Sandra Grey says “the TEU is signalling that the time has come to find a circuit breaker. The tertiary sector needs to find more resources to pay staff properly. That’s what this year’s campaign is all about.”

Learn more about #WhatSocietyThinksIDo here.

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