Victory For TEU Members – AUT Will Be Required To Withdraw Redundancy Notices

Te Ratonga Ahumana Taimahi | The Employment Relations Authority has ruled in Te Hautū Kahurangi | Tertiary Education Union’s favour in legal action against Te Wānanga Aronui O Tamaki Makau Rau | Auckland University of Technology.

The Authority determined that AUT breached the collective agreement and will be required to withdraw redundancy notices issued to as many as 80 staff a fortnight ago or face a compliance order.

Kaiwhakahaere | Organiser Jill Jones says “our members are relieved by the decision. It’s been an arduous and distressing few months as we work our way through this, so it’s nice to have some good news for them a week out from Christmas.”

“However, I must say it is sad that it’s taken a legal battle for AUT to do what we have been trying to tell them they had to do from the outset. We hope their leadership team will learn from this and engage with us fully and properly from the beginning in future.”

The determination states that AUT was obliged to identify positions that “could be determined as surplus” before applying selection criteria, that this didn’t happen, and that it’s now “necessary and just that AUT should be asked to go back and follow the CEA correctly”. The Authority also found that the calls for voluntary severance were not made as intended and required by the collective agreement.

The full Employment Relations Authority determination can be found here.

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