Otago fails in case against AUS
Otago University has failed in a bid to have to have strike action taken by AUS members during last years collective
agreement negotiations declared unlawful. After failing in an earlier attempt to get an interim injunction to prevent a
series of rolling strikes, Otago took AUS to court seeking a substantive declaration that the strikes were unlawful and
that AUS had breached good faith obligations.
University management attempted to convince the Court that the rolling strikes, which they labeled “secret strikes”,
were unlawful on the basis that they were called at short notice and that AUS not given advance notice or details of who
was taking strike action and when.
In its decision the Court held that the University’s arguments were “without merit’ and failed to even make out the
factual allegations on which its arguments were based.
AUS Otago branch President, Mark Peters criticised the University for financial waste in taking the case. “University
management has spent tens of thousands of dollars in litigation against the AUS, trying to prevent union members from
exercising their lawful right to strike”, he said. “The legal costs, staff time and negative publicity generated by
these weak cases have not been in the interests of staff, students, or the wider university community.”
Council of Trade Unions president Ross Wilson said that the University’s action was a clear example of employer attempts
to defeat the intent of the Employment Relations Act. "Otago University wasted the time of a Full Court of three judges
with a case which clearly had no merit in fact or law," he said." It is cases like these which give employers a bad
name.”
Otago University Director of Human Resources, Stephen Gray, has said that the University would not be appealing the
decision.
Also in Tertiary Update this week . . . .
1. New vice chancellors take up the reins
2. Adult and Community reference groups named
3. Operation surpluses posted
4. Auckland sells land to Crown
5. International call for education to be excluded from GATS
6. Higher-education enrolment doubles in Western Europe in 25 years
New vice chancellors take up the reins
New vice chancellors took up the reins at Massey and Canterbury universities this week. New Zealand’s first woman vice
chancellor, Australian Judith Kinnear, was welcomed to Massey’s Palmerston North campus on Monday by several hundred
staff at the university staff club. Formerly deputy vice chancellor at Sydney University, Professor Kinnear has said she
intends to spend the early period of her vice-chancellorship “listening and learning”, meeting staff and other members
of the University and wider community.
Professor Roy Sharp, formerly deputy vice chancellor at Victoria University, received a similar welcome at Canterbury
where several hundred staff turned out for a formal welcome. Professor Sharp said his first job was to get all staff on
board to find a solution to Canterbury’s problems.
Adult and Community reference groups named
Dr Andrew West, Chair of the Tertiary Education Commission, announced the appointment of seven community sector experts
to the Commission’s Adult and Community Education (ACE) Reference Group today. “The seven panel members comprising the
Tertiary Education Commission ACE Reference Group were selected from a list of leading New Zealand educators, spanning
the spectrum of adult and community education,” said Dr West.
Panel members include Geoff Pearman, Director of Continuing Education, at the University of Canterbury and Sandy
Morrison, a lecturer in the department of Maori Studies at Waikato University.
Operational surpluses posted
News that Otago and Victoria Universities have posted annual financial surpluses in 2002 has drawn a positive reaction
from the Association of University Staff (AUS). Responding to the announcement of an operational surplus of $6.3 million
at Victoria, AUS Branch President, Robyn May, said that the financial surplus, combined with an increase in student
numbers, reflected the very hard work performed by staff at Victoria over a number of years. Coming on top of surplus of
$5.3 million in 2001 she said that sustained operational surpluses mean that the University is now well placed to deal
with the serious salary anomalies which exist in the university sector. “Recruitment and the retention of staff are
significant issues for many faculties at Victoria, and these have not been alleviated in recent pay rounds”, she said.
Similar sentiments have been expressed at Otago where a $13 million surplus has just been announced. While University
management say that the surplus includes a one-off payment of $6.04 million from the Government after the University won
legal action over the funding of dentistry, AUS Branch President, Mark Peters, says that the surplus clears the way for
further investment in staff. He maintained that staff salaries remain well behind acceptable domestic and international
comparators and said that Otago needs to address its recruitment and retention problems now rather than later.
“Investment in buildings and infrastructure will be useless without core staff to teach and research”, he said.
Auckland sells land to Crown
Auckland University has sold a property, at Waikawa Bay at the northern end of the Coromandel, to the Crown for $3.54
million. The 300ha was gifted to the University last year by an American millionaire, Paul Kelly, and it was put up for
tender to raise funds for its new business school.
Conservation Minister, Chris Carter put together the deal involving the Nature Heritage Fund, The Department of
Conservation’s land acquisition fund and the Government’s discretionary fund to buy the land. The purchase followed
“difficult” negotiations, in which the University had earlier refused to extend the tender deadline to allow
negotiations to continue with the Crown. Chris Carter has said he will move to ensure similar wrangles over land held by
state-funded institutions will not happen again.
Worldwatch
International call for education to be excluded from GATS
Education International, representing 26 million teachers and education personnel around the world, has written to the
New Zealand Prime Minister expressing its astonishment that the government has asked other countries to open their
education systems to commercial competition under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS).
"It is our belief that your request for the full opening to foreign competition, including in the area of Research and
Development, of the educational systems of other countries is at odds with what is proposed in the Guiding Principles
that you will apply to New Zealand", wrote its General Secretary, Fred van Leeuwen. "We have difficulty understanding
why New Zealand makes requests of others that it says it is not prepared to accept for itself."
Education International "believes that liberalisation of trade in the education sector is a mistake. The implementation
of the right to education, a collective as well as an individual right, is to benefit society as a whole and is a
governmental responsibility. Trade in education services is based on a premise that everything is a commodity that can
be bought and sold to serve economic interests."
Commenting on the letter, AUS National President Dr Bill Rosenberg, said that the letter added further authority to the
call from AUS and other education unions for the government to remove education from the GATS agreement. "It confirms
our view that the government has undermined our ability to protect public education by its extraordinary requests to
other countries to open their education systems to foreign competition’, he said.
Higher-education enrolment doubles in Western Europe in 25 years
The number of higher-education students in Western Europe has doubled in the last 25 years, according to a new study by
the European Union. The biggest increase has been in Portugal, where more than four times as many students were enrolled
in 1999-2000 as in 1975-76. In Finland, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, and Spain, the number of students has at least
tripled. The lowest growth has taken place in Germany, where the number has increased by a factor of only 1.5.
Growth has peaked in some countries with the number of students stabilised in Belgium and the Netherlands since the
1995-96 academic year. Numbers have been falling in Germany and France since 1995-96, and in Italy since 1997-98,
because of the shrinking college-age population.
The study examined higher education in 30 countries: the 15 members of the European Union, three Western European
countries outside the union (Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway), and 12 candidate countries, most of them formerly
Communist nations of Central and Eastern Europe.
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AUS Tertiary Update is compiled weekly on Thursdays and distributed freely to members of the union and others. Back
issues are archived on the AUS website: http://www.aus.ac.nz. Direct enquires to Marty Braithwaite, AUS Communications
Officer, email: marty.braithwaite@aus.ac.nz