University pay deal to go to ratification
Union members at New Zealand universities have voted to send proposed new pay deals to ratification which, if accepted,
will see salary increases of between 4 and 5.5 percent for general staff and between 6 and 7.5 percent for academic
staff this year. The proposed increases come as a result of tripartite discussions among vice-chancellors, university
staff unions and the Government, resulting in a $26 million funding boost for universities targeted at salaries. If
accepted, most university staff will receive their biggest across-the-board salary movement in twenty years.
Meetings held with union members at seven universities over the last fortnight resulted in a vote of 1237 to 42 in
support of a recommendation from the combined unions’ bargaining team that enterprise-based collective employment
agreements incorporating the current salary offers be renewed. It has also been proposed that, once those agreements are
settled, further discussions will take place at each of the universities to discuss “local” issues, including proposals
to review general staff salary structures.
If ratified, the renewed collective agreements will all run until 31 May 2007, allowing the unions to again initiate
bargaining for national multi-employer collective agreements next year.
Association of University Staff General Secretary, Helen Kelly, said that an umbrella agreement between the unions and
vice-chancellors had been renewed, requiring the parties to work actively and constructively through the tripartite
process to ensure that the issue of competitive and fair salaries maintains a high priority. The agreement also requires
the parties to use their best endeavours to develop, agree and implement sustainable solutions to providing competitive
and fair salaries for staff; to implement, as appropriate, agreed outcomes from the Universities Tripartite Forum in
collective agreements; and to develop solutions to other funding and resourcing issues facing universities.
Ms Kelly said that the negotiations had been a significant advance in the way bargaining was conducted in the university
sector, and was the direct result of the efforts of union members over the past few years. She also said she expects
that the next stages of the tripartite process will be more complex than the initial round, as a result of the
Government’s plans for a new funding system and further differentiation within the tertiary education sector.
It is expected that ratification ballots to renew the current collective agreements will be under way by early August.
Also in Tertiary Update this week
1. New Secretary for Education
2. Wananga to lay off staff
3. New appointments to FoRST Board
4. It just ain’t right, say PTEs
5. UK staff accept pay deal
6. Universities close in face of Middle-Eastern conflict
7. Bishop (Minister?) calls for less to be spent on administration
8. Arnie docked
New Secretary for Education announced
It was announced this week that Karen Sewell has been appointed as the new Secretary for Education and Chief Executive
of the Ministry of Education. She will take up the new posts in November, replacing Howard Fancy, who notified his
resignation earlier in the year.
In announcing Ms Sewell’s appointment, the State Services Commissioner, Mark Prebble, said that she has a proven record
as Chief Executive of the Education Review Office, a position which she has held since 2001, and in various management,
leadership and teaching roles in a State Services career devoted to education. Mr Prebble says that Ms Sewell has a good
understanding of the issues facing the Ministry of Education and the wider education sector that will enable her to
quickly understand its strategic issues and the education-policy agenda. “She is deeply committed to the value of
education and to improving education outcomes for New Zealand children. She will continue the work under way at the
Ministry to strengthen its performance, systems and future capability. Ms Sewell is widely known and respected in the
sector, and by her colleagues in the Public Service.”
In June 2005 Ms Sewell was asked by the Board of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) to act as its Chief
Executive, and performed this role on leave from the Education Review Office for almost a full year. Mr Prebble said
that, as Acting NZQA Chief Executive, Ms Sewell demonstrated the ability to step into an organisation in crisis and to
take firm control, and then rapidly devised a strategy for recovery and led its implementation. She managed the delivery
of consistent results for the national examinations in 2005 and has established the planning for ongoing improvement in
future examinations.
Ms Sewell has previously taught at schools in the United Kingdom and in New Zealand, has been the holder of a teaching
fellowship at Victoria University Wellington, a recipient of a Nuffield Bursary at the University of London and has also
been an Inspector of Secondary Schools for the Department of Education.
Wananga to lay off staff
Hard on the heels of a reported loss of $4.9 million last year, it has been reported that Te Whare Wananga o
Awanuiarangi is expected to lay off as many as sixty of its 240 staff. Last year’s financial loss, equivalent to 30
percent of the Wananga’s income, is understood to be one of the worst ever recorded by a tertiary-education institution.
According to a report in Education Review, the Government is confident that the Whakatane-based institution can manage
its way back to good health and that, while the situation is being monitored, more formal intervention will not be
pursued as the Wananga has substantial reserves and is putting in place corrective action to ensure its long-term
viability. A spokesperson for the Minister for Tertiary Education, Dr Michael Cullen, is reported as saying that the
Crown does not expect the Wananga to request financial assistance to fund the deficit.
Council Chair, Dr Hirini Mead, said that the Wananga’s Council had approved a restructuring plan which included a
reorganisation of academic delivery to streamline administration and eliminate duplication across the sector. Dr Mead
told Education Review that the new structure would require between fifty and sixty fewer staff, with those affected
given the opportunity of taking voluntary redundancy or seeking positions in the new structure. He said the staff
positions to be cut would comprise both administrative and teaching staff.
National President of the Association of Staff in Tertiary Education, Lloyd Woods, said that job losses at both Te Whare
Wananga o Awanuiarangi and Te Wananga o Aotearoa continue to be heartbreaking for staff, including those who will be
left behind to try and “salvage the wreckage” in some areas. “We have been very involved trying to minimise the numbers
whose jobs are to be made redundant, and to ensure that the institutions do not cut any more staff positions than they
must,” he said. “It is vital that they are not left with insufficient high-quality staff to ensure high-quality
provision.”
New appointments to FoRST Board
The Minister for Research, Science and Technology, Steve Maharey, has announced three new appointments to the Board of
the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology, the main government funding body for science and technology. They
are Paul Tocker, Chief Executive of Crop and Food, Dr Diana Hill, Chief Executive and Director of the quality assurance
company, Global Technologies, and Dr Bronwen Connor, Head of the Neural Repair and Neurogenesis Laboratory and a senior
lecturer at the University of Auckland.
The new appointees replace retiring Board members Dr Andy Pearce, Professor Tom Barnes and Dr Grant Ryan. The
appointments are for three year terms effective from 13 July.
According to Mr Maharey, the new Board members bring a strong mix of governance and business skills and specialist
research experience, including emerging areas of science. They also bring experience in the public sector and strong
links with the global science community.
The other members of the FoRST Board are Dame Margaret Bazely (Chair), Professor Judith Kinnear, Jim McLean, Associate
Professor Pare Keiha, Professor Gary Hook and Craig Norgate.
It just ain’t right, say PTEs
In a series of rather curious media releases this week, entitled 10 reasons why student loan rules just ain’t right, an
otherwise unknown organisation calling itself the PTE Budget Policy Awareness Group appears to have launched something
of a campaign in protest at the decision of the Government to limit access to student loans and allowances to those
students enrolled in publicly funded tertiary-education courses.
The releases say that more than 100 private training establishments provide courses not funded by the Tertiary Education
(TEC), up to half of which receive no TEC funding at all. They add that many of those PTEs will be forced to close at
the end of the year.
The first media release from the group says that dozens of PTEs face a period of at least twelve months during which
students enrolled in their courses will not be eligible for student loans. “Students will flee these courses on mass
[sic], PTEs will go under, hundreds of teaching staff and students will be left stranded,” the release says.
“We have been left way up the proverbial creek – left to sink – left without any lifeline, let alone a boat or even a
miserable oar,” said Brijeshi Sethi, PTE Budget Policy Awareness Group spokesperson and Managing Director of a West
Auckland PTE, the New Zealand College of Education.
Association of University Staff National President, Professor Nigel Haworth, said that he was surprised at the outcry
from the affected PTEs. “The AUS has never thought it appropriate that public funding should go to private
tertiary-education institutions which are not publicly accountable for either the quality or usefulness of their
courses,” he said. “Students are better advised to enrol in public institutions offering assured quality and
qualifications which are consistent with the nation’s tertiary-education strategy and needs.”
Worldwatch
UK staff accept pay deal
University staff in the United Kingdom have voted to accept a pay deal that will increase salaries by 10.37 percent over
the next two years. The third year of the deal, subject to negotiations after the results of an independent review of
university finances, will provide a minimum increase of a further 2.5 percent.
More than 24,500 members of the new University and Colleges Union (UCU), or 70 percent of those participating in the
ballot, voted in favour of the deal which followed months of industrial activity culminating in strike action earlier
this year.
UCU General Secretary, Sally Hunt, said that the ballot turnout showed the high level of engagement that union members
have had during the dispute. “The final settlement provides a solid first step towards restoring pay levels in our
universities to those of comparable professions, but our employers must realise that there remains a long way to go,”
she said. “Recent studies have confirmed UCU’s view that there is extra money available for pay in the future, and we
expect this to be confirmed by the independent review of university finances.
Ms Hunt said that during the pay dispute the union had to negotiate with an employers’ organisation which lacked unity
and was often shambolic. “If we are to avoid further prolonged industrial action in the future, the national bargaining
structures and University and Colleges Employers’ Association itself require urgent reform,” she said. “In the meantime
this dispute has shown that the days when universities could hold salaries down and take our members’ goodwill for
granted are over for good.”
Universities close in face of Middle Eastern conflict
Several Lebanese universities and two Israeli campuses have cancelled classes as fighting between Israel and the
Lebanese militia, Hezbollah, entered its second week. A spokesperson for the American University of Beirut, one of the
region’s elite higher-education institutions, said that administrators had reluctantly decided to close two summer
programmes for American and European students because the situation had become too dangerous for many professors to
report for work.
Notre Dame University Louaize, a private, English-language university near Beirut, announced on Monday that it was
closing until further notice, while the Université Saint Joseph, a private, French-language university in Beirut,
announced last week that it was cancelling classes, examinations and diploma ceremonies. The University of Balamand, in
northern Lebanon, announced that it was suspending its summer semester until further notice.
In Israel, the University of Haifa and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology announced on Sunday that their
campuses were closing until further notice. University of Haifa President, Aaron Ben-Ze’ev, said that American and other
foreign students who were enrolled in the University's summer programmes had been transferred to the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem. The campus, he said, is empty except for emergency crews and researchers who come to feed and care for
laboratory animals.
Meanwhile, the Gaza University Teachers’ Association has called for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel, and for
Israel to withdraw all occupation forces from Gaza, ending the occupation of Palestinian land.
From the Chronicle of Higher Education
Bishop (Minister?) calls for less to be spent on administration
The Australian Minister of Education, Julie Bishop, is reported in The Australian as saying she wants universities to
spend less on administration and more on teaching, adding that savings from economies of scale, joint purchasing
arrangements and more collaboration across courses and institutions are among the ways they could achieve this.
It is reported that, while her comments will find favour with academics who have long complained about inflated
university bureaucracies, they are likely to be viewed with cynicism by administrations “groaning under the weight of
red tape” created by the Howard Government’s university reforms.
An overhaul of administration at Curtin University of Technology is said to have attracted the Minister’s attention,
with Vice-Chancellor Jeanette Hacket saying Curtin had switched to strategic procurement, centralised purchasing and
standardised information-technology services, saving the University $A1 million on its first contract for stationery and
business machines alone. The savings would be spent on teaching and research.
Outlining her first-term agenda, Ms Bishop signalled that she would visit the vexed issue of how to allocate base grants
according to teaching costs, and push for a greater range of institutions in Australia from liberal arts colleges to
specialist universities. She will also continue the fight to have some universities teaching-only, despite state
education ministers signing off recently on new national protocols that specify universities must have a research
component.
Arnie docked
Those concerned at the ease with which universities hand out honorary degrees will be pleased at news that an Austrian
court has ordered the country’s first private university to revoke an honorary degree it awarded to California Governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Imadec University in Vienna gave the honorary doctorate of business administration to the
former actor in a special ceremony in October 2001, citing his lifetime work, in particular with children in US ghettos,
and his services to the Austrian economy. Almost five years on, however, Vienna’s Administrative Tribunal ruled that the
University was not in a position to award honorary degrees, not only because it could give titles only to people who had
studied there, but also because it could only confer the degrees of executive MBA, international MLE and LLM. The court
described the University’s actions as a “breach of administration” and fined it an undisclosed amount.
Meanwhile, former world champion racing driver Sir Jackie Stewart received an honorary degree from Edinburgh University
yesterday, and UK television presenter, Chris Tarrant, is to receive an honorary doctorate from Aston University. The
host of hit TV series Who wants to be a millionaire will be presented with a degree celebrating his services to the
entertainment industry during a ceremony tomorrow at the University in Birmingham.
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AUS Tertiary Update is compiled weekly on Thursdays and distributed freely to members of the Association of University
Staff and others. Back issues are available on the AUS website: www.aus.ac.nz. Direct enquires should be made to Marty
Braithwaite, AUS Communications Officer, email: marty.braithwaite@aus.ac.nz