TEU Tertiary Update, volume 12, number 32

SSC ONLY SUPPRESSING UNION MEMBERS' PAY

TEU national president Tom Ryan and national secretary Sharn Riggs met with the State Services Commission last Friday to discuss its involvement in employment negotiations in the tertiary education sector.

Ms Riggs says that the union raised with the commission an ongoing concern that, after employers in institutes of technology and polytechnics have been reaching agreements with the TEU that they believe are fair and fiscally sustainable, it appears that SSC staff then have been advising chief executives that the proposed settlements are too high and don’t include productivity gains to justify any pay increases.

“The impression we have is that chief executives are being told that there will be consequences if they settle on terms that the SSC doesn’t ‘approve’ of. We want the commission to confirm if this is happening and if so what the threatened consequences are.”

“It seems that employers are being told that they must demonstrate productivity and flexibility gains to justify any pay increase at all, “ says Ms Riggs. “But it’s very unclear what constitutes a productivity gain in a polytechnic that has an EFTS cap and is facing funding cuts from government.”

Ms Riggs says that the union has a substantive concern that some ITPs have given non-union members significantly higher pay rises than they are offering to union members on the collective agreement. Employers appear to have offered these higher pay rates without any recourse to, or sanction from the commission.

“The commission needs to explain this apparent inconsistency in its approach,” concludes Ms Riggs.

ALSO IN TERTIARY UPDATE THIS WEEK:

1. Minister announces youth guarantee providers
2. ITP dispute enters second week
3. Universities to try negotiating one-by-one
4. Teacher educators meet
5. Tolley writes Letterman script
6. No to national university standards

MINISTER ANNOUNCES YOUTH GUARANTEE PROVIDERS
Tertiary education minister Anne Tolley announced yesterday the twenty eight tertiary education providers that that will be funded to deliver Youth Guarantee programmes next year.

The 28 providers will provide places for 2000 student places across New Zealand in 2010 and 2011. In return the government is providing funding of $52.7 million over two years.

"We are delivering on our promise to help 16 and 17 year olds who are at risk of disengaging from education or training," said Mrs Tolley.

"The jump-start to the Youth Guarantee was a key part of the Prime Minister's Jobs Summit earlier this year. It's aimed at young people who are ready to move beyond school, but who still want to study and learn practical skills. It will provide them with an opportunity to participate in a range of vocational programmes, free of charge, at selected private training establishments, institutes of technology and polytechnics."

Youth Guarantee places were allocated to regions of high need, based on the number of unemployed young people in the population and the quality of the proposals.

Of the 28 providers eighteen are polytechnics and ten are private training enterprises. The only two polytechnics that appear not to have been funded are Western Institute of Technology and the Open Polytechnic.

In Taranaki, where 30 student places are allocated, only one provider has been funded to deliver the youth guarantee education. In all other regions the minister has opted for a mix of public and private providers.

ITP DISPUTE ENTERS SECOND WEEK

With the employment dispute at six polytechnics now in its second week Tertiary Education Union members are worried that it could linger into and beyond the holiday period. Staff at NorthTec, Bay of Plenty Polytechnic, Waikato Institute of Technology, and Western Institute of Technology in Taranaki, Whitireia Polytechnic and Unitec have been involved in industrial action including a day long strike, lightning strikes and ‘wear red’ campaign days since Wednesday last week.

Many polytechnics are scheduled to end term this week and enter a holiday period for students. Although union members have amended their initial claim considerably in an effort to progress negotiations the employers still have not made any changes to their offer of one percent for two and half years in tandem with significant losses to current working conditions.

TEU national industrial officer Irena Brorens is worried that intransigence could result in this industrial dispute continuing on through students’ holidays and into their crucial exam and study period next term.

“We are keen to negotiate, but the employers’ stance is simply not realistic,” said Ms Brorens. "These staff are doing all they can for their polytechnics and for their students. Enrolments are up and these tutors and lecturers are crucial in the current economic environment, giving job skills to people who need them. Instead of recognising that, their employers are telling them that they are not working hard enough, and that they should be paid less. It’s simply not acceptable.”

UNIVERSITIES TO TRY NEGOTIATING ONE-BY-ONE

Union members at universities have completed a nationwide series of stop-work meetings and have resolved to explore the possibilities of achieving local single employer agreements

The meetings were scheduled after the eight university employers manifested their opposition to negotiating a nationwide collective agreement during recent negotiations. The employers initially sought to have the claim for a nationwide multi-employer agreement negotiated in isolation from all other claims and then, when that was resisted by the unions, refused to meet again nationally after the first four days of negotiations.

The eight universities have instead invited members of the combined unions to bargain locally. They argue that this does not rule out a multi-employer agreement.

At the stop-work meetings the bargaining team advised union members they believed employer opposition to a multi-employer agreement was so entrenched that it would take sustained serious industrial action to change their position.

Each of the stopwork meetings endorsed the bargaining team’s recommendation that it now explore the possibility of locally negotiated single employer agreements, but that it leave the claim for a multi-employer collective agreement on the table to be discussed after,. The combined unions bargaining team will now implement that strategy.

The decision to keep the claim for multi-employer agreements live means that members have retained the option of taking action nationally if needed. Unions’ national advocate Nanette Cormack says that the mood of staff in universities is such that none of the employers should rule out the possibility of industrial action in the near future.

TEACHER EDUCATORS MEET

TEU’s newly formed teacher education network has set as its first task responding to the Teachers Council consultation document on the requirements and approval processes for initial teacher education programmes.

The council has been reviewing initial teacher education programmes since 2007 with the goal of increasing the effectiveness of the approval and monitoring processes for programmes and strengthening the quality of graduates who become teachers.

The review is looking for feedback from those in the education sector on what the entry requirements should be to get into teacher education courses, how long the course practicum should be and how that practicum should be assessed, and how the programmes should be designed.

Currently over 92 percent of primary and secondary teacher education graduates are from universities and 52 percent of early childhood teacher education graduates. There is however a reasonable amount of diversity within the sector with twenty six providers across wananga, institutes of technology and polytechnics, universities and PTEs. At the moment the Teachers Council requires that intending teachers demonstrate that they are of sound character and fit to be a teacher, but entry requirements (pre-requisites) can vary between providers.

The teacher education network represents a significant and vocal section of TEU’s membership and also has close links with other New Zealand education unions PPTA and NZEI. It used its first meeting to confirm that it wants to play a strong role as an advocate for high quality public teacher education as well as for the staff who provide that education.

TOLLEY WRITES LETTERMAN SCRIPT

There has been a great deal of hype around John Key’s upcoming appearance on David Letterman’s Late Show tonight. In an exclusive scoop, TEU entertainment correspondent Paki Taunuhia has discovered that the prime minister commissioned the Hon Anne Tolley to write his ‘top ten’ list for the show.

Senior insiders report that Mr Key was concerned that Mr Letterman would use the opportunity to belittle New Zealand. So, in an effort to increase New Zealand’s appearance of intellectual capital, he abandoned his usual speech writers and turned to his education minister for help. And here they are; Anne Tolley’s top ten reasons why New Zealanders are smarter than Americans:

1. Our government’s policy of cutting tertiary education spending in favour of prisons creates a competitive incentive to learn.

2. Look how our Otago and Canterbury students work collaboratively on joint projects like the Undie 500.

3. New Zealanders are bi-lingual – we can speak English and American.

4. We’ve got so many great academics we have to keep their pay low to encourage them overseas.

5. Everyone can pronounce the leader of our nation’s name.

6. Our tertiary education staff recognise they should stick to their knitting rather than extracurricular things like the governance of their institution.

7. We stayed out of Afghanistan… oh, wait…

8. The US secretary of education, Arne Duncan, is a Harvard graduate. Where’s Harvard?

9. We don’t waste time on learning about things like Moroccan cookery.

10. We know how to spell Wanganui.

NO TO NATIONAL UNIVERSITY STANDARDS

A foray into national academic standards by the Australian Universities Quality Agency has been strongly criticised by universities amid fears of more intrusive federal regulation.

AUQA's proposal for a system of national academic standards led universities to complain of a one-size-fits-all approach implying a uniform curriculum and even external standardised assessment.

"People are anxious about government intruding into academic affairs," said Mike Gallagher, executive director for the Group of Eight universities.

"You'd never want a national (university) curriculum in history or in philosophy or in economics."

The anxious reaction has been coloured by uncertainty about the nature of a new national regulator for tertiary institutions.

Executive director David Woodhouse rejected the suggestion that the overall response to AUQA's discussion paper on standards was a negative one. Faced with accusations of "dumbing down", universities had to be able to make clearer statements about how they and their students were performing. "It doesn't do the sector any good to be constantly ducking that issue," he said.

A definition of academic standards by discipline, proposed in AUQA's paper, would be "virtually impossible to achieve," far too costly and damaging to diversity, the Group of Eight said in one of 55 written responses to the agency.

In its submission Universities Australia said AUQA's plan could stifle innovation, subject universities to micromanagement, and saddle academic staff with the administrative burden. UA chief executive Glenn Withers told the HES that the logical extension of the AUQA approach was a prescribed curriculum.

Education ministers asked AUQA to pursue the issue of standards well before last December's Bradley report, which noted shortcomings in the agency and called for a new national regulator. That new regulator, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, is scheduled to be set up next year.

By Bernard Lane at the Australian

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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, email: stephen.day@teu.ac.nz.

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