All AUS members are invited to a meeting with Helen Kelly, General Secretary AUS who will address the issue of the threatened staff cuts in the College of Arts and answer members questions on this and other developments including changes to funding in tertiary education and the progress under the tripartite umbrella agreement.
Thursday 13 April at 1pm in Central Lecture Theatre C1
Helen Kelly will also be holding a special meeting for all AUS Library staff.
Helen will be available to address any concerns staff may wish to raise and clarify members rights under the General Staff Employment Agreement.
There are some significant HR issues which are being discussed in the Library at present.
The Library Committee encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity and look forward to seeing you all there: Thursday 13 April at 12noon in Arts Lecture Theatre A9
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"Warning to the VC jet set: prepare for a crash landing" is a Guardian article by Roger Kline, the head of universities, equality and employment rights at Natfhe, the UK university and college lecturers' union.
It can be read online here, or below.
Warning to the VC jet set: prepare for a crash landing
Roger Kline
Tuesday March 28 2006
The Guardian
Higher education is facing its most serious industrial dispute for a very long time. And it is clear that many vice-chancellors and principals have had difficulty coming to terms with the level of support for the action.
Natfhe members are up in arms for four reasons. First, their salaries have radically slipped, by whatever measure is used, compared with other professions. Even the employers accept this. Years of gradual relative decline have led to a grim determination that this is the year that something has to be done.
Second, whatever sleight of hand is used, the employers are struggling to explain why they cannot afford to meet a claim that is fully costed against top-up fee income (where appropriate) and wider funding settlements.
Third, the sector is led by chief executives who appear unable to apply to themselves the standards they expect of others. Why on earth should staff accept less than 23% over three years, at a time of improved funding, when their own leaders have paid themselves 25% over the past three years?
Finally, discontent over pay is symptomatic of a wider concern about excessive workloads, unmanageable administration and unsympathetic management.
A number of vice-chancellors appear to believe academic staff are best managed according to the sort of industrial relations practices usually found in a low-cost airline or on a factory production line. This approach sees trade unions as interlopers, struggles with any form of academic governance, collegiality or consensus, and prioritises at all costs the right to manage.
One of the difficulties in settling this pay dispute is the significant tension between this tendency and other university VCs who respect their staff and whose approach is more pragmatic.
Proponents of the "Ryanair tendency" include what Natfhe members would regard as the usual suspects: Peter Knight of the University of Central England (pay rise of 28% over the past three years), Neil Gorman of Nottingham Trent (39.8%) and Brian Roper of London Metropolitan (35.4%).
Peter Knight wrote in these pages recently: "The unions believe most VCs are fully paid-up members of the Amalgamated Union of Wimps and Woosies ... If pay is stopped, the action will collapse ... It is absolutely essential that their cynical action fails."
When Neil Gorman recently sought to put this rallying cry into practice, it fell flat on its face. An imminent lockout of staff who had confirmed their intention to engage in Natfhe's assessment boycott disappeared when staff threatened to escalate action.
These approaches are in sharp contrast with that of a VC who wrote to me last week, saying: "We value the joint working we have developed in recent years with our staff trade unions. While we deeply regret the forms of action currently being undertaken, we do recognise that when this dispute ends, academic staff will undertake the marking and assessment currently on hold. Therefore ... we will not be withholding monies for partial performance except where work not currently being undertaken is not completed in a timely manner at the end of the dispute."
Macho management has many shortcomings but, above all, it does not work. If there is one thing that demotivates and agitates academic staff, it is management that resists delegated autonomy, debate and expression of difference, and insists on bean-counting and a refusal to be challenged.
Employers have locked out academic unions from negotiations scheduled for today, saying this is because of our continuing non-strike action. But they will meet Unison, despite its strike today on pensions. It is more clumsy provocation.
Natfhe membership has increased since the beginning of the dispute. Our members would rather be at work. Their commitment to the success of students is undiminished. When the dispute is over and we have gained the settlement we seek, universities which understand that debate, difference and challenge need not poison long-term industrial relations will prosper. Those determined to show how tough they are will struggle to maintain the trust and respect of staff.
Roger Kline is head of universities, equality and employment rights at Natfhe, the university and college lecturers' union.
Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited
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From David Small, the Branch President:
The Minister for Tertiary Education, the Hon. Dr. Michael Cullen, announced the next steps in tertiary education sector reform on Tuesday 4 April.
The new approach is diametrically opposed in both substance and style to the cuurent plans by UC to cut staff in Arts.
Full details are available at this link.
My media release on the subject is below.
Immediate Suspension and Complete Reassessment of Arts Cuts at Canterbury Needed After Government Tertiary Education Announcement
Staff at the University of Canterbury are welcoming today’s policy announcement by the Minister of Tertiary Education, and are claiming that it shows the need for an immediate suspension and complete reassessment of the University’s plans to make further cuts in the Arts.
“At the very time the government is announcing a move away from what it calls ‘the current, overly simplistic, Student Component funding system’, the University is axing staff based entirely on that measure,” said Association of University Staff (AUS) Canterbury President, David Small.
Dr Small said that there is widespread support among staff for Dr Cullen’s view that universities are more effective in their basic mission of serving the public when they organise their research and teaching around a plan that is responsive to the economic and social needs of their community and the country, and that is developed in consultation with the university’s diverse stakeholders.
He said that the university’s plan to cut eight positions in Arts was being implemented without any consideration of factors that the Minister identified as essential for a university, such as fostering “critical thinking and innovation”, acting as “the conscience and critic of society”, and supporting “the flexibility and innovation that comes with independence of thought”.
Dr Small said that Dr Cullen’s statement reinforces AUS’s argument that it is simply unacceptable for a New Zealand university today to be using such a blunt financial instrument to make cuts with profound academic, social and economic costs, and to remain completely unmoved by such widespread opposition from within the university and the wider community.
Last year, the University of Canterbury recorded a financial surplus of $9.2 million, up 50% on the previous year, $2.5 million ahead of budget, and at the upper end of government guidelines on appropriate levels of surplus for a university. Despite this, it is continuing with plans to cut $2million from the Arts, a move that it claims requires forced redundancies among academic staff. The programmes targetted are Russian, Islamic Studies, Asian History, Education, American Studies, English, Chinese, and Music. The cuts are being made in the absence of an academic plan and in the face of a unanimous vote of condemnation from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. The university released a change proposal on 20 March with submissions closing on 20 April.
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