June members' update

A copy of the update recently emailed to members can be found below the fold.


National Bargaining

The Umbrella Agreement parties continue to meet to discuss the allocation of the salary funding set aside as contingency funding in the recent Budget by the Minister of Tertiary Education Michael Cullen.

Nigel Haworth (AUS National President) said, “There is a sum of money clearly on the table and it is a question of the distribution.” Haworth said he would discuss the deal with members “as soon as we’ve got things tied up in a way that everybody’s comfortable with”.

The AUS bargaining team is meeting in Wellington on Friday 15 June. Member meetings will be held towards the end of June.

Deloitte Report

The Deloitte Report found that international salary comparisons provided a case for a much stronger salary claim for academics than for general staff. The full report can be found here

The focus for the international comparisons is on academic salaries and benefits. Not only does New Zealand face competition for academic staff who may be domiciled in those countries, but it also faces competition from those countries for recruiting academic staff who may be domiciled in other countries. Whilst limited international competition exists for some specialist general staff, the principal competition for general staff is between universities within New Zealand and between university and other potential public and private employees. Information is also provided on salaries and benefits for non university positions which may be comparable to university academic staff positions.

Morale Survey

We have had a good response to the morale survey. The original pilot (sent out to academic staff in the College of Arts last December) was modified to include all staff.

This survey represents our conviction that morale is important for a productive workplace. Our initial survey set out to test the anecdotal evidence of low morale among academics in the university. It was always our intention, following the redundancies in the College of Arts, to test morale across campus. We hope to work constructively with the university to address the findings.

A feature of this survey is the large number of responses (60% of the returns to date) in the comments field. These will provide invaluable qualitative data and enhance the utility of the survey. We hope to report the outcome of the survey by July.

Early Childhood Learning Centre

The Vice-Chancellor wrote to the Campaign Action Group to defer the review of the Centre until the merger of the University and the Christchurch College of Education. One of the proposals was a merger with Te Ao Tamariki Childcare Centre at the College. Meanwhile all continuing staff vacancies in the Centre will be filled. The Action Group is to be congratulated for pursuing a cogent campaign.

College of Arts Redundancies

The College of Arts wrote to affected staff in the School of Education and Chinese Programme to say that a selection pool process to determine who would be made redundant was no longer necessary, owing to the retirement of two members of staff.

Only one person has been made redundant. Dr Ghazala Anwar is exploring the option of external funding to retain her position in Religious Studies.

Annual Leave

For clarity we wish to advise academic members that they can request annual leave in advance (anticipate leave) and if they have leave remaining from 2005. They can use it this year. Although the academic collective agreement provides that annual leave cannot be accrued without the prior written approval of the Human Resources Director, it is our view that where leave is not or cannot be taken within the year, the entitlement cannot be forfeited unless University management have complied in full with the Holidays Act.

In general, the Act provides that agreement must be reached between an employee and employer regarding the timing of leave, but if agreement cannot be reached, the employer may require the leave to be taken. Not less than fourteen days’ notice of the requirement to take annual leave must be given.

It is also our view that a general edict to take leave does not satisfy the requirements of the Act, so that unused leave will remain as an entitlement for up to seven years.

It should also be noted that an employer may allow an employee to take an agreed portion of his or her annual holiday entitlement in advance.

Latest additions to the main AUS website:

PBRF - Feedback on use of PBRF data by TEC

PBRF - Feedback on the 2006 Guidelines

Post 2005 Ministerial briefing

Submission – Differentiation within the Tertiary Sector

Submission - Strategic Review of the Tertiary Education Workforce