AUS Canterbury Branch Submission on the draft amalgamation proposal

The following was approved by the Canterbury Branch Committee at its meeting on 7th June and submitted on behalf of Canterbury members. Members are also encouraged to make their own submissions, if they wish, by June 20th.

Much of the discussion at Canterbury is still at the stage of considering whether to support an amalgamation at all, rather than on the specifics of the current proposal. At last year’s conference, the Canterbury Branch delegates did not vote unanimously in favour of the remit that the AUS support in principle a merger with ASTE, because some delegates did not believe they had a mandate from their membership to do so. At the time, our Branch President commented that “this is a process that cannot move too slowly”, in order to ensure that no major changes were made without a clear mandate from the members. But we do understand the remit passed by conference and are progressing the discussion to the extent that we can.


AUS Canterbury branch has not formed a single view on the proposed amalgamation. There has been both vocal support for, and opposition to, the idea of amalgamation. As a generalisation, members who support amalgamation are persuaded by the argument that bigger unions may be more effective at advancing the cause of members, and a combined ASTE-AUS-TIASA membership would make for a much larger union.

In general, those who oppose amalgamation do so because they do not believe that AUS members will receive the same level of representation as they currently enjoy, both in terms of representing university staff to external organisations, and in representing sector groups within the union. For example, regarding the present proposal, concern has been expressed at the loss of the national staff sector Vice-Presidents. They are also concerns that the strongly democratic culture of the AUS and level of participation commensurate with this culture, based as it is only seven sites, would be undermined in a much larger organisation.

In addition, we have received the following from our members.

1. Would the current proposal lead to a reduction of the number of university staff appointed to university Council?
2. Would the current proposal reduce branch representation on the National Council?
3. There are representation issues related to the proposed composition of council, and the voting power at conference. AUS Canterbury Branch advocates a position that, at least at the initial stages, has representation of the various sectors in proportion to their membership. Members were generally opposed to any reduction in representation on either of these national bodies.

There is also a large proportion of the membership who are either indifferent to the amalgamation or are not engaged in the current debate. One could speculate as to why this is (don’t care either way, too busy dealing with reviews of their departments, think it’s a fait accompli and so on…) but what is clear is that any amalgamated union needs the support of the majority of its members to be successful and unified. We will be doing our best between now and the vote to ensure that no members at Canterbury are caught by surprise by this issue.

Given this, we recommend that serious consideration be given to the threshold required to pass this proposal. Currently 65% of those who vote in a national poll will be enough to pass the proposal. The proportions who do vote are assumed to be representative of those who do not. AUS Canterbury Branch recommends that there should be a set threshold turnout for validation of the ballot (e.g. 50% + 1 turnout) in addition to the 65% majority to carry the proposal. This is a constitutional matter and should be treated with the gravitas it deserves.

As much of the debate both here and at other campuses centres on whether to amalgamate or not, AUS Canterbury Branch recommends the ballot questions be amended to reflect this. We favour these options for the ballot:

1. Do you support amalgamation on the basis of the proposal distributed to members in August 2007?
2. Do you support amalgamation but NOT on the basis of the proposal distributed to members in August 2007.
3. Do you oppose amalgamation and would not support any proposal to do so.

AUS Canterbury branch committee, wishes to see university staff continue to feel connected to their union and have a strong union which voices the concerns of university staff. We believe these recommendations will help ensure that if amalgamation goes ahead, it does so with the support of the majority of its membership.


Submitted on behalf of the AUS Canterbury Branch.