Volume 2, Number 3, March 2010
From the Branch President, Megan Clayton
UC Change Thermometer
With one change proposal implemented, two currently under consultation and one still to come, TEU members are in the eye of an extended storm of restructuring now more than six months old. As each phase is introduced, organisers and representatives meet with members to find ways of mitigating the uncertainty and dread that the change process brings, at the same time as looking for constructive ways to make submissions and challenge those aspects with negative implications for members and the University. The continuous scanning of proposals for auguries and errors along with gauging the best and yet at the same time most realistic expectations for those affected is taking its toll on members, representatives and organisers alike. It remains clear that, while current employment law and its precedents allow for engagement through consultation, the possibility of genuine and meaningful partnership between union and institution is precluded by the critical power remaining in the hands of the employer – or, as the VC has put it many times, “At the end of the day, I am the decision-maker”. The TEU initiated bargaining at a national level in 2009 with the claim that no redundancies should take place during the term of settlement. The loss of this national claim and the devolution to local bargaining does not make this any less the view of the union. The pace of current changes at Canterbury and the extent of the union’s involvement in administratively facilitating this process should not elide for members the fact that TEU remains fundamentally opposed to redundancies as a means of managing the university’s labour force and cutting costs. Wherever we can, our engagement with the employer is in defence of this principle and in support of stability of employment for the greater good of the institution’s goals. The employer’s position is itself significantly conditioned by the increasingly constrained levels of tertiary funding under the present government. The loss of ACE funding nationwide has had its flow-on effect in the loss of academic positions from the sector at Canterbury under the current restructuring, and the TEC directive to tertiary institutions to reduce offerings in preparatory programmes and learning support may yet threaten these areas – and the research that supports them – at this university. Just as New Zealand is paying a price for its previous lack of investment in trade training and apprenticeships, so this Government appears to be setting up the tertiary education sector for a similar fall. More generally, the government’s stated position that there will be no increase to tertiary funding brings about an enrolment funding crisis in which institutions run the risk, in having to do more with less money, of in fact doing less for more students. The TEU’s view is that partnership between the university and the union – with the latter’s strength of grass-roots’ knowledge, organisational expertise and ability to facilitate supported outcomes – is a better way through the currently constrained times than simply cutting the University’s labour resources at their roots, to the detriment of both parties.
Redundancies:
47
Redeployments: 0 Additional redundancies proposed: 51
The Co-Location Argument The change proposals for the new Communications/External Relations and International/Student Services portfolios rely on service and administrative co-location: all services being offered from the same location. In the case of Communications/External Relations this refers to all roles, and in the case of International/Student Services it involves, at this stage at least, bringing together administrative support across the portfolio into one location. In both portfolios administrators will thus be in a “hub” together. The “efficiencies” the employer is seeking are assumed in these proposals to come from reducing the number of administrative positions across both portfolios, with the expectation that co-location will lead to the same amount of work done more efficiently by fewer people. In the Communications/External Relations portfolio, this “hub” is proposed to involve just one staff member: a receptionist/administrative assistant. The new director’s proposed Executive Assistant would, under the proposal, be required to provide relief cover and support where needed. The TEU is willing to support co-location as a feature of these new portfolios but opposes such drastic and impractical cuts in administrative support. We are currently working with affected members to create an inventory, for the purposes of writing alternative position descriptions, to propose a more realistic alternative for these portfolios.