We Are The University

TEU Update - 21 March

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Fri Mar 21 2025 13:00:00 GMT+1300 (New Zealand Daylight Time)

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Bargaining Update

There were two bargaining meetings this week; one where your bargaining teams put forward new proposals that could potentially settle bargaining and one where we tried to tidy up other outstanding issues.

In the interest of reaching a settlement, the Professional team has made the call to withdraw the claim to include H band in coverage of the Collective Agreement. Thank you to those H band members who gave feedback to the reps and organisers on this issue. As H band staff will remain on IEAs for now, you should soon be receiving advice from the Vice Chancellor re your terms and conditions.

The Academic team has also made the call to withdraw the claim for Academic casuals to be covered. There are only a tiny number of staff on legitimate Academic casuals, and these are normally people like guest lecturers. If you have concerns about an Academic Causal contract, please contact the organisers.

In other news, the TEU’s Industrial Officer has written to the Vice Chancellor with serious concerns about whether your employer is acting in good faith. This particularly concerns the pay offer to non-union members and the employer’s position on back pay, along with communications to new TEU members stating that their previously agreed pay rises will be removed. If you are a new member of the TEU who has received such a communication, please get in touch with the organisers at and have not yet spoken to the organisers about it, please get in touch with them on nicole.wallace@teu.ac.nz and yasmine.serhan@teu.ac.nz.

Strike Deductions: With Hono now up and running (see below), the suspension from the strike has now come through. Remember to check any pay dock is correct and that you have only been docked for time you would otherwise have been working, especially if you are a part time or shift worker. GTAs, TAs and Casual staff should not have been docked. Applications for the strike fund can also now be processed. If the loss of money from the strike is hard for you, apply for the fund by emailing strikefund@teu.ac.nz with the following info:

Hono Blues: A number of Hono issues are coming through. Our organisers are prioritising resolving any payment issues, but are also aware of problems with leave balances and missing steps in onboarding, and are working through these. If you are having one of these problems, please get in contact with University HR first, and if the issue is not resolved, advise the organisers of your issue and what the employer’s response has been (see Other reminder below for contact details). Documenting the problem is part of solving the problem.

Reminder for casual staff – if you are asked to pay back money received over the Hono shutdown period, do not agree to do so until you get advice from an organiser.

Faculty Merger and Council meeting. Earlier this year, Senate overwhelmingly declined to support the proposed merger of the Law and Business Schools. This month’s Council’s agenda called for consideration of the merger proposal to take place without public access and therefore without transparency. The TEU wrote to the Chancellor challenging the rationale for Council having behind-closed-doors discussions on this matter and stated that any rationale was outweighed by public interest. The TEU believes that neither the Employment Relations Act 2000 nor the current Academic Staff Collective Agreement are compatible with Council considering the merger in isolation of affected staff. We weren’t the only ones to challenge this and it seems that by the time the TEU letter was received, the VC had already decided to remove the item from the private part of the agenda. It will now be on the agenda for an “extraordinary” meeting of Council before the end of March and will be in public. The official view: Update on proposed new faculty arrangements: Business and Economics, Law - The University of Aucklandhttps://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/notices/2025/proposed-new-faculty-business-economics-law.html. See also Auckland Law Faculty Merger Decision Delayed Amid Transparency Concernshttps://www.lawfuel.com/auckland-law-faculty-merger-decision-delayed-amid-transparency-concerns/ and Uni Council takes Law merger off the agenda – for nowhttps://lawnews.nz/administrative-public/uni-council-takes-law-school-merger-off-the-agenda/

Around Aotearoa

Tertiary education: Not a Priority. We are concerned about the Government’s intention to shift public funding from non-priority provision “to ensure funding is directed towards the government's priority areas.” Worse still, we should prepare instructed about what we teach to teach based on which way the political wind is blowing. Tertiary institutions 'should not assume funding will be maintained' | RNZ Newshttps://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/545382/tertiary-institutions-should-not-assume-funding-will-be-maintained. Not unrelated perhaps: Doctors fear Govt instruction means they can’t talk freely about public health issues | New Zealand Doctorhttps://www.nzdoctor.co.nz/article/news/doctors-fear-govt-instruction-means-they-cant-talk-freely-about-public-health-issues

New collective agreements at Massey and Canterbury. Te Hautū Kahurangi | Tertiary Education Union members at Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa | Massey University have voted to ratify a new collective agreement. Covering a range of workers from gardeners and technicians to tutors and lecturers, the agreement delivers improved pay and conditions that include an approximate 6% pay increase over 2 years, improved parental leave rights, and more for union members covered by the collective agreement. TEU members at Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha | The University of Canterbury have also ratified a new collective agreement that includes increases totalling 5% over two years, automatic pay progression for maintenance staff who were previously without it, and an overhauled salary scale for medical practitioners. Members at Canterbury also successfully fought off an employer claim to remove retirement leave for new staff. Settlements at Massey and Canterbury | Tertiary Education Union – Te Hautū Kahurangi o Aotearoahttps://teu.ac.nz/news/settlements-at-massey-and-canterbury/

Trump looms large. Trump is surveying Australian academics about gender diversity and China – what does this mean for unis and their research?https://theconversation.com/trump-is-surveying-australian-academics-about-gender-diversity-and-china-what-does-this-mean-for-unis-and-their-research-252282 Non-American scholars who plan to travel to the US, even in transit elsewhere, should be aware. Travel advisories suggest phones be sterilised of anything that might be construed as anti-Trump. Travellers whose passport lists gender as X will be under increased scrutiny at the US border. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/19/trump-musk-french-scientist-detained. Check with the Risk Office (riskoffice@auckland.ac.nz) if you are concerned.

Across the Unionverse

“Like a mob boss, [Trump] threatens to cut off two of the university’s fingers, academic freedom and faculty governance”: The US government has sent Columbia University a ransom note | Sheldon Pollock | The Guardianhttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/19/government-trump-columbia-university . See also Trump has turbocharged the attacks on free speech at US universities. I have seen it first-hand | Sandy Tolan | The Guardianhttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/20/donald-trump-gaza-protests-us-universities-palestine-arrest-sanctions. See also Profiles in Self-Censorship | David Cole | The New York Review of Bookshttps://www.nybooks.com/online/2025/03/10/profiles-in-self-censorship-dei/. See also The Case of Mahmoud Khalil | The New Yorkerhttps://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/03/24/the-case-of-mahmoud-khalil. See also The Volunteer Data Hoarders Resisting Trump’s Purge | The New Yorkerhttps://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/the-data-hoarders-resisting-trumps-purge

From bits to qubits. Quantum computers don’t just represent the next step in computing; they’re an entirely new technological species with enormous implications. TEU member Alex Sims and Dulani Jayasuriyahttps://newsroom.co.nz/author/dulani-jayasuriya/ (Business School) explain: Quantum (computing) leap into a new era - Newsroomhttps://newsroom.co.nz/2025/03/14/quantum-computing-the-dawn-of-a-new-computing-era/

Other reminders

Please consider sharing this and subsequent Updates (electronically or print) with colleagues who may benefit from knowing what we are doing on behalf of all staff.

Brent Burmester TEU Branch Co-President (Academic)| Department of Management and International Business | Room 4122, Level 4, 12 Grafton Road, Auckland 1142, New Zealand | Ext 84559 DDI +64 9 923 4559

University of Auckland Branch Committee, Te Hautū Kahurangi Tertiary Education Union. Join your unionhttps://teu.ac.nz/join - it's your right! Got a question? Let me know.