Polytechs resisting attempts to keep single collective agreement for sector, union says

The Tertiary Education Union says polytechnics are resisting its attempts to retain a single collective employment agreement covering the entire sector.

It has asked the Employment Relations Authority to provide facilitated bargaining for a multi-employer collective agreement, or MECA.

The union's assistant national secretary - industrial, Daniel Benson-Guiu, said for the past four years its members were covered by a single agreement negotiated while the polytechnics were campuses of the national skills and training institute Te Pūkenga.

The institute was winding up and Benson-Guiu said there was no reason they couldn't shift to a multi-employer collective covering 11 employers - the 10 independent institutes and the group of four that remained within Te Pūkenga, but would next year function as a federation of individual institutions.

"We know that the employers may have slightly different interests, but we also know that the sector has not drastically changed over the last few years, especially when it comes to what it takes to employ staff and retain staff and make sure that they're well remunerated for the work that they do," he said.

But the union was struggling to negotiate a MECA.

"Currently each employer is claiming they're so different from each other that they couldn't possibly be in one agreement. That's even though the agreement right now continues to be in force and there doesn't appear to be a problem on a day-to-day basis," Benson-Guiu said.

"Right now, effectively, they're stalling in terms of negotiations. We had our claims from day one. We've seen no claims at all from any of the polytechnics about the MECA specifically and we've been in negotiations for over six months," he said.

"From what we can see, there is no money and there's an attitude that each employer should go it alone."

One of the polytechnics, Ara, said it was engaged in collective bargaining with the union and remained committed to bargaining in good faith.

"Our preference is for a single employer collective agreement because we believe it provides greater flexibility to reflect Ara's specific operating environment and the needs of our kaimahi," it said.

"Existing terms and conditions remain an important foundation for those discussions. As bargaining is ongoing, we are unable to comment further."

Meanwhile, the union said it was seeking a six percent pay rise for its members at six universities.

Benson-Guiu said the universities had made offers but the union's members wanted to see more money on the table.

The universities were Auckland, Waikato, Massey, Victoria, Canterbury and Otago.

Benson-Guiu said universities and polytechnics were under-funded and could not meet the needs of staff or students.

He said the problem had caused course and campus closures among polytechnics and in universities it was leading to increasingly uncertain employment.