Never mind. You can find the CE data in the report, but I did find one nice table of the 4,800 non-CE staff in universities, ITPs and wananga getting over $100,000 in the December 2010 year (on pp.20-22). The numbers are a bit fuzzy but I do wonder which non-CEs were getting $440-450K pa. All figures are for total remuneration, which may include end of employment leave wash-up, superannuation, redundancy, etc. Anyway, go ahead and impose your own perspective on the data

And if you’re really curious, Auckland Uni VC Stuart McCutcheon has the highest remuneration in the sector at $640-650K.

• King’s Education The missing students (there are also 9 staff missing) include 26 from Japan, 14 from China, 7 from the Philippines, 3 from Thailand, 1 from Korea and 1 from the Czech Republic – the whereabouts of 21 students is unknown. A story from The Philippines about the affected families there and some family members here. 13 Filipinos are believed to be trapped or missing and one of the hardest stories is that of the series of text messages from a student, who has not been recovered, to her mother. Tertiary Education Minister Steven Joyce met the school’s directors yesterday, and also diplomatic representatives (whom he assured that there would be an investigation on the building’s collapse). Education NZ had a statement. Not everyone is dead or missing at King’s Education – here is an interview with a rescuer of a King’s Education student.
  
• Openings/Closures I may do an update on provider issues later in the day, with a focus on the wider issues rather than straight closures and openings. In the meantime, Steven Joyce said that Lincoln/Canterbury Unis and CPIT won’t reopen until at least March 14. Canterbury Uni has put out a detailed release about this issue, while Lincoln is really just waiting for students, staff and others to be ready as the campus is fine. Joyce hinted that CPIT wasn’t in great shape. On a positive note, I saw that Seafield School of English in New Brighton (!) plans to be open today.
• Good News Lincoln Uni senior lecturer Ann Brower was saved from a bus and is safe in hospital (and a talk to a rescuer). The students are doing a great job – 800 or so on Saturday (3,000 since they started) – and here’s a profile of their organiser. Here are some photos of Lincoln Uni students at work. Dunedinites are helping to feed the Canterbury Volunteer Army (and ODT…wow, they got 17.000 lunches!). A WITT international student travelling in Christchurch was helped superbly by her homestay hosts who found her a place to stay in Christchurch– it’s a great example of what people will do for each other.
• Saving Animals A Massey University-organised veterinary team has headed to Christchurch. A Wellington SPCA team is going with them, headed by ATTTO’s Blair Hillyard.
• Official Notices TEC has a great page on provider closures – MOE has improved their page. The State Services Commission has offered advice to state sector employers on dealing with the quake. Education NZ has a response page for providers. StudyLink has updated their notice. NZQA has an earthquake notice.
• Quake Analysis Auckland Uni sociologist Tracey McIntosh on possible migration from Christchurch. Unitec lecturer on rebuilding (brief).
• Students A Victoria student has been helping provide sign language interpretations at official briefings. A first year Canterbury Uni student on his experience.

Other News

• Outdoor Education Aoraki Poly has welcomed the staff back in a joint Council, management and TEU statement (before that the local paper wrote an editorial). So, it’s all fixed now…
• 51 years…is how long one man has worked at the University of Otago.
• Idiots 2 Otago Uni students allegedly entered a bar kitchen area, lit a couple of small fires, which apparently caused little damage, and defecated in a sink, police said. They have been arrested.
• Short Bits Otago Uni is involved in a spinal cord repair study. Auckland Uni academic on NZ firms’ Internet use. NMIT chefs are cooking with corn. A Vic architecture grad is joining the family firm. Auckland Uni is hosting acts from the Auckland Arts Festival. An Otago PhD student is helping to detect DNA from ancient teeth.

Unlike many previous years, there has been some obvious restraint in salaries: salaries for the CEs at Telford, BOPP, NMIT, SIT, EIT and UCOL stayed in the same $10,000 band, while  the CE salaries at TWOA, Lincoln University, Whitireia and Weltec went down.

Some CEs had major pay rises: Awanuiarnagi up $30K, Northtec up $30K, MIT up $30K, VUW up $30K, Auckland up $50K.

Some CEs started or finished during the year and those figures are distorted – see the effective date column to check when someone started or left.

1. Residence for Study This is a chunky Dominion Post story. NZVCC Chair Derek McCormack is calling for foreign student graduates to automatically get residency. Steven Joyce said no, but then said that he wanted to review the allocation and coordination of international education promotion money. There’s a shorter version on The Press’ website.
2. Uni or Dole? Secondary principals are pleading for unis to take more students so that secondary school leavers don’t end up on the dole.
3. International or Domestic? Steven Joyce has refuted as “lazy logic” a claim that international students are taking places at the expense of domestic students.
4. Lower Admissions NZUSA has put out a release about admissions limits at universities, and so has Maryan Street of Labour - both are quoted in stories above. The Press has written, poorly, an editorial about why selective admissions should be welcomed at universities – it could do with some editing to improve the flow.
5. Indian Institute Indian institute the Rayat Bahra group was in town recently to look for opportunities.
6. Canterbury PR Wins The University of Canterbury has won a PR award for the work its inhouse team did for the successful sale of its $50m of philanthropic bonds last year.
7. Wintec RPL Wintec is getting into RPL. There’s a Waikato Times story here, or you can check out their specialist website at www.elevate.ac.nz. They seem to be charging $25/credit and collecting SAC subsidies on top of that (Presumably they are, anyway, as they’re charging international students $65/credit).
8. NorthTec’s Council As I mentioned in a post yesterday, NorthTec has made two more appointments to its Council.
9. Dunedin Pub The Gardens Tavern (the Gardies), a favourite student haunt,  is closing soon and its closing night is causing a few headaches as people from near and far come to celebrate.
10. Pay Envy The State Services Commission will now be publishing pay details for CEOs, in bands, for all Crown entities now, not just core departments and TEIs – that means that NZQA, TEC and other agencies will have pay over $100,000 reported.

MECA Back Story

• The MECA agreement is important because it is the only significant one in tertiary education. It only covers 1/3 of ITPs but influences negotiations at other ITPs and is important to TEU as an example – like most unions they prefer to set industry-wide conditions.
• Most of the ITP agreements (MECA or not) have considerable similarities, including maximum teaching days, teaching hours, high leave allowances and annual increments. Employers usually look at those and see inflexibility and low productivity, while employees see security and fairness.
• Employers have not done much about the employment agreement issues over the years because (a) ITPs don’t always work together well (b) the ITPs have focused on other goals and (c) the TEU has been pretty effective at getting the ITPs to roll over the agreements.
• At the start of 2009, the ITPs were facing the ending of various transition funds in 2011, while some had also lost lucrative out of region courses due to regulation. Then the Minister of State Services put out tough pay expectations for state sector agencies and subsequent comments by the State Services Commission led people to believe that a zero pay increase was the starting point. Ministers reinforced this point. All of these issues influenced the MECA ITPs when they entered their negotiations and they took a much tougher stance than previously. Key points in their offer on 6 August 2009 are provided below.
  • A 1% salary increase with no back-dating.
  • A 24 month term from the date of signing (Note: the MECA expired in March 09).
  • All discretionary leave at the employers’ discretion.
  • Increase to number of teaching days from 185 to 204 (Note: 204 is the maximum number of days worked – the MECA has 9 weeks leave plus up to 12 days of public holidays).
  • A working party to identify ways to improve productivity through more flexible hours of work.
• TEU members turned down that offer, but by December they were offering 0% pay increases (for 4/6 ITPs) as long as other conditions were kept. The employers turned that down.
• This month, the employers and TEU discussed more options, including the employers offering a 2% pay rise on signing and another 2% in a year’s time. The TEU’s members rejected that option and called for facilitation by the Employment Relations Authority. The TEU also raised the spectre of ITPs being able to offer individual employment agreements to staff, which is apparently possible a year after a collective agreement expires – March 1 2010.

What Next?

What interests me is how the negotiations have developed from an initial focus on pay rates and whether Ministers were pressuring ITPs into zero or low pay rises into a very clear tussle over specific conditions. In the long term, I don’t see how ITPs can succeed while they have such restrictive employment arrangements. They face constraints on total teaching hours (reducing the ability to have staff focus mainly on delivery, rather than content development), while the discretionary leave cannot be relied on to support development plans. 

The sticking point right now seems to whether the employers can or cannot require staff to use discretionary leave. ITP staff on the MECA get four weeks discretionary leave (in addition to five weeks annual leave) and this leave is at the discretion of the employee (except in the first two years where 3 weeks can be required for PD or at any time if there is a performance problem). Employers would like to be able to require that academic staff do particular things (ie work in industry for 2 weeks pa, or do specific professional development) while employees would rather keep their current flexibility. I think it is unlikely that employers will back down easily on this one, but neither will the TEU.

If MECA negotiations stall, will the employers seek to attract people to individual agreements? Well, I have no idea, but if they do I can’t see them having quick uptake unless they come up with a very different employment model ie they’d need to really show what innovation they could do without MECA constraints. Changing MECA conditions will create some preconditions for innovation, but good management and staff buy-in will be required to make it succeed.

Finally, there is a distinct possibility that this could all blow up publicly. The parties are still working fairly quietly, but after a year of negotiations, people could get fed up and do some interesting things.

Disclosure: My life is complex. I worked for the ITP national body last year, including the six MECA ITPs, but had no direct involvement in this issue. I have a sister in law who chairs a TEU branch and an uncle in law (if such a term exists) who advises the MECA ITPs over their negotiations – they bear no responsibility for my words.