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Unitec students fear failing their courses as a result of persistent striking from Unitec staff.

Unitec members of the Tertiary Education Union (TEU) have been striking intermittently since September 16; the most recent strikes are due to failed mediations.

USU president Greg Powell says the most recent action is hitting students in the crucial exam preparation period.

He says the USU has been fielding many complaints from affected students who “fear their lecturers’ actions will compromise their study and the results of their courses.”

Penny Cowie is one of these students. She is doing a 36 week course in welding at Unitec and says she is in “misery” over the strike action and its affects on her course.

She says she has lost about a weeks worth of access to resources needed to complete the next step of her course due to the action. She needs to sit a practical welding test which requires at least 100 hours of supervised practice to pass. Because of the strike action, she has only had about 50 hours practice. She says she would have sat the test by now if there were no strikes.

She says the stress created from the strike has been so bad she has not been able to concentrate, and it is infringing on her personal life.

She thinks Unitec needs to “step up to the plate” over the issue and the TEU needs to negotiate better and “stop using students as the meat in the sandwich.”

She says the ordeal makes her less likely to want to recommend Unitec to anyone.

“I should have gone to AUT or Papakura Welding School,” she says.

Strike action at Unitec began after negotiations over employment conditions failed. Unitec is one of six North Island polytechnics involved in the dispute; the TEU has been in negotiations for nearly eight months with employers.

The TEU has rejected the employers’ most recent offer of a two percent salary increase with no back-dating and an 18 month term from the date of signing.

Employers also want discretionary leave to be at their discretion rather than the employees’ as it is for other staff on individual contracts. The employers also want to increase teaching days by ten percent.

So far, there has been three full days of striking, as well as lightening strikes and half day strikes at Unitec.

Unitec says it wants to return to the negotiating table with the union to avoid further disruption to students’ examination preparations, however, TEU advocate Chan Dixon says that union members have worked hard with employers to try to reach a positive outcome, but the six polytechnics continue to insist on cuts to the academics existing working conditions.

“The polytechnics and institutes of technology are using the current environment to try to take working conditions away from people. This is disingenuous because the polytechnics actually have full enrolments and can afford to treat their staff better. We don’t believe that the current offer is acceptable,” Ms Dixon says.

Mr Powell is concerned about the affects the strike action will have on Unitec students.

“Striking and withdrawing education from students, particularly during the exam preparation period, is incredibly serious – causing a great deal of stress on students, and to use it to ask for more holidays than the rest of the staff at Unitec seems opportunistic.”

Union members have had the chance to strike during the recent mid-semester break to target management in a way which would not have had a direct affect on student, but would frustrate management, he says.

“The Students’ Association has tried to get the issues resolved with minimal effect on students. We have contacted the TEU numerous times to request meetings so that we can inform our students and the TEU have refused to meet with us.”

Mr Powell acknowledges that the salary increase is minimal and says the USU has some sympathy for this. However, he believes this could have been dealt with a lot better causing less disruption to students and focusing the stress and frustration on the employer instead.

Unitec chief executive Rick Ede says he is also concerned about the action affecting students’ exams.

“There is already enough pressure on students at the moment with their studying that the last thing they need to worry about is how this will affect their exams,” he says.

He says Unitec has a contingency plan in place to minimise disruption to students should further industrial action occur during the examination period.

These provisions include independent facilitators to supervise exam rooms, and rescheduling and re-allocating assessments that have been affected by the TEU’s industrial action.

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