Student nerves frayed as tutors strike

Pre-exam nerves were frayed among students at six North Island polytechnics when hundreds of their tutors went on strike today.

Some students, such as at Unitec in Auckland, joined pickets, saying the quality of their education depended on proper working conditions for the tutors.

The Unitec Student Union accused the institution of devaluing dedicated staff by offering a "disrespectful" pay rise in drawn-out negotiations for a multi-employer collective agreement.

But other students felt too stressed about gaps in tutorial assistance in their last-minute exam preparations to be too fussed about the politics of the dispute.

Polytech administrators played down the effects of the strike by saying this was study week for most students and enough non-union tutors would be available for the few remaining scheduled classes.

This failed to impress a group of civil engineering students who spent this morning in an exam but were irked at the cancellation of an afternoon revision class scheduled ahead of another exam tomorrow.

"A lot of issues should have been sorted out by the employer -- we are getting bypassed and we are the ones who pay for it," said Mike Woods.

Business student Julie Whitehouse seemed shaken by the cancellation of a packed out revision class on a challenging law subject, the Consumer Guarantees Act, on which she will be examined on Saturday.

"I am really upset about it because it is a really hard subject," she said.

Students at Northland Polytechnic and Taranaki's Western Institute of Technology will receive a double-whammy tomorrow, when their tutors stay out for another day.

Tutors will return to work at Unitec, the Waikato Institute of Technology, Bay of Plenty Polytechnic and Whitireia Community Polytechnic in Porirua, but with intentions of striking again next week.

Association of Staff in Tertiary Education (ASTE) president Lloyd Woods said strike action was always a last resort but his 800 members at the six institutions were determined to achieve a collective agreement after more than six months of negotiations.

He accused the polytechnics of trying to thwart the cooperative spirit of the Government's tertiary education strategy by offering pay rises of zero to 2.5 per cent which were below settlements of about 3 per cent achieved in stand-alone employment agreements.

Staff at Northland Polytechnic were concerned there seemed to have been no productive response from their employer, Mr Woods said.

"Members have been working extremely hard to successfully bring the (Northland) polytechnic back from the perilous position it was in only 12 months ago and take a zero per cent salary offer as a slap in the face for their efforts."

ASTE believed Northland Polytechnic needed to find only around $40,000 in total to fund the claimed increase of 2 per cent for 2003 -- a lesser claim than that made for the other institutions in the multi-employer bargaining.

Unitec chief executive Dr John Webster said that although his institution had little in common with the other five, it had worked in good faith to negotiate a multi-employer agreement.

He said the employers made a last attempt to resolve the dispute in mediation last Friday, but the union remained "obdurate" in a bid to combine the best conditions from several expired agreements.

As a result, he had decided to initiate bargaining for a single- enterprise agreement at Unitec in an attempt to break the impasse so staff could gain a pay rise by Christmas "and we can get back to the main business of educating students".

Union members at Unitec are upset the institution gave colleagues on individual agreements a 3.25 per cent pay rise in March, yet has offered them just 2.5 per cent with counterclaims such as for longer working hours.

But Dr Webster said the 2.5 per cent was governed by the restraints of multi-employer bargaining, and there should be no objection to extending official duty hours from 34 to 36 a week, figures which unionists claim are greatly exceeded by actual time on the job.