Reflections on Unionism in HE

The NTESU National President recently responded to the news that one of the Branches of the NTESU was planning to disband. This is an interesting note on the environment in which unionists in higher education in this country exist because its not the first institutional representation which has met this attitude from the employer.

There are several branches which have experienced the claim from their institutions that one cannot organise without being sufficiently representative. This is an interpretation of the LRA and is essentially not correct. The right to organise is enshrined in the Act, employers who then say that the union cannot meet can only do so on the basis that meetings cannot take place during working hours. So, what's wrong with lunch time. Those employers who will not allow the use of venues are simply obstructive. These are rights that one has to argue for and engage employers over.

Interestingly, in some of these institutions, it has been other unions which appear to have colluded with employers to keep the NTESU out of reprentational consultations. This is a "sad note" on turf-centered thinking and certainly creates devisions within the Labour movement which are not constructive. Our law unfortunately runs on majoritarianist principles and that means that local recruitment is essential and this is not easy work, requires commitment from the same people who fought for our freedoms in the past.

Higher Education employers are not not known for their co-determinative approach and they are generally highly resistant to academic and administrative staff unionising. This includes intimidation of staff into not joining unions. Its a bizarre aspect of institutional life when we all understand academia to be free-thinking institutions not draconian top-down zones. Unfortunately, the very institutions which one would expect to embrace co-determination, freedom of association and other human and labour rights are the one's that resist and deny these the most. Employers claim they are collegial with the academic community - this is a big myth.

Here are the NTESU National President's comments extracted and edited from an email.

It is unfortunate that our attempts to contact and meet with the Branch Executive were met with no response. Being a unionist is 'not a bed of roses' - especially when fighting for the rights of others and in a sector that is slowly becoming aware about the concept of unionism and have tended up to the recent past to 'hide their head in the sand'. This is not only at ---, but also at almost every HEI. Unionism is hard work with rarely any recognition, an arena of battles and simutaneously educating our very people - this is also compounded by the type of Managers we are also dealing with; and the social/global competitive environment we are all facing. We cannot 'throw our hands in the air and wait for others to save us', nor can we fall into apathy as 'students' are presently in, nor turn our faces the other way, nor throw in the towel.

I undersand where you are coming from......pioneering is never easy...... I have been insulted, ridiculed, threaten by management, had my salary stopped by a VC, given a DC letter with allegations of sabotage, thought I was losing it mentally.......... and even been shot. WHY DO I STILL CONTINUE? I believe in human freedom, free from suppression and oppression. I believe that by awaking our people in HEIs beyond 'bread and butter issues' we will contribute to our country. I think it is not going to get any easier. I believe that there is a purpose in who we are, what we are and what we have to do.

Its interesting to look at the comments which came from the Branch. Because, there are other institutional representatives in HEIs who have given the same comment. Here is an edited version. There is clear frustration with Management here.

The Branch listed these, but not limited to these, issues :

The Branch not being recognised as per the institution's threshold and substantive representation;

(COMMENT the Union is registered, not the Branch, and the employer cannot refuse to recognise it and its branches. however, it can demand a level of representation before consulting and / or negotiating with the Union - it is the job of local recruiters to see to this growth.)

The non-participation of the Branch has meant that the members voice had no platform.

(COMMENT as mentioned above our law is majoritatian in nature but this can be worked around by defining the workplace and hence creating a representational group. This has been done in at least two campuses where recognition agreements have led to more flexible cooperative agreements with managements - (Rhodes and WSU).

The Branch's failure to arrange an affordable funeral scheme.

(COMMENT the first priority of a union is the labour rights of its members, benefits such as these are nice to haves and require the members to pay very high union dues or at least that the union has very many members. Members have to acknowledge that a union is not a consumer organisation but given numbers can facilitate consumer based benefits.)

Management barrs NTESU from holding meetings during working hours.

(COMMENT the employer is entitled to do this, at least until a recognition agreement clause comes into action and changes that. Two things make Branchs grow vigorous recruitment, and, the decisions of management which is often the best recruiter of members for a union.)

Frustrated by a lack of communication with our constituency which now feels the Union is somehow a fly by night scheme.

(COMMENT if the employer is restricting communication then this is refusal of a basic organisational right. There are several basic organisational rights which the employer must afford to the union regardless of representativeness. Communication with members and potential members is one of these.)

Cost to Company in Tertiary Education Institutions

We are NOT and never will be companies. We don't really care what companies do. We come to work in these environments mainly because we seek an environment of collegiality and dignity for all workers. We don't have CEOs and we believe in exchange for the benefit of the institutions not dictation benefiting shareholders profits.

So, what can we say in describing the worker approach to Cost to Company (CtC)? In the experience of some NTESU negotiators at Branchs you will encounter the following comments about CtC.

1. We don't trust their figures (they report a sub set to us in order to obfuscate) and its reported in a complex jargon typical of Human Resources Divisions.

2. In a "defined income organisation" one has to use other strategies to manage remuneration. (as opposed to income generating).

3. Managements link CtC to performance management (a spurious link which is driven by the following).

3.1 Any form of scaling goes away and even the CoL increases are managed out of existence in favour of bonusing in a vacuum of skilled supervisor, middle and senior management to manage bonus assessment.

4 If pension / provident, medical aid and housing are just subsumed into salaries packaging (in the name of providing flexibility for staff members) then there is never further growth or another increase on these for anyone. The employer now no longer has the 15% on their books for pensions and the subsidy for medical aid simply stops (wrapped into the package which only grows by the cost of living (CoL) additions in future. The flip side of flexibility is collapse of pension and medical aid (especially where these are in-house schemes) and huge long term savings for the employer on the backs of current and future employees. We're back to the 30's and 40's when the real union movements won these battles and introduced these benefits. Eventually we'll be back on the streets fighting for them back.

5. CtC tries to match apples with oranges from the salary-data-reaping companies (we don't trust these data or their definitions of our post descriptions for this industry ie. we think there is mismatching going on driven by the following). (Support staff in private sector do one function supported by three other co-workers - support staff in our sector do four functions with a wide skills basket with no co-workers).

6. Corporatisation of Universities which are defined income organisations, educational and organisational cultures is MISDIRECTION and WRONG. It is highly disruptive of staff morale and the principles of collegiality.

7. We agree with the NEHAWU there are discrepancies (evidenced by the following).

7.1 CtC only works above a certain high level of salary band, it can't work in the service and general staff sectors where high debt means never having the disposable income to spend on pensions and medical cover in aCtC packaged environment. Rather do it collectively and up front. Members get into trouble this way.

8. When doing CtC management conveniently leave out most of the pool of recruitment organisations. For instance, management talk about analysing the main recruitment pool in some centers for, say, service workers (usually the local town or city). The CtC data does not include the Public Service Departments, Eskom, Telkom, Municipals etc - salary data-reapers do not have these or management neglect to ask for them for full comparison and calculation of compa ratios. When we pointed this out they said Oh we didn't consider them to be major employers!

9. All of the comparisons based on the CtC principles have resulted in every support post so far evaluated for 50th %-tile being down graded.

10. We are quite certain that the exercise is : how little can we get away with paying general staff and how much can we save here? ie. What benefits can we "package" or cut-out. About 25-30% of Academics received any extra remuneration in the exercise done for them - the others now have one foot on the desk the other on the bed.

11. CtC predicates itself upon appointees being able to "package" their remuneration. But, we are contractually obliged to belong to the Med Aid and the Pension / Provident funds the employer subscribes to. What else is there for us to package? Its senseless in our organisation which defines everything. Our med aid and pension funds would collapse if everyone were to drift off and choose their own outside schemes, etc..

12. CtC means that when packaging happens a lump sum is placed in an employee's hands. This means that things are only subject to CoL increases. In a defined income industry these are highly limited and therefore the advance (promotion or scale of salary) is eliminated. CtC of pension, in particular, becomes really cheap for the employer. In fact it goes away altogether because their 15%, current, is added into income for us; our tax rises and their CtC drops dramatically never to reappear again. That 15% stops right there we are left with the overall general salary minimum CoL increase based on the resources of defined income institutions like ours attract. How individuals apportion any pay increase in CoL to take care of increasing their pension income prospects becomes their own problem. One hopes that interim increases in CoL (the only thing left in really hard-nosed negotiation) will be well utilised for other than debt redemption by our members. Members don't want to get involved with financial managers and insurance brokers - they want the organisation to cooperate with them in these provisions - hot shot moving is not what this industry is about if we wanted that we would go and work somewhere else.

13. CtC results in management bombastically coming with the "only / of course we are correct - you idiots ...".

14. This is critical -- CtC brings the best of 1940's and 1950's employer thinking to the fore in which we sell our souls to "the company store".

This is why these institutions are playing the insufficiently representative me and blocking / bashing NTESU around the country. They know weak numbers can keep us out of the negotiation rooms around these things.

15. Our management here doesn't seem to think that where we might be better off, better than outside places its a GOOD THING. They would rather go to the lowest common denominator.