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.