Te Herenga Waka Academics Split from TEU, Form Splinter Union

What’s the most effective way to make change? Have a broad church representing multiple interests? Or have small, targeted groups trying to make incremental change in specific areas? It’s a question now being posed by Te Herenga Waka academics. Law professor Nicole Moreham and biology professor Wayne Patrick have formed the University Academics Union (UAU), with a focus on academic protections and problems at universities. 

Why the new union? Moreham attributes it to fear of losing academic voice, citing recent attacks on academic freedom in the United States and the financial vulnerability of most academic institutions.

“I don’t think we’re immune from that here in Aotearoa," said Moreham. 

“We in the university know about this, but if you go and talk on a cricket sideline or in a pub, it’s unlikely that people are hearing about it.” 

The idea is to get a voice by academics, for academics, in the circles which require it, like university governance boards. The UAU has already been active in this area, releasing a report detailing how academics at Te Herenga Waka are paid less than their colleagues at Aotearoa’s other universities at every career step.

One snag. There is already a union representing academics in NZ; the Tertiary Education Union (TEU), who represent not just university academics, but also the non-academic staff, and employees at polytechnics and training colleges. Their initial response to the formation of the UAU didn’t mince words. In an email to all members at Te Herenga Waka, seen by Salient, they wrote “small unions splinter membership cohesion, weaken bargaining strength and play into the employer’s hands.” 

So, why couldn’t Moreham and Patrick’s priorities be carried out from within the TEU?

“The TEU is a broad church,” said Moreham. “It’s got to do a lot of things. It’s got to represent [people dealing with] the merger of the polytechnics, and negotiate separate collective agreements for all of the universities, polytechnics, and training colleges.”

“Academics have some quite unique interests given our position as society’s critic and conscience. The TEU are obviously interested in that, but it’s a small part of what they do, whereas for us it’s the entire operation.”

When the same argument was posed by Salient to TEU Te Pou Ahurei | National Secretary Amy Ross, her response was a quick “show me the evidence.”“We had a specific conference on academic freedom last year,” said Ross. “We have academics in the TEU who specialize in this. We do submissions and meet regularly with politicians.

“We hold significant influence within society to protect and stand up for academic freedom, far more than a small group of people in a brand new union would.”

There’s a philosophical debate at play here: is bigger better? Moreham noted how there are separate unions for resident doctors, senior doctors, hospital workers, and nurses. Could a single-minded focus result in better outcomes?

Ross, unsurprisingly, disagreed.

“When there are multiple unions, one group can undermine the other,” she said. “If you want a particular amount of pay and one group settles, it immediately weakens everybody else who might want to push for something better. It doesn’t work the other way.” 

“I think we play on people’s egos a little bit, when we say yes, you’re very special and you need special representation. As if that can’t be delivered when you stand in solidarity with other people.” 

“Why would they [the UAU] achieve anything different to us, when they have such a small number of members that they represent?”

The UAU is (for now) solely Te Herenga Waka-based, meaning its numbers will always naturally be smaller than the TEU’s. It’s also unclear which union currently commands a plurality of academics at Te Herenga Waka, though as the UAU is newer, it appears likely to be the TEU.

Moreham refused to say exactly how many members they have, but ten are required to register as a union, and the number is now “considerably more than ten.”

“We’re in such a growth phase that if we give you the number now, it could be out of date quite quickly. A lot of people are waiting and seeing to see if we’re going to get our act together and actually get into bargaining.” 

There’s little evidence favouring either the TEU’s mega-union approach or the UAU’s targeted union strategy. In fairness, it’s a hard point to prove—if a targeted union approach results in a 4% wage increase, you don’t have the counterfactual as to what would have been achieved with a mega-union. Still, what little research has been done on the subject doesn’t seem to have found one strategy being necessarily better than the other.

One potential advantage of the targeted strategy is how membership of the UAU is cheaper than the TEU, but unlike the TEU, it does not (yet) offer representation in employment disputes. While one could be a member of both, by the TEU constitution, only the TEU can negotiate on behalf of their members in bargaining. 

Both unions were asked what relationship they currently have with each other. Neither appears to have one. 

The debate over the future of unionism in the tertiary sector is underway.