nteu is an amalgamation of

national tertiary education staff union and

national union of tertiary employees of south africa

[registration number LR2 / 6 / 2 / 610]

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National Collective Bargaining in the Higher Education Sector

A POSITION PAPER FROM THE

NATIONAL TERTIARY EDUCATION UNION

[originally an NTESU position paper]

NEDLAC SUMMIT ON HIGHER EDUCATION

26 / 27TH AUGUST 1999

5TH AUGUST 1999

John Landman (NTEU (Rhodes))

The National Tertiary Education Union has been an advocate of national level collective bargaining for tertiary education workers since its inception and prior to 1998 its predecessor the Union of Democratic University Staff Associations had developed papers on the subject through the early 1990's,

This is not a new concept and not one that has been entirely developed by any individual union within the sector. It can be said that the UDUSA and its successor the NTEU have probably been working on and developing these ideas for the longer time.

By way of introduction the NTEU would want to highlight the following :

In advocating a National Bargaining forum for Higher Education over the period of this decade, NTEU believes :

1. A significant separation exists between primary and secondary and post-secondary education sectors;

2. The inter-relationship issues surrounding labour relations, institutional and industry level employment relations, bound only marginally upon the same backgrounds as primary and secondary sector debates;

3. Tertiary level necessities and goals are set in a separate knowledge growing and generating ethos as opposed to the knowledge dissemination ethos;

Only a bargaining council could authoritatively, transparently and forcibly, undertake a national survey of conditions of service, remuneration, packaging etc, which is overdue.

Common understandings and agreements on industry standards which accommodate freedom of association, freedom of academic activity and autonomy all of which are important to the long term sustainability of the industry and its contribution to the national economic product is also overdue.

The NTEU notes that the industry, including government, has not embraced and, outside of government circles, is largely ignorant of, the UNESCO Recommendation on the Status of Higher Education Teaching Personnel, which expresses concerns :

"As to the vulnerability of the academic community to untoward political pressures which could undermine academic freedom;"

These political pressures lie both in party political and in the politic of some grassrooted groundlevel labour and demands.

The UNESCO continues :

"Considering that the right to education, teaching and research can only be fully enjoyed in an atmosphere of academic freedom and autonomy for institutions of higher education and that the open communication of results, hypotheses and opinions lies at the very heart of higher education and provides the strongest guarantee of accuracy and objectivity of scholarship and research;"

UNESCO is :

"Convinced nevertheless that similar questions arise in all countries with regard to the status of higher education teaching personnel and that these questions call for the adoption of common approaches and so far as practicable the application of common standards which it is the purpose of this recommendation to set out;".

 Management entrenchments

Currently higher education institutions contravene much of the UNESCO recommendation, which is as much about labour rights as it is about educational rights, and these contraventions are impinging upon the labour rights of individuals. UNESCO, for instance, in Article 31 recommends :

"Higher education teaching personnel should have the right and opportunity, without discrimination of any kind, to take part in the governing bodies, and to criticise the functioning, of higher education institutions, including their own, while respecting the right of others sectors of the academic community to participate, and they should also have the right to elect a majority of representatives to academic bodies within the higher education institution."

In our Universities the act of criticising university management will lead to harassment and suspension from duty. Participation in governance is hampered by resistance from managements to participation in internal decision-making structures, practices, and the development of consultative mechanisms. This is done through cronyism, obscuring information, refusal to grant representative status and the use of executive cliques within governance structures to hide and impose decisions on our communities. Appointment systems often barely meet open and fair procedural standards and effective, fair and just labour relations are myths in institutions not meeting international standards. Persecution through restructuring and retrenchment actions which lack procedural integrity and consideration of human consequences is becoming alarming in tertiary institutions. Attitudes and activities such as these are rife amongst the SAUVCA members in the industry.

Security of employment and tenure is becoming endangered as a result of institutional inability to embrace an industrial relationship which actually encompasses the concept of "university" as it is supposed to have developed over the centuries. This is for two reasons : Budget-bending commercialism and the misappropriation of power to the extent of corruption, if not moral, then academic.

What separates the HE sector from other educational levels?

Higher education across the world is a layer of the education sector based on independence of thought and seeks to engender independent learning structures in its students. As such the whole character, and the operational ethos and philosophies within the sector, are not bound by the same necessities and goals as are the primary and secondary sectors.

Just the size of these sectors is intimidating for workers in the HE sector. They consider this a threat to their own issues and feel that these will be easily lost in the debates about primary and secondary levels. In other words, the focus of a combined education bargaining platform will not be favourable for tertiary level staff. This has also been the focus in international level discussions on how to fit tertiary organisations into the international union for primary and secondary level teaching staff, the Education International. Similar fears are common amongst the academic workers in the HE sector who feel that their issues will be swamped by the overwhelmingly larger general staff complements.

The debates and consultations at tertiary level are very different from those at primary and secondary levels. The following make the sector distinct from primary and secondary levels :

• high level of curriculum independence;

• the way in which academic departments function and operate, as niche deliverers of product;

• the need to ensure the protection of academic freedom and autonomy, while still defending the working, labour and salary interests of staff.

The NTEU does not say that there is no connection between the three levels, or that representatives at primary and secondary levels are ignorant of the issues, but, it does recognise that the workplace has specific characteristics often not understood even by the students in the institutions. The NTEU believes therefore that a significant separation exists. It further recognises that it is not easy, from outside of the sector, to see how the notions of academic freedom, autonomy and independence drive the character of the workplace and the bread and butter issues that interplay between general staff and academic staff levels, and ultimately those of management. How the sector arrives at its decisions and how it settles on its resolutions is based in this notion of debate within a context of freedom of expression and cooperative consultation.

Unfortunately, the NTEU has to conclude that its very existence evidences the fact that, in reality, it does not work this way other than in a small but growing number of departmental level dealings.

Why national level collective bargaining in HE?

The tertiary level of education has been characterised by an independence that has been fiercely defended over the centuries. In this country during the Apartheid era many institutions fought to maintain that autonomous character within the constraints of severe governmental gerrymandering and interference. This interference took the form of special treatment of some institutions, on the one hand, and simple tinkering with the subsidy funding structures, on the other.

But, the autonomy and independence of these institutions notwithstanding, it is the belief of the NTEU that serious labour considerations underlie the current nature and operation of the sector. These include issues such as extreme competition between institutions for students, staff and funding, competition over the quality and content of course work and programmes of education and the development of extreme differentials within the sector in conditions of service and inequalities in salary and other benefits between institutions. National level bargaining is as much about academic issues in knowledge generating institutions as it is about the reward and remuneration of those workers.

While competition is often the stuff of "lean and mean" quality it tends to be more the stuff of just lean and mean. Leanness in educational programme quality which becomes reliant on staff complements which are over worked and not paid on a competitive level with counterparts in industry. Meanness in the manner in which the institutions are managed and which leads to paring and cutting to the extent that education comes down to Rands and Cents and cost implications and where humans are not resources but costs.

An orderly transformation of the sector is necessary if it is to survive. We have recently heard that forecasts predict lower enrolment levels in universities and technicons over the forthcoming years. Transformation is not just about the staff complement: it is as much about this as it is about the provision and product offered to the customer students and customer business sector absorbing those students. The NTEU does not believe that this is an aspect that can be forgotten amongst the more highly structured primary and secondary sector issues.

Educational quality in tertiary levels is about cooperation and coordination. This is especially true where the demands of change are driving the forces of research and development, education for leadership and training for life long learning.

The sector is being driven into a morass of cross-competing institutions which are isolated from each other and without a common direction around which to compete. There is nothing wrong with competition but there is everything wrong with a system which competes for the sake of survival and not for the sake of education.

New government educational policy statements have not yet been consolidated by the new Minister of Education. Nor has the Council for Higher Education (CHE) yet produced anything in discussion documents or plans of operation, which will guide the industry, either. The NTEU believes that pre-existing government policies are nevertheless being interpreted in a vacuum by institutions as a result, and because the policies are still not clear yet. There is also a great deal of speculation and crystal ball gazing going on to try and isolate where to place resources so that the maximum funding can be drawn from the state subsidy system. National skills lists appear to be a dangerous thing and this needs to be debated as a national labour issue in the HE sector since managements are already using what they think is going to be the list to rationalise institutions. These actions have a definite impact on the labour security of the sector. A matter of high priority for the NTEU.

These issues must be addressed at national level. The consequence of not doing this will be that the tertiary sector becomes a non-contributing shambles rather than a deliverer of quality educational and knowledge outputs.

There are more than just "bread and butter" issues and issues of conditions of service to be addressed in the Sector. These other issues may not appear to be the crux of collective bargaining as it might be seen by unions out side the HE sector or unions which cross-cut sectors. But, they are quite involved with the conditions under which workers in the sector are currently working. The difficulty will be in turning the thinking of educationalists in the tertiary sector towards the constructive role they can play and the general gains they can make within national bargaining. Ironically, there is less work to be done at the general staff level in this regard.

Where the distance between education workers and managements is wide and, unilaterality or constrained consultation is the norm, where do our hearts lie? In a natural conflict between employers and employees or in a natural conflict between essentially a NEDLAC-like CHE which could function as easily as a bargaining chamber as it can be an advisor to the Minister of Education and the nations educationalists?

The NTEU believes that there is natural labour tension between its members and their employers and that this requires the services of conflict resolution, bargaining and industry internal debate that a labour oriented bargaining council must provide. The NTEU further postulates that this chamber will have to generate a structure that will feed into the CHE on policy debate and matters in the interest of the tertiary education sector.

A chamber within the Education Labour Relations Council (ELRC) or a Higher Education Bargaining Council?

The final question here is what will be the role of, and interchange between, the Council for Higher Education and a Higher Education Bargaining Council? It might be debated here whether there is enough worker representation on the CHE and whether this should not be enhanced. Whether the terms of reference of the CHE should not be broadened to help it address labour issues as well as the systemic and general issues of the HE sector? This, it seems, may have made sense when the CHE was being formulated within the Education Ministry and the sector as a whole. But, in its present form the CHE will appear to deal more with matters which will side with managements and with the nature and character of what we call Higher Education overall. There will and probably should be tensions between a Higher Education Bargaining Council and the Council for Higher Education. These tension will surround funding and rationalisation, privatisation, merging and closures of institutions. Clear labour issues under the Labour law but also clear conceptual issues under the education law.

There is a further complication resulting from the mixture of institutions within the sector. There are institutions in which employees are directly salaried by the taxpayer and the National and Provincial Education Departments. There are the subsidized and autonomous institutions, created by private acts of parliament, and paid, in part, by subsidy from the state. And lastly, the independent vendors that will make up the further education sector, paid from own funding and student fees. It is difficult to see how these sections of the industry will be dovetailed under the umbrella of a single bargaining unit. But, the industry is not dissimilar from the motor industry, for instance, where the common interests of the industry and conflicts at local plants are addressed at a national level

It makes no sense to the NTEU that the strategic and other debates in higher education should be the subject of some sub-structure buried within a generic education bargaining realm. The connection between primary and secondary education is one of a matter of course and not one of a matter of progression and passage. It never has been a foregone conclusion that learners go directly on into tertiary education this has always been an own choice and high expense route. The huge and acknowledged problems in the schooling sector indicate that the ELRC will be over subscribed with issues in this regard. This suggests to the NTEU that a separate council is appropriate with its own workloads and agenda.

For these reasons, and for reasons surrounding the transformation of higher education in South Africa, an independent and focussed bargaining council, charged with drawing generalised standards and guidelines, and even concrete sector-wide parameters in salary, conditions of service and strategic planning, is appropriate. The task will be very similar to that of NEDLAC itself in that it will seek to arrive at agreements between the rooted independence of tertiary educationalist and the independent minded institutions they inhabit. This within a sector prone to constantly debate issues then debate the ensuing decision further. The inwardly questioning nature of the industry and the high level of critical self-awareness is high challenge for any national level collective bargaining chamber to overcome and draw together in the interests of the industry.

The NTEU believes there is certainly labour instability within the sector that is not being addressed at local levels. Managements are not converting their thinking into the 21st Century with many seemingly on just entering the 20th Century. In this syndrome it is difficult for the NTEU to envisage institutional transformation, rational rationalisation which excludes privatisation and which considers humans as resources not costs who can be reskilled and multiskilled as many already are without strong national level guidance. These are institutions which have waited out the ten years I have been involved in representative structures for laws to eventually be promulgated before they have begun to think and transform workplaces reluctantly into places where people are humans who enjoy and openly give their loyalty to. There is also a firm belief in maintaining the freedom of thought and academic independence of the Higher Education sector that must be kept free of government interference. Academic and institutional independence is as sacred as the freedom of the press.

Right to Human and Labour Rights

Amongst all of this: the UNESCO Recommendation, the South African Constitution and labour and educational law; the NTEU will not lose sight of the right not to have the following abused through ineptitudes or power abuse, and this indeed is what is under discussion with regard to national collective bargaining in tertiary level education :

• Appropriate induction processes;

• Security of employment and tenure;

• Appropriate and standardised appraisal and evaluation procedures;

• Discipline and dismissal based on just and sufficient cause and independent peer evaluation;

• Negotiation of terms and conditions of employment;

• Fair grievance and arbitration procedures for dispute resolution and settlements;

• Salaries which reflect the importance of higher education, and hence all its personnel, comparable with other occupations requiring similar or equivalent qualifications and skills;

• Equitable conditions of service, working conditions and facilities conducive to productivity;

• Salary differentials based on objective criteria;

• Equality of employment for women and disabled persons in the industry;

• Equivalent value implanted upon part-time employees in the industry.

A national bargaining council will have to deal with these issues because the institutions don't or don't do it transparently and cooperatively. The Council for Higher Education is not intended nor mandated to do so.

To conclude: paragraph 3 of the UNESCO recommendation cannot be met in system which has an unstable industrial relationship, extreme employer-employee tensions and in the stress climate currently imposed by unmanageable workloads and economic incapacity of all staff in the industry.

 To quote paragraph 3 of the recommendation :

"The global objectives of each member state of the United Nations for international peace, understanding, co-operation and sustainable development require, inter alia, education for peace and in the culture of peace, as defined by UNESCO, as well as, qualified and cultivated graduates of higher education institutions, capable of serving the community as responsible citizens and undertaking effective scholarship and advanced research and, as a consequence, a corps of talented and highly qualified higher education personnel."

Industrial cohesion and coordination will be the contribution of a national tertiary education bargaining council to this goal of humanity in South Africa.