Austerity, Precarity, and Tertiary Union Strategy: Notes from The Left TEU Network

Abstract

This intervention critiques the Tertiary Education Union (TEU) prior to, during, and beyond the 2023 ‘Stop the Cuts’ campaign across the tertiary education sector in Aotearoa New Zealand. The members of The Left TEU Network, represented here by the authors of this piece, suggest that the TEU have focused on maintaining good relationships with university management over the specific needs of tertiary staff, especially those on precarious contracts. The result of this ‘service unionism’ model has been a narrow focus on the collective bargaining process for full-time staff with little attempt made to challenge the structural conditions that are corroding the tertiary sector, and the TEU’s base, from within. Against the service unionism model, The Left TEU Network seeks a transformation
of what it means to be a TEU member away from mere payment of dues in return for a vague sense of insurance towards direct and democratic engagement in a political forum. The TEU left Network thus seeks a style of organisation that can build the national
union movement within and across sectors in order to intervene on wider issues of politics and social justice.