Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Salient. Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 41 No. 15. July 3 1978

NZUSA Wins Bursary Dispute

page 8

NZUSA Wins Bursary Dispute

Debate about the future of the national student body, NZUSA, is hotting up on campuses throughout the country. "Truth" joined in the attack on NZUSA recently with an article that claimed the moves on some campuses to withdraw from the national body were based on dissatisfaction over NZUSA apathy on campus issues.

"Truth" charged: "Students feel that it is too concerned with international causes such as East Timor and other leftwing movements. Students want the national association to be more active as a pressure group on their behalf on issues such as bursaries and student employment."

"Many feel", the article continued, "that as a lobbying group NZUSA is weak and ineffectual". It was interesting that the "Truth" story failed to refer at all to a recent and well publicised dispute at Massey University where a group of senior social work students had their winter term bursary cheques docked by the Department of Education.

The Department's action, based on a claim that the students had received bursary money they weren't entitled to last long holidays because they also received wages, was challenged by NZUSA. Arguing that the department's action was illegal, NZUSA threatened court action against the department unless the students were paid back the money that had been deducted.

Two days after this threat was made public NZUSA announced that the department had agreed to pay the students their full bursary cheques. Thus an estimated $5000 of student money was recovered.

In an interview recorded during study break, Salient's Peter Beach talked to NZUSA Research Officer Peter Franks about the Massey dispute and put some general questions to him about the criticisms of NZUSA's effectiveness.

How important was NZUSA's victory in the dispute over social work students' bursaries at Massey and why was it achieved?

I believe that the very satisfactory settlement we reached with the Education Department over the social work students' dispute is a good example of the effectiveness of NZUSA in action.

One of the reasons why we were successful was that the students concerned were dedicated and persistent and were determined to see the thing through to the end.

Other reasons were that we were able to raise their grievances immediately with the department, work out what we believed were major flaws in the department's approach and then successfully persuade the department to our point of view without having to go through the time-consuming and costly business of taking legal action. In short, the successful outcome achieved was due to the students' firmness in standing together on principle and our ability to negotiate the correct result - it was a combination of those two things.

Can you explain in more detail the background to this dispute?

The Massey social work students are one of a number of groups of students who have to work as part of their courses during the summer vacation.

Traditionally they've received only bursaries for this work and there's no way that students can last the whole year on $26 a week, let alone on $15. Last vacation the introduction of the Student Community Service Programme changed this situation to a degree. Some of the students' employing bodies received SCSP grants and were thereby able to pay the students some wages.

It's important to understand that the students didn't anticipate that this would happen when they received some bursary assistance in advance at the start of the 1977/78 vacation.

At the start of the year, when the students returned to Massey they were told that they weren't entitled to the bursary money because they'd received wages as well. They were told the bursaries would have to be paid back.

At the students' request, we took the matter up with the department in Wellington. The department gave us an assurance that if the money had to be refunded it could be paid back by instalment, to lessen the impact of the repayment on each student involved. Then at the start of the second term the department unilaterally broke off negotiations with us and instructed the university to get the money back. It was decided to do this by deducting the full amounts "owed" from the winter term bursary cheques - in some cases this meant deductions of $288 and not much left for the students!

Don't you think it is wrong that this group of students got both bursaries and wages during the last holidays when other students, in similar positions, received only bursaries?

I don't think so at all. We fought this case on the fundamental principle that this group of students, who'd had a rough deal financially for a long time, should not suffer further financial penalty because of what might be politely described as administrative confusion, not of their making.

These students are doing a demanding course in training to be social workers who will spend their working lives helping other people in need. Because their course is based on a combination of theory and practice, they have to spend a lot of their four years of study working out in the field. But they've never gained in money terms because of this. I talked to them about their vacation savings - generally these were very low and in some cases were negative ie the students were in debt. Apart from the moral justice of their case, which was in my opinion considerable, the thing was that the department was, in our opinion, acting outside the bursaries regulations in asking for the money to be returned.

If that's right then wasn't your victory over the Education Department due simply to a loophole in the regulations and not to any action on NZUSA's or the social work students' part?

You're arguing with the benefit of hindsight and the thing just wasn't that simple.

For a start the social work students could have simply accepted the demand to repay their money, laid down and got trodden on. But they didn't. They thought it was unjust and fought it and asked for and received NZUSA's help.

Another point is that interpretations of regulations and statutes are just as important, if not more important, than the actual words written down on the regulations or in the law books. The bursaries regulations are open to conflicting interpretations in a number of areas.

Also interpretations of laws and regulations are based on practical problems that arise in their administration or application. It needed the social work students' case to really highlight the problem with the employment restriction regulation being abolished. As soon as we heard of the social work students' problem, we studied the regulations very carefully to see how they would apply. We came to the conclusion that the students were legally in the right which our lawyers confirmed on the basis of their own, independent study.

Turning to wider questions that are related to this dispute. Truth claimed recently that NZUSA is weak and ineffectual as a lobbying group.

I read that. I believe that statement is a fantasy, but after all Truth makes a habit of that. Still, this claim's worth examining because Truth isn't the first to have made it and it's been said before by a number of NZUSA's critics.

If we were as weak and ineffectual as it is claimed we are, NZUSA would not be taken at all seriously by the people in Government and government departments with whom we deal on a variety of issues and on a very regular basis.

If we were such a weak, useless lot that the Department of Education could afford to laugh at us, there'd have been no way in which we'd have settled that dispute. It was, after all, a settlement which was reached - we didn't have to go to court, although we would have if forced to, because we successfully persuaded the department to accept our recommendations.

Personally I'd like the critics who say we're ineffective to actually study the record and base their arguments on facts. I believe that NZUSA's record as a "lobbying group", the term used by Truth, is a good one. For over thirty years we have been the only group that has persistently put forward constructive plans for improving student bursaries in this country.

It's been a long, hard slog - no one would deny that. But I don't believe anyone could make an argument out of the claim that NZUSA has not played a major role in the reforms that have been made. I recall that when the present bursaries scheme was introduced two years ago the Dominion fan an article on bursaries headed "student marches return a dividend" which outlined the major gains that had been made. I think that headline sums up pretty well the importance and necessity of constant student action on bursaries, organised and led nationally by NZUSA.

At present NZUSA is very closely involved in discussions on reforming the present bursaries system and on examining alternatives. We asked for a working party to be set up to do this and finally got it. We are now spending a lot of time talking, on a regular basis with the Department, Treasury, the University Grants Committee, universities and a number of other interested groups about ways of making the present, inadequate system better.

You've talked a lot about bursaries, can you give some other examples of NZUSA's work on issues relating to student welfare?

Since 1974 we've argued that the deepening economic crisis New Zealand has faced has made it harder for students to get the decently-paying holiday jobs they need, due to growing unemployment. In 1974 we got some of the restrictions applying to the granting of emergency unemployment benefits to students relaxed. In 1975 the Government agreed to our request that students should be eligible for special work. And I believe that our pressure on this issue helped bring about the Student Community Service Programme last long vacation.

This year sees the start of negotiations between the University Grants Committee and the universities on the block grants which the Government will pay to universities over the next five years. We will be preparing a major submission to the UGC and we've already had discussions with them on the areas we're going to cover. I think it would be fair to say that the UGC have welcomed this approach from NZUSA.

A further area concerns overseas students' welfare. Most of the improvements in this area in recent years - for example the establishment of the Overseas Students Admissions Committee and an independent academic appeals committee for overseas students, have resulted from NZUSA proposals or initiatives in which NZUSA was involved from the outset.

I would be the last to claim that NZUSA can work any miracles. The sucesses weve had have been based on hard, concentrated work and on the support of students. Students need a national organisation which maintains regular contact with the powers that be, which can develop expertise in areas of policy and administration which affect students and, most important of all, which can take up students' individual or collective grievances and organise student action.

There will always be arguments about NZUSA's policies within NZUSA's ranks. In my opinion that's a good thing and if students don't like particular policies they should fight to change them. That's a completely different matter however from the actions of a few people who want to destroy NZUSA or cut it off at the knees, the minority which I believe Truth is trying to encourage. I don't believe they will succeed, but if they do their actions will cause very serious harm in the long-term and future generations of students will have nothing to thank them for whatsoever.

Peter Franks

Peter Franks