Shal­iza Has­sanali

A re­port by the West In­dies Group of Uni­ver­si­ty Teach­ers (Wigut) has raised sev­er­al con­cerns about man­age­ment of the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus and threats made to its mem­bers to with­draw from the union.The eight-page re­port, dat­ed De­cem­ber 6, 2012, was pre­sent­ed by Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath at the an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing of the union at the Fac­ul­ty of En­gi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine cam­pus, for the 2011 to 2012 term.

Eleven peo­ple were elect­ed to serve on Wigut's ex­ec­u­tive for 2012/2013 with Ra­goonath be­ing re-elect­ed as pres­i­dent.The re­port, which the Sun­day Guardian ob­tained, fo­cused on 16 is­sues, among them pen­sions, open cam­pus, hous­ing loan agree­ment, med­ical in­sur­ance, study and trav­el grants, car loans and sab­bat­i­cals/ schol­ar­ly leave.

Some of the is­sues high­light­ed:

�2 Man­age­ment propos­ing dif­fer­ent rates of ben­e­fits for dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories of staff

�2 Aca­d­e­m­ic staff to be sep­a­rat­ed from pro­fes­sion­al and ad­min­is­tra­tive staff with dif­fer­ent terms and con­di­tions

�2 Cal­cu­la­tion of an­nu­ities on lo­cal and not Unit­ed King­dom rates

�2 A re­duc­tion of the re­tire­ment age

�2 Wigut seek­ing in­creas­es to salaries and al­lowances for trans­porta­tion, hous­ing for heads and dean

�2 Wigut want­i­ng new funds for staff to in­vest

In thank­ing the out­go­ing ex­ec­u­tive in his con­clud­ing re­marks, Ra­goonath stat­ed that there were in­stances when mem­bers felt they were not ad­e­quate­ly ser­viced, de­spite the fact that they worked on a vol­un­tary ba­sis and still per­formed their reg­u­lar uni­ver­si­ty du­ties while man­ag­ing the union's af­fairs.

"I say this with the back­drop of "threats" by some col­leagues to with­draw from Wigut. Maybe, I should say, I did not ad­dress all their con­cerns and re­quests in a time­ly man­ner. I ap­pre­ci­ate that there were in­stances when mem­bers felt that they were not in­ad­e­quate­ly ser­viced, but I must re­it­er­ate that we took on the task as your ex­ec­u­tive on a vol­un­tary ba­sis," Ra­goonath penned in his re­port.

In many in­stances, Ra­goonath said, he spent up­ward of 20 hours a week at­tend­ing to Wigut's mat­ters, not­ing that the de­mand on his time had im­pact­ed neg­a­tive­ly on his schol­ar­ly ac­tiv­i­ties.

Con­cerns about man­age­ment

Un­der the sub­head­ing "cam­pus man­age­ment con­cerns," Ra­goonath said Wigut re­mained high­ly con­cerned about the man­age­ment of the cam­pus.He drew ref­er­ence to the cam­pus reg­is­trar's term com­ing to an end with the deputy cam­pus reg­is­trar act­ing in the po­si­tion, even though the post was ad­ver­tised twice.

The ter­mi­na­tion, Ra­goonath said, came at a time when there was no deputy cam­pus bur­sar, whose po­si­tion be­came va­cant on Au­gust 1, 2012, and had not been re­newed."Ef­fec­tive­ly, a se­nior ac­coun­tant is now act­ing cam­pus bur­sar," Ra­goonath wrote.The point, Ra­goonath not­ed, was that the cam­pus se­nior man­age­ment was down to on­ly the prin­ci­pal and deputy prin­ci­pal.

"Wigut is mind­ful that notwith­stand­ing that the strong per­son­al­i­ties of the act­ing cam­pus reg­is­trar and act­ing cam­pus bur­sar, the fact re­mains they are not sub­stan­tive­ly ap­point­ed, and as such, may give way to strong opin­ions from the oth­er half of se­nior man­age­ment. Wigut has raised this con­cern with the prin­ci­pal and, notwith­stand­ing his as­sur­ances, re­main wor­ried as to this state of af­fairs."

The union was nev­er con­sult­ed about protest ac­tion un­der­tak­en by staff in the bur­sary, Ra­goonath al­so stat­ed."Such ac­tions were thus nev­er sanc­tioned by Wigut."He said, "The con­cern of the staff, as well as the op­er­a­tions of the bur­sary were high­light­ed by Wigut in meet­ings with the VC, the uni­ver­si­ty reg­is­trar, the uni­ver­si­ty bur­sar and our own cam­pus prin­ci­pal. The end re­sult now is the cam­pus bur­sar has been ter­mi­nat­ed."

In their fi­nal sub­mis­sion, Ra­goonath said Wigut asked for ser­vice, off-cam­pus du­ty and en­ter­tain­ment al­lowances, while a pro­pos­al for the waiv­er of tax­es on mo­tor ve­hi­cles pur­chas­es.Ra­goonath ex­plained that Wigut was forced to make rep­re­sen­ta­tion for Open Cam­pus staff at St Au­gus­tine to be paid their back pay, fol­low­ing the agree­ment for new salaries over the pe­ri­od 2008 to 2010, which was signed in 2010.

"It may be re­mem­bered that while staff of the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus re­ceived their new salaries in De­cem­ber 2010, Open Cam­pus did not re­ceive the new salaries un­til the end of the first quar­ter of 2011. By this time St Au­gus­tine staff had al­ready re­ceived their back pay."

Wigut pre­pared tofight pro­pos­al

Al­so, com­plaints of de­lays in pro­cess­ing health in­sur­ance claims and get­ting pre-cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, es­pe­cial­ly with em­ploy­ees seek­ing treat­ment abroad.Ra­goonath said a unit in the World In­dex Sub Fund was val­ued at US$17.87 per unit, when com­pared to the US$15.24 rates of­fered in 2011.But while Wigut felt a sense of com­fort in this, Ra­goonath said there would al­ways be volatil­i­ty in the fi­nan­cial sys­tem which can change in a day.

Since 2011, Wigut, Ra­goonath said, had asked for new funds to be made avail­able for staff to in­vest, but this did not hap­pen."Part of the rea­son for this is, sim­ply, that the oth­er Wiguts had their at­ten­tion di­vert­ed away from pen­sions with oth­er is­sues."The oblig­a­tion to be paid by the uni­ver­si­ty for sup­ple­men­ta­tion would be sub­stan­tial­ly re­duced, Ra­goonath said."Clear­ly, the uni­ver­si­ty in­ten­tion was to save funds and not pay the re­quired sup­ple­men­ta­tion to mem­bers."

The union im­me­di­ate­ly called on the uni­ver­si­ty to stop a pa­per re­lat­ing to the sup­ple­men­ta­tion, since there was no con­sul­ta­tion.Notwith­stand­ing, Ra­goonath said the pa­per went to the Fi­nance and Gen­er­al Pur­pos­es Com­mit­tee and was ac­cept­ed in prin­ci­ple, re­sult­ing in Wigut Ja­maica fil­ing a gen­er­al griev­ance.Af­ter a meet­ing with Wigut Ja­maica, the uni­ver­si­ty ad­mit­ted to hav­ing fal­tered in the process and agreed to take the mat­ter to the Wiguts.

How­ev­er, at a No­vem­ber 26 meet­ing last year, Ra­goonath stat­ed, that the uni­ver­si­ty in­di­cat­ed that it will con­tin­ue dis­cus­sions with the hope to im­ple­ment lo­cal rates in 2013."The new ex­ec­u­tive has to re­main pre­pared to fight this pro­pos­al," Ra­goonath said.

Ra­goonath: Is­sues are in­ter­nal

In a tele­phone in­ter­view, Ra­goonath said the is­sues were in­ter­nal mat­ters."The threats by col­leagues to with­draw from Wigut, that is their choice. I have noth­ing to say on that."Ra­goonath said the cam­pus man­age­ment con­cerns were pub­lic knowl­edge."There was no cam­pus reg­is­trar and no cam­pus bur­sar at that point in time."

Ra­goonath said those va­can­cies were filled in Feb­ru­ary."Those mat­ters have been rec­ti­fied. The uni­ver­si­ty had tak­en its time in fill­ing the po­si­tions. Ad­min­is­tra­tion will tell you that they took their time be­cause they were try­ing to get the best peo­ple for the jobs."Ra­goonath said Wigut was in the process of ne­go­ti­a­tion for the oth­er is­sues raised.

Cam­pus prin­ci­pal:I have no prob­lem with union...is­sues be­ing dealt with

Con­tact­ed by Sun­day Guardian for a com­ment, St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus prin­ci­pal Prof Clement Sankat said, "That's all be­hind us. These are nor­mal mat­ters be­tween UWI and the union (Wigut). Noth­ing is con­fi­den­tial. Every em­ploy­er has these is­sues. The doc­u­ment is not some­thing leaked. And all em­ploy­ers have chal­lenges."One of the biggest is­sues is it did not have a reg­is­trar and we have a cam­pus bur­sar Pat Har­ri­son. She came from be­ing deputy uni­ver­si­ty bur­sar at Mona Cam­pus (Ja­maica)."

Asked if he had seen the doc­u­ment, Sankat said, "Yes. If you are leader of an in­sti­tu­tion, there would be all kinds of is­sues. We filled the po­si­tion of the cam­pus reg­is­trar with Richard Saun­ders. Wages are an­oth­er is­sue."UWI has a third par­ty which is the Gov­ern­ment. I have no prob­lem with Wigut. They are do­ing what a union is do­ing. It's not a big is­sue. It's a doc­u­ment and its pres­i­dent (Bish­nu Ra­goonath) was re­port­ing to his union. Our staff and union are im­por­tant."- ML