University Staff Get Salary Rises

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30528, 25 August 1964, Page 9

University Staff Get Salary Rises

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, August 24. Salary increases ranging from £lOO for assistant or junior lecturers m general departments to at least £450 for professors have been granted.

lhe rates and scales for university academic and senior non-academic staff to take effect from April 1, 1964, were announced today by the Prime Minister (Mr Holyoake). Mr Holyoake said emphasis had been given to encouraging recruitment by making salary rates in the new extended lecturer grade comparable with the rates paid in the United Kingdom universities.

“The new salaries are the outcome of careful consideration and consultations between the University Grants Committee and the Cabinet committee on Government Administration under the chairmanship of the Minister of Labour, Mr Shand, and with the Minister of Education, Mr Kinsella,” said Mr Holyoake.

‘•ln addition, I heard representations by deputations I received from the recent conference of the councils of the universities and from the association of university teachers. “Both these bodies were most co-operative and responsible in their approach to the complexities involved,” he said. “They fully realised the problem has been to achieve a reasonable compromise between the obvious need for the universities to be able to compete for staff in a world market, and the need to maintain a practical rela-

tionship with the general level of other salaries paid in New Zealand,” said the Prime Minister. Medical professors will receive from £3700 to £4OOO and professors of all other faculties from £3250 to £4OOO. Generally, the exact points of the salaries paid to particular professors within the range will be for the university councils to decide. For associate professors and readers, medical staff will receive £3250 and those in other faculties £2BOO. “The University Grants Committee and the Government were very much concerned to see that the lecturer grade, which, together with professors, is the grade at which most recruitment

takes place, should be fully competitive with the rates offered to the same staff in United Kingdom universities,” said Mr Holyoake. “It has therefore been decided that present salary scales for lecturers will be amalgamated into a single extended scale for lecturers,” he said.

“This scale will range up to £3OOO in the case of medical staff and to £2500 for other staff. “There are certain , bars in each range and promotion beyond the bar will be for the university councils to decide.” Assistant or junior lecturers would have a new salary scale from £lOOO to £l2OO in all departments. The Government had also authorised the universities to pay additional allowances of up to £3OO to certain staff who had administrative duties over and above those normally associated with their academic positions. The total of salary plus allowances must not exceed £4OOO.

The university councils had also been authorised to grade their registrars, librarians and liaison officers as academic staff and pay them salaries up to the minimum of a non-medical professor, said Mr Holyoake. Additional grants to the universities amounting to £381,000 had been approved for the present financial year. The lower grades of nonacademic staff also recently received the benefit of the ruling rates salary increase approved for staff in the State services.

“The Government accepted and approved the report of the advisory committee on higher salaries in the conviction that its recommendations represent a desirable change in current salaries paid from public funds. “Acceptance of these changes does not establish salary relativities which must be regarded as permanent,” said Mr Holyoake. “There is no doubt that internal and overseas changes in comparable salaries will from time to time make it necessary to review the university salaries which have now been approved. “The Government believes it is vitally necessary that universities be adequately staffed, and we have placed what can be considered a liberal interpretation on the recommendations of the advisory committee on higher salaries,” he said.