Your $86,000 Executive

This article was originally published in the September 27, 2006 issue of CANTA magazine.

At the end of this year, UCSA President Warren Poh will walk away from his position having received one of the highest university student association presidential salaries in the country.

There are eight registered universities in New Zealand, making up eleven student associations (Massey University accounts for four with their Auckland, Palmerston North, and Wellington campuses, and extramural studies). The student executive of each association is made up of two parts—the officers and the remaining members. At the UCSA, the officers are the president, vice president, and the finance and services officer (FSO)—another nine people make up the rest of the executive.

As is the norm for student associations across the country, the executive officers and members hold paid positions. The officers are employed and are paid a salary; the remaining members receive an honorarium for their services to the association.

Across student associations, the UCSA is one of the most open with details of the executive pay structure: details are available in its constitution—but unless students read the 34-page document, they would be unaware of them. Do you know how much the executive get paid? “We don’t go out and actively publicise them,” admits Poh. “I suppose I don’t think about it… and maybe that’s something we need to change.”

Warren Poh will be paid $32,456 this year—second only to the estimated $34,300 received by the president of the AUT student association, Paul Stewart ^[1]; but almost $10,000 more than Dan Bidois president of the Auckland University Students’ Association (AUSA), the lowest paid at $22,609.

Vice President Belinda Bundy and FSO Chris Whiteside will each be paid $11,766—the highest vice president in the country being at Massey’s Albany Students’ Association on $20,000, and the lowest at Lincoln, on $3,500.

Finally, the remaining nine executive members each receive a maximum of $3,230—only $10 under the top-paid at the Victoria University Wellington Students’ Association (VUWSA), and six times more than the lowest at the AUSA on $500.

Totalling $86,902 in salaries and honorariums to the executive from the annual budget.

Is this publicised enough? “Maybe in our introductory magazine, we need to say… this is what they get paid, and this is the set-up,” suggests Poh.

For executive officers, this remuneration is made without any process or approval: they receive it as long as they show up. Executive members have their honorarium amount approved by the executive, based on attendance and the management of UCSA projects—should any member receive less than 50%, a no confidence motion in that members is made. Should the executive officers be under the same reviews?

“I have a report each fortnight, which goes to the executive and they look over it saying ‘where you making good use of your time?’” says Poh. “I’ve never experienced a meeting where a president’s report has not been accepted… maybe there needs [to be an] accountability thing.”

[Executive members] that want pay rises should be able to justify them.

—Kyle Millar

At this year’s AGM Kyle Millar, a former executive member and vice president of the UCSA, now studying a Masters in Political Science put forward two motions. The first set out to remove the performance-based approval process surrounding executive honorariums. Millar feels that “too many of the recent UCSA problems can be laid at the feet of [executive members] who did not wish to rock the boat; in safeguarding their own interests, those of the student body suffered,” and feels that removing the approval process for executive honorariums will “cut down the bullshit time”.

“It’s better to have a diverse or even lazy executive than one that is perpetually setting, amending, judging, or appealing performance targets,” adds Millar. He doesn’t feel that removing performance requirements will promote an executive that runs for their individual remuneration rather than focus on the goals of the association, brushing it off saying that “the reasonable belief that if you’re greedy, you’re not also stupid!” But concludes, “most years we have more warm bodies than brains [on the executive].”

Millar’s other motion targets the Consumers Price Index (CPI) adjustments made to honorariums.

$150 a week barely covers rent in Auckland

—Anna Crowe

At the end of every year, the amount paid to each position is adjusted with the CPI, amounting to an average increase of approximately 2% each year. This has allowed the presidential salary, last set in 1998 at $27,500, to work it’s way up without remark or approval at a general meeting. Lincoln, Victoria, and ASA all use a similar system. Is this a fair system to adjust salaries?

The Waikato Students’ Union (WSU) appears to be the only association in the country that debates the presidential salary for the following year and has it approved at the AGM as part of the budget.

Millar wants the automatic adjustment on member’s honorariums removed. “[Executive members] that want pay rises should be able to justify them,” argues Millar, and wants pay rises voted on by students at an AGM. However, he stops short of suggesting any changes that need to be made to the process for executive officers.

Millar feels that performance-based systems for officer’s salaries are “pretty pointless”, and was on the executive in 1999 when they were removed for the vice president and FSO. Poh on the other side, is a “big fan of performance-based stuff”, but sees difficulty in assessing it. “How would you judge that? Would you take that to the executive, and they judge it?”

Looking across universities, there are vast differences between the salaries and honorariums paid to officers and members, even between associations of similar sizes.

The extreme example is at AUSA, which represents the largest student association in the country with just over 20,000 members, but whose president and executive members receive the lowest salary and honorariums in the country. AUSA‘s Administrative Vice President Anna Crowe feels that “the rates should go up, as the current situation is that only those who can afford to forgo taking other work run for positions… $150 a week barely covers rent in Auckland.”

In contrast, the UCSA is the fifth largest association, but whose president and executive receive one of the highest pay packages. “One way to think about it, is that Victoria, and Otago, and AUT don’t operate in a commercial environment like we do. They don’t run their cafés and bars, nor have the responsibility to set their prices for the students and provide the same services that we do,” explains Poh. Even if the current rates are commercially sustainable, are they fair?

Co-president of the New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations, Conor Roberts comments, “the amount of work that student executives do does not generally vary between institutions. The amounts we are talking about are not huge and it is my experience that the people involved in their student associations do not do it for the money but do it simply to serve their student community.”

This is a view shared by many other student associations around the country. “It has seldom been an issue… students are more concerned about what the exec does,” comments Carl Gordon, Vice President WSU. “At the end of they day, the money isn’t a big thing,” says Poh, “If I wanted to get paid, I could [get] paid way more somewhere else.

It’s something fun in the end, it’s not a business, it’s a students’ association.

—Warren Poh

How do the student members feel about the executive pay set-up at the UCSA? Poh says that the “standard issues” with anybody getting paid arise, but notes a general apathy amongst students when it comes to getting involved in the issues of the association.

Poh agrees that it’s an issue that needs more discussion, and invites students to bring their views to executive meetings, “I’m always keen to talk about stuff that’s not the price of chips… they get a bit tedious.” ❡