Student trade union has been granted full access to information about AU student workers’ identities and wage and employment conditions
Studenteransattes Landsforbund (SUL), the national Danish trade union for student workers, has been granted full access to information about the identities and wage and employment conditions of 3000 student workers.
SUL has requested access to full information about employment conditions for all student workers, student counsellors and student instructors at Danish universities.
“We have requested this information simply in order to get an overview of how many students are employed under a SUL collective agreement,” explains Christian Damholdt, organisation consultant at SUL.
Student workers at universities are typically employed under the HK STAT collective agreement (the National Union of Commercial and Clerical Employees agreement for government employees) or the SUL agreement. Under the Danish Access to Public Administration Files Act, Aarhus University has an obligation to grant requests for full access to certain kinds of information about its employees. In this connection, the university wishes to make the following statement:
MESSAGE TO STUDENT WORKERS
9 October 2014
Studenteransattes Landsforbund (SUL) has lodged a request with Aarhus University for access to the names, positions, degree programmes, job responsibilities, wage conditions (collective agreement and job category) and email addresses of all student workers.
Under the Access to Public Administration Files Act, Aarhus University has an obligation to grant access to information about its employees’ names, positions, educational backgrounds, job responsibilities, wage conditions and business trips.
Information about student workers’ names, positions and wage conditions can be retrieved by searching the university’s databases, and Aarhus University forwarded this information to SUL on 9 October.
However, information about the students’ degree programmes, job responsibilities and email addresses cannot be easily retrieved via a search in university’s databases, and in any case, this information is not registered for the vast majority of students. In order to retrieve this information, a manual review of approximately 3000 case files would be required, which would involve a disproportionate use of resources. For this reason, Aarhus University has not granted access to this information.
Further information
If you have any questions in this connection, you are welcome to contact Chief Legal Counsel Mads Niemann-Christensen ,, tel. 8715 2138.