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ANU VC Brian Schmidt . Photo : Ray Strange
Double standards ?
ANU , UNSW cut jobs as union asks why NYU gets special treatment .
Flames that rose from announcements
Australian National University and
UNSW were planning staff cuts were fanned by news a US university ’ s Sydney campus was eligible for JobKeeper payments .
ANU vice-chancellor Brian Schmidt revealed the “ painful ” decision to cut jobs after more than 200 employees took voluntary redundancies .
The university will make 215 roles redundant over the next nine months .
Schmidt said : “ The stark reality is : we need to save money , and this will mean spending a lot less , both on our non-salary expenditure , but also on salaries .
“ This is not a course of action we wanted to take , but it is our only viable option going forward if we want to remain a sustainable , stable university .”
ANU is seeking to cut spending by more than $ 100 million a year until 2023 and will target both academic and non-academic employees .
The news came as UNSW , which also accepted voluntary redundancies , announced 256 jobs will be slashed .
UNSW vice-chancellor Ian Jacobs told staff the university had dealt with 80 per cent of a $ 370 million financial gap estimated for 2021 but an additional $ 39 million in savings still needed to come from salaries .
" I deeply regret the impact on staff who will lose their jobs ," he wrote in a statement .
" All staff affected in this way will receive a redundancy package and we will do all that we can to assist them with the next steps in their career ."
The National Tertiary Education Union estimated more than 11,000 jobs had been lost at Australian campuses in recent months , adding that many could have been prevented if university workers had been made eligible for JobKeeper .
The union also found it “ extraordinary ” that New York University ' s Sydney campus qualified for the payments .
NTEU president Alison Barnes said : " The Morrison government changed the rules three times to prevent these universities from accessing JobKeeper .
" Yet four private universities in Australia and even the Sydney campus of New York University have been able to access JobKeeper .
But Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said Australian universities were being funded by taxpayers in other ways .
" That is not support that is available to foreign universities that may have a domestic campus , so it ' s a different situation ," he told reporters .
" You are talking about an apple and an orange ."
Labor ' s education spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek described the explanation as insane .
" I would like Scott Morrison to answer to those families that have lost jobs , why is it that their jobs don ' t matter and yet the government has subsidised this very wealthy foreign university ?" ■
Raise your
hands
USyd VC Michael Spence . Photo : James Croucher
Sydney Uni asks staff to volunteer for redundancy .
University of Sydney staff are being asked to raise their hand
for redundancy .
In an email to staff vice-chancellor Michael Spence said he was seeking expressions of interest in voluntary redundancies among continuing staff and those on fixed-term contracts with more than six months of their term remaining .
The news came as a change proposal from Curtin University was leaked to the ABC , revealing management would seek hundreds of redundancies .
The proposal will be negotiated with unions and staff but the ABC reported that the university was seeking $ 45 million in savings , most of which would come from cutting staff costs .
Announcing the plan , Spence said while its semester 2 enrolments have been stronger than predicted after COVID-19 hit the sector , there is still uncertainty about how it will fare next year .
“ We have now revised our budget projections and are working on the assumption that we will achieve only 65 per cent of our planned commencing international student enrolment revenue for 2021 ,” the statement read . “ This will have an impact on our budget for the next three to four years .”
Spence also spelled out pay cuts for members of the university ’ s executive – the vice-chancellor and his deputies , along with vice-principals , executive deans and deans will take a 20 per cent reduction in their salary for 2020 .
The vice-chancellor advised staff that the university had not set a target for the number of roles for voluntary redundancy but NTEU Sydney branch president Kurt Iveson said staff understand that the university is hoping to shed at least a hundred jobs through the process .
“ Job loss through [ voluntary redundancies ] inevitably means even more work for staff who remain – and this is on top of the incredible workload intensification we have experienced in responding to the pandemic this year ,” Iveson said .
“ For an executive team that is responsible for branding our university as a place where we ‘ unlearn ’ conventional approaches to problems , isn ’ t it a shame that they can ’ t ‘ unlearn ’ austerity as a default response to crisis ?” ■
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