Campus Review Volume 26. Issue 4 | Page 32

wOrkfOrce

campusreview.com.au

Labour changes
for TAFE NSW
Photo: Jon Black © APN Australian Regional Media

new managing director says the organisation’s
bureaucracy needs to be streamlined;
employment, work conditions may change.
By James Wells

A

nother round of job cuts and
changes to enterprise agreements
at TAFE New South Wales has been
foreshadowed ahead of the new managing
director’s modernisation push.
Jon Black, who stepped into the role
last December, told Campus Review the
organisation’s overgrown bureaucracy and
“very outdated” workplace conditions have
hamstrung TAFE, leading it to prioritise
resources for administration over teaching.
This has “restrained” teachers from
innovating in the classroom, Black argues.
For Black, a modernised TAFE NSW is
about “providing contemporary training
in education ready for the jobs of today
and the future. That means we need to
invest more and more of our resources in
actual training in education delivery, not
in administrative burden or overhead. It is

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about being very responsive to industry
needs and that is what we can do.”
The TAFE modernisation, in the works,
is trimming the organisation’s bureaucracy
and cutting red tape. Black also wants
to increase TAFE’s transparency to
the taxpayer.
“Any job losses … [are] in good order
in terms of the outcome for the student
and ultimately for my accountability to
the taxpayer, to make sure that we spend
every dollar of taxpayer support to TAFE in
a very efficient and modern way,” is how he
explains potential job cuts.
Black didn’t specify the number of jobs
that would probably go.
The news has sparked fresh concern
within the NSW Teachers Federation.
Between June 2012 and June 2015,
TAFE NSW reduced its overall workforce

by 4645 members, a cut of almost onethird. Regarding the possibility of more
job cuts, Maxine Sharkey, the union’s
TAFE spokesperson, says with job cuts
and redundancies already having been
made since June last year, Black’s latest
comments raise the question: “What would
be left in TAFE?”
“Probably not a week goes past that I
don’t have correspondence with one of the
TAFE institutes, telling me they are engaging
in consultation and reviews to look at more
job losses,” Sharkey tells Campus Review.
Nathan Bradshaw, spokesperson for
The Public Service Association of NSW
– which represents members of TAFE’s
administrative and support staff – also
summarises “there are no more jobs to cut”.
Meanwhile, Black says the second part
of his modernisation agenda will involve
adjusting teachers’ enterprise agreements
to arrange a more flexible workplace – so
as to accommodate working according to
student demand.
“Take a case in Illawarra just recently,
where the teachers wanted to shift a
program to teach not on a Monday through
Thursday but on a Tuesday through Friday,
because it was about when the students
were available,” Black says. “I get a letter
from the NSW Teachers Federation saying,
‘Oh we can’t do that; it’s against the rules.’ ”
The existing enterprise agreement TAFE
NSW has with the Teachers Federation
already allows workers to teach at any
time – seven days a week, 24 hours a
day, though “the parties agree that the
use of excess teaching hours shall be
discouraged”. Sharkey says many teachers
already work excess hours, regardless.
Black, however, says he believes the
current enterprise agreement isn’t in the
students’ best interest. He says changes
are necessary to secure the future of TAFE
NSW, and pledges to ensure the safety and
wellbeing of staff will not be compromised
as a result of the reforms.
“[The teachers’ union] needs to come on
board and say, ‘this is about the student,”
Black said. “There are 250,000 unemployed
youth in NSW. We need to stand up and be
prepared to deliver training for these people
because nothing will be better to their
self-esteem and the productivity in relation
to NSW than if we can provide training or
pathways to training … We’ve got a real
opportunity now for the future, but as I said,
we’ve got to modernise.” n