Victoria University offers voluntary redundancies

Andrew Trounson December 11, 2008
Article from: The Australian
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,24897,24784840-12332,00.html

VICTORIA University has delayed any forced redundancies into next year, instead launching a voluntary redundancy program.

Vice-chancellor Elizabeth Harman has suggested that total job losses could be less than first anticipated as management looks to cut sessional and contracting staff while seeking other savings beyond staff cuts.

The National Tertiary Education Union is now claiming a partial victory for its campaign against VU's plans to cull up to 270 people, claiming that the university hasn't been able to find the redundant staff it had been expecting.

“They went searching for a tail of short courses and units and found that the dog didn't have a tail,” NTEU branch president Richard Gough told The Australian.

But Professor Harman said forced job losses were still a possibility next year, with management's work with consultants Ernst & Young to identify non-viable courses and surplus staff simply taking longer than expected to complete.

“This isn't the end of the story,” Professor Harman told The Australian.

“We are still going to end up with staffing changes.”

But Professor Harman said management had identified more than $10 million worth of annual savings from expected voluntary departures, cuts to sessional staff and other savings in higher education. However, that is still short of her total savings target for higher education of $16.5 million.

Mr Gough said any compulsory sackings next year would spark industrial action under the current enterprise bargaining talks.

VU has identified 140 higher education courses and 500 units that it will discontinue or phase out next year, reducing the total offering to around 200 courses and 1,700 units. Mr Gough said many of these course were already being taught out or had fallen into disuse, which is why management had failed to find significant redundancies from them.

VU is looking for further course cuts, including shedding the teaching of languages other than English, with the exception Vietnamese, for which VU is the only provider nationally.

Professor Harman said the cuts would allow VU to redeploy resources into high demand areas like teaching, business, accounting, and nursing.

In October, Professor Harman shocked staff with plans cut up to 150 higher education academic staff to secure $16.5 million in savings. A further $8.5 million in savings has been targeted from up to 100 job losses in administration, and a further $2 million in savings from about 20 job losses in TAFE.

The announcement, which had been formulated without consulting the union, angered the NTEU and worried local politicians. But while Professor Harman admitted that the communication strategy could've been better, she said the announcement had “focused minds” and there was now a renewed focus among deans and school heads to find savings while minimising job losses.

“Minds are now very focused,” Professor Harman said.

“The savings actions now being proposed by higher education faculties are deeper and wider than throughout 2008 when the budget depended on higher education productivity gains that didn't materialise.”

She said “the last few months have been a hard process at VU and I wouldn't be the only person disappointed in that we haven't succeeded in making sure all our staff fully understand what we want to do.”

“I'd have preferred to have had better communication strategies out there.”

Indeed management and the union still remain at loggerheads over the need for staffing cuts. Professor Harman says the cuts are needed to stave off looming deficits and in the wake of the failure of past productivity drives. But the NTEU believes VU is overstating the urgency, which it says is being exacerbated by the cost of the redundancies themselves and the university's construction plans as it reconfigures its spread of campuses.

The NTEU has called for an independent party to give a view on the university's situation and Professor Harman has agreed to consider it in further talks with the NTEU.

Mr Gough said the union wanted to “look for solutions that don't require targeted redundancies but still leave the university in a sustainable position”.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,24897,24784840-12332,00.html