EU members at Massey University are bitterly disappointed that the Vice-Chancellor has continued to push ahead with disruptive and unnecessary plans to disestablish 178 administration and finance jobs only to establish 141 new roles.
A preliminary decision was released on Tuesday, with no substantial changes to the initial proposal despite overwhelming staff feedback against it.
TEU Organiser Ben Schmidt says now is not the time to cut staff. “Administrative and finance staff are essential to the smooth running of the University and supporting academic staff to focus on teaching and research. The Vice-Chancellor’s preliminary decision will make their already tough jobs even tougher. The preliminary decision will negatively impact services to both staff and students by placing undue pressure on already stretched workloads.”
In addition to redundancies, the proposal would likely see long serving staff lost, major disruption to the University, and further increases to workloads of already overworked and under-resourced academic and general staff. Union members have raised concerns about the potential health and safety implications of any further increases to workloads without better resourcing.
Schmidt says “The Vice Chancellor must address this by fronting up to meet with staff and work to value and invest in the crucial work that administrative workers do.”
The TEU really doesn’t get it. Periodic layoffs of staff are inevitable under the current funding model, which links funding to numbers of student enrollments. But does the TEU focus its efforts on changing the funding model? No, instead they try to convince us that sexual harassment is a terrible problem in the tertiary sector, and that it’s linked to colonization. And they’re right behind the idea that universities are systemically racist.
Tertiary needs to go back to basics like more expert university lecturers and teaching staff at decent wages and more independence on their courses within reason and less fad courses, and less administrators and ‘finance’ people being paid by the university.
Tertiary is about education and the staff should represent that.
Academic decline been happening to NZ for decades, blow by blow.
Another note on academic decline.
https://www.kiwipolitico.com/2021/02/another-note-on-academic-decline/
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