Staff rally against ANU cuts
Around 250 union members and supporters rallied on 16 October against sweeping cuts at the Australian National University, which are set to eliminate 638 full-time equivalent positions.
The university expects to save $250 million between now and 2026, $100 million of which will come from workers’ wages. According to the National Tertiary Education Union, this equals a 12 percent cut in annual salary expenditure.
The proposed changes, which the administration has dubbed “Renew ANU”, involve abolishing the College of Health and Medicine and merging its constituent schools into other colleges.
So far, 50 college staff have been told they will not have jobs next year. But staff working in other university areas have discovered that rolling job losses are expected to continue. No one knows whether they’ll be next until they receive an email calling them into secretive meetings with senior management.
“Renew ANU” was announced in an all-staff address, which staff were only notified about 24 hours before it happened. During the address, new Vice-Chancellor Genevieve Bell said that the cuts would make the ANU a “smaller university”.
According to the chief financial officer, the university’s expected 2024 deficit of $60 million has ballooned into a projected $200 million deficit. Exactly how this happened is unclear, which is why the union is demanding that the university open its books.
ANU is the first university to announce major job cuts since the federal government introduced a cap on international student numbers at Australian universities. The indicative caps will reduce ANU’s total number of international students by 14.5 percent compared to 2019. The university has justified the cuts by stating that it can no longer expand its way out of debt by enrolling more full-fee-paying international students.
Initially called against the proposed job cuts, the NTEU’s rally came a day after management announced that it would ask all staff to forgo their scheduled 2.5 percent pay rise in December, a move the union was not notified about. Predictably, the winding up of last year’s enterprise bargaining campaign, which involved calling off planned strike action, has emboldened management to sideline the union and unilaterally attempt to slash pay.
During the pandemic, staff at ANU narrowly voted to defer two annual pay rises on the promise that it would save jobs. Months later, the university announced that hundreds of jobs would go anyway. Now, union members are much more suspicious of management. Staff who voted yes last time have said they won’t be doing so again.
In the email notifying staff of the intention to cut their pay, Bell revealed that she would immediately reduce her salary by 10 percent. She failed to mention that this would be a reduction from $1.15 million—far more than the average university worker.
It would be hard for Bell to be a more unpopular vice-chancellor. These unprecedented cuts come after a year in which ANU called the police on student protesters, attempted to privatise on-campus childcare, declared that parking fees will nearly triple next year and announced a new draconian postering and advertising policy that may breach the enterprise agreement.
A majority will need to vote to change the enterprise agreement if the staff are to forgo their scheduled pay rise. After a resounding vote of members at the rally, the union is now gearing up to run a “vote no” campaign. A win for the union’s campaign will be an important victory—not only for ANU staff struggling with the cost of living but also because of the message it will send to any other vice-chancellor considering similar cuts.
