Early WGEA data reveals COVID impact
Terri MacDonald Director, Policy & Research
When giving evidence at the Senate Committee hearing into the Job-Ready Graduates package last year, and this year at the Senate Select Committee into Secure Jobs, the NTEU warned that the mass redundancies in higher education will almost certainly see insecure employment increase even further. With Universities Australia announcing the loss of more than 17,300 jobs in 2020 alone, and further losses in the thousands so far in 2021, the NTEU has been gathering evidence on not only where these losses have occurred, but looking at their impact on the remaining workforce. The job losses come at same time as the regressive changes bought in by the Federal Government via the Job-Ready Graduates package last year mean that universities must now teach more students with less funding per student, on average. Indeed, the 2021 Federal Budget saw a cut to the Commonwealth’s Grants Scheme funding by almost 10% in real terms over forward estimates. What this means is that while jobs have disappeared, the work has not. In fact it has intensified, with the ‘Costello baby boom’ generation reaching university entrance age (and set to continue to increase, until peaking in 2024-25). What we are looking at is a ‘perfect storm’ scenario for insecure work to become the predominant form of employment in higher education. Yet, at the same time, casual and short term contract positions are the first to be affected as university managements ‘throw the lever’ on employment numbers as a mechanism to deal with immediate budget shortfalls – as COVID proved to be the case, on a national scale. In the first part of 2020, we saw thousands of short term contract, casual and sessional staff miss out on work, as the first wave of lockdowns hit the country and courses moved online. Then, as the impact of border closures and billions in lost university revenue came into play, universities commenced their redundancy rounds (often in excess of what their actual loss of income was, meaning that some university managements viewed COVID as less a crisis than an opportunity). Regardless of intentions, last year the NTEU forewarned policy makers that, while tertiary education was already one of the most casualised sectors in the Australian economy (with only retail and hospitality at a higher levels), once the waves of job losses are through the system we would almost certainly see an acceleration of precarious employment in higher education.
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Unfortunately, the early evidence is showing that the Union’s warnings to policy makers are justified.
with 326 casual staff lost, interestingly the percentage of insecure staff as a proportion of all non-management staff does not really change between 2019/2020 and 2020/2021.
Employers reports from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) for this year are starting to show some interesting contrast between 2020 and 2021. Usually undertaken in April, these employer reports are a snapshot in time of an organisation’s workforce and its gender equity policies.
However, at ANU, it’s worth looking at the difference in management staffing numbers between the two reports. In 2019 –2020, ANU Management totalled 484 staff, out of an all staff number of 6,300. As a percentage, this meant management categories were 7.6% of all staff.
Importantly, the WGEA reports provide information on staffing by headcount. While WGEA doesn’t break down staffing by academic/general staff cohorts, it is useful in that it gives an indication of headcount staffing numbers overall.
In the 2020-2021 reports, ANU Management total 435 staff members, out of a figure of 5,521 all staff. As a percentage, this meant there was a small increase in the proportion of management staff, at 7.8%. Looking at this, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that, while there are job losses for both management and non-management staff, the brunt of the redundancy pain is not being felt by the managers of the institution.
While this year’s employer reports have been delayed, a few universities have started to forward their reports. As the NTEU is an organisation that represents staff of these employers, universities are legislatively obligated to forward a copy to the Union.
The WGEA report for University of Adelaide also presents an interesting picture of that institution during COVID, albeit in a slightly different way to ANU.
Due to the delay in reporting, only a few reports have so far come through. That said, we can already clearly see there are major declines in staffing data.
What is immediately noticeable is the dramatic increase in casual numbers – of some 345 staff members. According to the WGEA report, this is due to a major increase in clerical and administrative staff (in fact, there was a drop in ‘professional’ casual staff, from 357 to 240) going from 161 reported in 2019/2020 report to 623 in the 2020/2021 report.
Figures 1 and 2 show the results from two Group of Eight universities – the Australian National University and the University of Adelaide. These two universities are worth noting as research intensive institutions that have been reliant on international student fee income to subsidise their research (and teaching), and as such both have been impacted by the border closures.
But what about management numbers? In 2019-2020, there were 504 management staff at University of Adelaide reported to WGEA, out of a total of 4,392 staff. The meant that management staff comprised some 11.47% of all staff. In 2020-2021, there were 474 management staff members reported to WGEA, out of a total of 4,492
At ANU, the bulk of job losses can be seen in the permanent areas – with 216 full time staff and 82 part time staff gone in the 12 months between reports. While there are also significant job losses for casual staff, Fig. 1: ANU – All non-management, by headcount WGEA Report year
Full time permanent
Full time contract
Part time permanent
Part time contract
Casual
All non % insecure manage- (casual & ment staff contract
20192020
2,573
954
468
295
1,526
5,816
47.7%
20202021
2,357
855
386
288
1,200
5,086
46%
Source: WGEA employer reports, 2019-2020 and 2020-2021
Connect ® Volume 14, no. 2 ® Semester 2, August 2021
