The jobs apocalypse It's happening now!

Kieran McCarron Policy & Research Officer

Since March this year, the NTEU began issuing strong warnings about possible heavy job losses coming to the sector in the wake of lost international student revenue. These warnings included TV and radio appearances, pleas to the Government, and even full-page newspaper ads.

At the time, the NTEU’s own modelling confirmed Universities Australia’s estimate of at least 20,000 job losses in 2020 without government support.

It is not too late for the Senate to do the right thing in the coming weeks and reject this bill – and we continue to urge members to join us in contacting the crossbench senators to achieve this outcome.

Sadly, these warnings went unheeded. Instead, the Government moved to restrict Universities’ access to JobKeeper and released a disingenuous 'support package' on Easter Sunday that did nothing to address the gaping hole in international student enrolments.

Later, in June, the Government dug the boot in again, announcing the surprise funding reforms they called the Job-Ready Graduate Package that would be rapidly legislated and implement for 2021 and beyond.

This bill has been widely criticised from all corners of the sector for its idiosyncratic fee increases, cuts to funding per place, and complete unwillingness to acknowledge the teaching-research nexus, or indeed even the concept of teaching quality (over quantity).

It is not too late for the Senate to do the right thing in the coming weeks and reject this bill – and we continue to urge members to join us in contacting the crossbench senators to achieve this outcome.

Getting to the bottom of the job loss numbers

The NTEU can confirm that there have been at least 12,185 positions lost in Australian universities since March. This comprises at least 5,300 continuing positions, 6,486 casual positions and 399 fixed term positions that we are aware of.

Sadly, the full figure is likely much higher. Universities generally cannot conceal continuing staff redundancies – this is because NTEU negotiated Enterprise Agreements have strong redundancy provisions, including mandatory consultation. These processes reveal the numbers of jobs affected to us.

NTEU ad in the Geelong Advertiser for the Deakin Day of Action in June

Notably, however, the 5300 figure comprises a mix of headcount and full time equivalent (FTE) counts. This is because several universities have announced FTE redundancy targets, but they have not announced which positions are affected. The total number of positions affected will always be higher than these FTE figure targets as not all positions are full time.

Casual staff losses

Beyond continuing staff redundancies, the true extent of job losses becomes more difficult to quantify. The NTEU has confirmed that fixed term staff and casual staff have not been renewed as a result of cost cutting at a handful of universities, but we have little official data on most.

If universities are going to the expense of making hundreds of continuing staff redundant, it is very likely they are ending fixed term and casual roles too. After all, we estimate that casual staff account for 45% of all university employees by headcount, and fixed term staff 21%.

Two universities where we are aware of the full extent of casual job losses are La Trobe and Deakin, each with a reduction of over 2400 casual staff. These figures are enormous.

There is currently no requirement for universities in states other than Victoria to report a headcount of casual staff (something we have lobbied for consistently), however, they do report a FTE figure annually to the Department of Education.

Based on these figures, it appears that La Trobe has reduced its casual staff by almost the full amount reported in 2019, while Deakin has lost about two-thirds versus this particular figure.

Overall, NTEU estimates that there are around 100,000 people engaged on casual contracts in the sector. If reductions of these magnitudes are occurring sector-wide then it is not out of the question to assume that up to 50,000 of our casual colleagues have lost work since the COVID-19 disaster began.

Honesty in numbers needed

The NTEU has requested all universities openly provide data on these changes in employment so we can properly track and publicise the enormous impact this crisis is having on staff at Australian universities and the ongoing problem of insecure employment in our sector.

We will also be surveying sector employees shortly to try to get to the bottom of the true extent of concealed job losses among those in precarious employment.