PROFESSIONAL STAFF
MEMBER STORY
A strong local Branch essential as we enter the uncharted waters ahead As I write, La Trobe University will end the Jobs Protection Framework in a fortnight, which has staved off some of the worst impacts of the pandemic for the last year. We’re just out of our fourth lockdown, with no international students in sight and a cruel lack of support from the Federal Government, it’s hard not to imagine much of what we know and love about the University falling off a cliff after 1 July. Already, colleagues have taken voluntary redundancies, decades of institutional knowledge simply gone, their Zoom farewells as surreal and unreal as so much of our lives have been this last year. What will the University look like with hundreds of our colleagues and friends gone in the next few months? When we return to the office again, what university will we be returning to? Already, half – HALF – the staff are at risk of burnout, according to a recent survey. We were taken through survey results in detail, but simply knowing the problem doesn’t solve it, because the problems are real. Over $150 million less revenue forecast this year compared to 2019; a hole that will take 5–8 years to dig out of; a deficit the Federal Government doggedly refuses to address, not because they can’t, but because starving the tertiary sector suits their ideology just fine.
Susanne Newton La Trobe University
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So many people I know are worried for their jobs, professional staff working long hours beyond what
Sentry
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JUNE 2021