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Sharron Bennett/Stuff
The University of Otago is expected to make several hundred redundancies in a bid to save $60m from its budget.
The University of Otago is being tight-lipped over how many staff have indicated they would take voluntary redundancy as it tries to trim $60million from its budget.
Several hundred jobs are expected to go at the tertiary institution, which asked for applications for voluntary redundancies last month.
“We won’t be making numbers available until the end of the process and staff have been informed,” a university spokesperson said.
The deadline for applications for voluntary redundancy is June 2.
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The university’s financial position has in part been driven by a drop in domestic student enrolment numbers and below inflation funding increases from the Government.
“If we do nothing, and even if our enrolments recover more quickly than we expect at our current rate, we will still have a budget in the red for several years,” acting Vice-Chancellor Professor Helen Nicholson told staff.
Hamish McNeilly/Stuff
Acting Vice-Chancellor Professor Helen Nicholson at a media stand-up addressing the University of Otago’s financial woes.
“That is not tenable for us as a university.”
Meanwhile, the Tertiary Education Union (TEU) would be making its position loud and clear with an organised paid stop-work meeting to be held from 12pm next Tuesday, union organiser Phil Edwards said.
It would include speeches and “some narrative around our position on these proposed cuts’’.
Edwards said it wasn’t a protest, rather an opportunity to “express our view on what the employer is doing at the moment”.
Hundreds of staff had already indicated they would attend, and staff from other universities are also expected to show their support.
The Employment Relations Act guaranteed two paid stop-work meetings per annum, and “we’ve decided to use one of them to bring our staff together”, Edwards said.
Supplied
An artist’s impression of Te Rangi Hiroa, a new University of Otago residential college.
Under a paid stop-work event, anemployer is entitled to have enough staff to prevent any interruption to their operations.
“While some staff may cancel lectures, it would be the responsibility to ensure those students are not negatively affected by that, so they may need to run those at another time,” Edwards said.
He said it was still unknown how many jobs the university was looking at cutting, the plans to reduce expenditure, or future plans for capital works projects.
“There are so many things we don’t know.”
The university council is expected to meet next week to discuss the tertiary institution’s seven-year strategic plan, called Pae Tata – Strategic Plan to 2030.
The university’s current capital projects include a reportedly $220m redevelopment of its Christchurch Campus, a $44m refurbishment of the food science department, and a new 450-bed residential college, both in Dunedin.
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