100 signatures reached
To: Swinburne VC Professor Pascale Quester and Swinburne Councillors
NTEU Solidarity with Swinburne Staff and Students
Students and staff, teachers and researchers alike feel increasingly disenfranchised and manipulated by a layer of senior university management who do not understand higher education and are not accountable for their actions.
Swinburne staff “adamantly expresses its loss of confidence in the Executive Group, Chancellery and Council in the management and leadership of our University” in the face of hundreds of new voluntary redundancies and cuts to student programs rammed through without financial transparency, consultation or meaningful input from staff and students.
University Council has to stop behaving like some rogue corporate operator. We need it to return our university to being a proud and responsible public institution working conscientiously for its students, staff, and the broader public good.
Why is this important?
So far this year Swinburne Council have;
1. embarked on a mass voluntary redundancy round that was not needed while taking on millions of dollars in debt to fund the redundancies – debt the union says the university will be continuing to pay off well after the Covid-19 crisis has passed.
2. Started another University wide sacking, sorry as Pascale says 'optimisation opportunity', while trying to tell NTEU they don't have to consult with anyone about that (yes we have put Swinburne in formal dispute)
3. Make big cuts to STEM while publicly announcing they want to be STEM focused. This includes cutting the only public health program in Victoria that teaches research and responses to pandemics.
We urge all NTEU members and university staff to sign this petition in solidarity with Swinburne colleagues and to #defendhighered
How it will be delivered
We will deliver this petition to the Vice-Chancellor and University Council in person