Back to University of Western Australia
Media Release: UWA Staff to Protest Job Cuts in Engineering
Staff from the University of Western Australia will protest against planned cuts to academic jobs in the Faculty of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics on Thursday October 14.
Members of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) as well as other academics and general staff will gather at UWA’s Crawley campus from 7.30 to 9.00 am.
The protest starts a campaign against plans by UWA management to cut the jobs in Engineering and other faculties across the university.
“It seems incredible at this time, when there is such a demand for engineers in the mining sector in Western Australia, that a leading University would be heading in this direction”, Dr Jamie O’Shea, NTEU UWA Branch President said.
“The proposed cuts of 23% of spending on the salaries of teaching and academic are totally disproportionate to the size of the Faculty’s current deficit of $2.2 million.
“The high teaching load experienced by many teaching and research academics at UWA is already impacting on research productivity. Reducing the number of academic staff, particularly at a time when student numbers are rising can only exacerbate the problem.
“The NTEU is very concerned both for the staff and students impacted on and for the UWA community. Due to the size of the cuts it is likely that individual staff members will be identified for forced redundancies; many are long serving devoted teachers and researchers who have made a significant contribution to our great university. The cuts in Engineering, Computing and Mathematics, which follow the job cuts that occurred in Bimolecular and Chemical sciences, will reduce the capacity of UWA to help in responding to challenges in these areas.”
The NTEU is concerned that the cuts in Engineering, Computing and Mathematics are the start of a major wave of restructuring at UWA.
These cuts are consequences of the decisions by the UWA Executive over the past five years to direct teaching generated money away from funding teaching activities and towards other activities, including $250 million for capital works.
The protest will take place outside the UWA campus on the corner of Stirling Highway and Winthrop Ave.
For comment or more information
Dr Jamie O’Shea, President NTEU UWA Branch.
Steve Kaless, UnionsWA Media Officer.
Comments
There are no comments. Be the first to have your say!