Swinburne Uni and ACU face major job losses

Swinburne and the Australian Catholic University face the likelihood of losing hundreds of jobs as COVID cuts deep.

Greg Craven, vice-chancellor of the Australian Catholic University.

Two more universities could shed hundreds of jobs after staff at Swinburne University of Technology were told on Tuesday that the university would need to lose 125-150 jobs in coming months to reduce an expected budget deficit of at least $45m in 2020.

At the same time the Australian Catholic University has told its staff that 7 per cent of its workforce, or 174 full-time jobs, will need to go unless the university can make major salary savings.

Swinburne’s recently appointed vice-chancellor, Pascale Quester, told her staff in an email that the necessity for job losses was “a difficult reality to share”.

“But I want to assure you that every effort has been made to keep the number of colleagues that will leave us as low as possible,” she said.

“Indeed, had it not been for the earlier collective efforts directed towards reducing our deficit, the number of required redundancies, and the impact on our operations would have been more severe.”

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Professor Quester, who joined Swinburne in August from the University of Adelaide, said the university had suffered a $75m revenue loss this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Financial savings made earlier this year — through taking leave, volunteering for redundancies, cost management and executive pay cuts — had already been ­factored in.

“Our financial situation would have been much worse had it not been for this excellent work,” she said.

Professor Quester told staff that the university needed to be ready for intense competition with other Victorian universities as the focus turned to the domestic student market following the loss of international students.

“Competition will reach unprecedented levels and our fitness and financial resilience will be put to the test,” she said.

The federal government’s Job-ready Graduates bill, which had now passed parliament, would mean less per-student funding for the STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) courses taught at Swinburne, she said. Reviews were underway in each area of the university to “ensure we are operating in the most efficient way, including reducing duplication, improving processes and streamlining delivery”.

Australian Catholic University vice-chancellor Greg Craven said job losses could be minimised if staff would agree to other measures to save salary costs including reducing hours worked, purchasing additional leave, forgoing salary increases and a temporary recruitment freeze.

ACU estimates it will lose $126m in revenue over the 2020-2022 period due to the pandemic and plans to cover the loss by reducing its surpluses over those three years by $53m and making non-salary and capital savings of $31m. This leaves $42m to be saved in salary costs and the university has opened consultations with staff to explore saving jobs by reducing employment benefits and conditions.

The university still expects to record surpluses worth a total of $46m from 2020 to 2022 but has rejected the option of using the remaining surpluses to save jobs.

ACU chief operating office ­Stephen Weller said the higher eduction sector remained volatile. “If we were not to set aside a small surplus we would risk the ongoing sustainability of the institution,” he said.

The ACU board approved a cut in the surplus of 6 per cent of revenue to 2 per cent to assist the university with its revenue losses.