University merger plan stokes union’s fears for jobs

An agreement to explore a merger between South Australia’s two largest universities has already hit a major obstacle.

UniSA chancellor Jim McDowell, UniSA vice-chancellor David Lloyd, Adelaide University vice-chancellor Peter Rathjen and Adelaide University chancellor Kevin Scarce.

The agreement to explore a merger between South Australia’s two largest universities announced yesterday has already hit a major obstacle: the National Tertiary Education Union said it would not accept forced redundancies and would demand the best employment conditions from each institution apply to all staff of a merged super institution.

University of Adelaide NTEU president Nick Warner said in a statement last night the union would explore with an “open mind” the idea of a merger with the University of South Australia.

“I believe there could be a lot of potential benefits in joining forces with our sister university,” he said.

But he said the union would not blindly sign on to the plan.

“In the event that a merger does go ahead, the NTEU would expect the two universities to agree to a policy of zero forced redundancies and the negotiation of a new enterprise agreement that maintains the best conditions from each university for all staff of a merged entity.”

When the possibility of a merger was raised several years ago, it was estimated the cost of ­offering all staff the best conditions from each institution was in the tens of millions of dollars a year, which would wipe out any economies of scale that might be achieved.

The University of Adelaide now has a new enterprise bargaining agreement and the University of South Australia’s latest agreement is still being negotiated.

The union’s outright rejection of forced redundancies would also complicate any effort to make economies of scale from a merger by reducing back office staff or by rationalising courses.

Yesterday’s announcement of the plan to spend the next six months exploring a merger revives an idea first seriously proposed around 2010.

At that time, it was the University of South Australia that pushed the merger, under then vice-chancellor Peter Hoj, who left in 2012 to become vice-chancellor of the University of Queensland.

His successor, current University of South Australia vice-chancellor David Lloyd, was also attracted to the merger idea, but it was resisted by then University of Adelaide vice-chancellor Warren Bebbington.

However, University of Adelaide chancellor Kevin Scarce is a strong supporter of a merger.

Since the arrival of vice-chancellor Peter Rathjen at the University of Adelaide this year, the institution has switched its view and has pushed forward with exploring merger options.

In earlier incarnations, the merger idea also involved South Australia’s smallest public university, Flinders.

After it made it clear it was not supportive, Flinders University does not feature in the latest revival of the plan.

To succeed, the merger will need the support of the state government of Liberal Premier Stephen Marshall and the federal government, whose Education Minister Simon Birmingham is an alumnus of the University of ­Adelaide.