University of Ballarat redundancy talks today

By Marcus Power
Updated November 2 2012 - 2:19pm, first published June 20 2010 - 12:26pm
University of Ballarat Vice-Chancellor Professor David Battersby.
University of Ballarat Vice-Chancellor Professor David Battersby.

THE National Tertiary Education union will meet today with members at the University of Ballarat to discuss possible redundancies at the university.The University's Vice-Chancellor Professor David Battersby announced last month voluntary redundancies would be offered to all staff.The move was partly in response to an $8 million revenue loss the university expects from a drop in international student numbers.At the time, Professor Battersby said the redundancies would offer staff the chance to take extended leave without pay for study, travel, parenting or being a carer."Our workforce is our most valuable asset, but it's also our most costly," he said."This is about being agile and flexible as a university."The union's Ballarat branch president Jeremy Smith said today's meeting was part of a series of meetings with staff."We're having some meetings with areas where there is a concentration of fixed-term contracts, as opposed to ongoing positions," Mr Smith said.He said the union wanted to find out if contracted workers thought their contracts would be renewed.He said larger general meetings had already been held with members across the university's six campuses. The union has been in discussions with university management since April.More talks will held at the end of the first week of July, when student applications for semester two begin to be approved.Though fewer overseas students are expected to enrol at the university's Ballarat campus, the drop has hit hardest at the university's partner organisations in Melbourne and Sydney.Professor Battersby said the university would also look at cutting expenditure, particularly in staff travel and buying computers, while boosting revenue."We need to increase our student intake through things like marketing, and I'm quite buoyed by some of the new international partnerships we have formed."

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