Federation University staff have vowed to fight against the loss of 200 jobs "using all available means" and called on the institution's vice chancellor to resign.
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During a mass meeting, National Tertiary Education Union members at FedUni passed a motion calling for vice chancellor Professor Duncan Bentley and chief financial officer John Blair to resign over their poor record in managing university finances and the drop in student enrolment and revenue since 2019.
They also vowed to oppose the job cuts using all available means including mass rallies in strategic locations, an ongoing media campaign, and pursuing legal measures to enforce FedUni's Enterprise Bargaining Agreement.
"FedUni's NTEU members have successfully stopped poor decision-making by senior managers at our University before, as we did when management backed down on its disastrous plan to cut the Bachelor of Arts program in its entirety," said FedUni NTEU branch president Dr Mathew Abbott.
"Members are organising again to stop these cuts and we know students and community members are behind us."
Dr Abbott said staff and students were "angry and distressed" about the potential cuts, which account for 12 per cent of the university's workforce.
The university initially called for expressions of interest for voluntary redundancies, which were to close less than two weeks after the cuts were announced, but that date has been extended to Friday, April 12.
A series of rallies at campuses including Mount Helen, SMB, Wimmera, Berwick and Gippsland will also be held in the coming weeks.
Federation University management and the union will meet again this week.
When the restructure was announced in March, it was confirmed that there would be forced redundancies if there were not enough voluntary candidates.
Dr Abbott said the uncertainty of not knowing whether their positions were safe or not was taking a toll on staff.
"How will they ensure the genuineness of the redundancies given they are asking people across the entire university to put their hands up," he asked.
"Where do they actually want to make staff redundant? It's creating a lot of uncertainty for people because nobody knows whether their positions are safe or not. Creating this fear across the entire workforce remains a huge problem."
