THE University of Newcastle has hit a stalemate with one of the two staff unions over its savings plan, opening the door to more job cuts.
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Vice-Chancellor Alex Zelinsky said UON set an August 10 deadline for agreement with the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) and the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) over its proposal to delay salary increases and increments, as well as defer academic promotion salary increases.
"If we can't find those $12 million... then we will have to take other measures and unfortunately it will be jobs," he said on July 29.
The parties had already reached an in principle agreement to reduce annual and long service leave and introduce an early retirement scheme. CPSU NSW assistant secretary Troy Wright said on Monday the mostly-tripartite negotiations "have broken down and run their course".
"Today was the UON's deadline for an agreement in principle to be made and no meaningful progress has been made for several weeks," Mr Wright said.
"The negotiations were initially about what employee-related savings could be found within the scope and powers of the agreement without making a variation.
"Once discussions moved on to what variations could be made to pursue further savings... no further agreement could be made between the NTEU and UON. The CPSU was willing to consider any options proposed, but the NTEU tabled their own non-negotiable measures that the university found unreasonable and counter-productive to the savings they were attempting to achieve."
UON required agreement from both unions to put its proposal to a staff vote.
The NTEU Newcastle branch put forward on August 5 a draft Memorandum of Understanding and its own draft variations.
It said management must satisfy the Expert Assessment Panel (EAP) that measures are proportional to the financial impact and necessary to avoid or minimise loss of job opportunities.
Its variations included that employees who might otherwise be stood down without pay as a result of COVID -19 are not stood down and that no staff member will be made forcibly redundant as a cost-cutting measure not connected to a reduction in work.
It also included that UON will allocate at least its full 2020 casual staffing budget up to September 30, 2021; that regularly employed casual staff who had reasonable expectation of future work will continue to be employed where there is work required to be performed; and that if there is a reduction in work that they have first order of preference to resume that work.
The CPSU's Mr Wright said the NTEU's "demands" were "naive and unrealistic".
Variations also covered termination payments, superannuation, close down days and fixed term contracts.
Professor Zelinsky wrote to the NTEU on August 7 saying "had the university been advised the NTEU would be pursuing these additional issues the negotiations would have taken a different course".
He said UON could not agree to many of the conditions, which he said "will impose a significant additional financial burden on the university".
He wrote directly to all staff on Monday, saying UON's proposal was estimated to save $12 to $15 million.
"Every million dollars equates to eight professional staff jobs or five academic staff jobs," he wrote.
"Given the scale of savings required, it is not possible to guarantee that no jobs will be lost over the next 12-18 months. However, if staff agree to the proposed salary measures, this will mean up to 120 jobs will be saved, depending on the mix of academic, teaching, and professional staff."
NTEU Newcastle branch president Dan Conway replied on Monday.
"We remain ready to meet with management and work towards equitable variations," he wrote.
"However our members and staff are not prepared to give up pay and conditions on a vague and completely unenforceable claim that it may secure 120 positions. They require real security over the next period."
He said in a separate statement UON's faculty restructure "leaves the NTEU concerned that job losses are inevitable".
A spokeswoman for UON said it was "committed to minimising the financial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on our staff and students".
"Like many in the tertiary sector, we cannot avoid financial impacts entirely and have been negotiating with the NTEU and CPSU on savings measures.
"We have maintained that there would be some job losses because of the COVID-19 impacts.
"The negotiations with the unions are an attempt to minimise these."