UNIVERSITY of Newcastle staff have labelled as "distasteful" the institution embarking on a global search for new senior academics while outgoing employees who have lost their jobs negotiate their leave dates.
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A UON senior academic who declined to be named told the Newcastle Herald that the institution had asked staff in its three colleges - of engineering, science and environment; health, medicine and wellbeing; and human and social futures - to produce a list of names of academic 'superstars' that the university may investigate headhunting for new roles.
"They haven't yet finished with the restructuring," the senior academic said.
"Many of the people identified for detachment are still around and trying to finish off in a meaningful way with a lot of struggles, because the pressure is to terminate people as soon as possible, even if it means leaving things half done and students being left up in the air.
"We received a very strong message they had to terminate as soon as possible.
"In the meantime they are planning to resume hiring, which is a bit of a bizarre move considering the timeline."
UON's acting director of Human Resources Services, Brian Jones, said the organisational change process had seen the university align teams to its strategic priorities, "reducing staff in some areas, and growing in others".
"This includes the creation of [100] new [full time equivalent] roles in most schools and divisions, and we're just starting to recruit to fill these vacancies," he said.
"In most instances, our current staff are being given priority to apply in closed recruitment rounds.
"While most academic vacancies created by the change process are at the early and mid-career level, a small portion of new roles [7], less than 10 per cent, will be senior appointments in strategic priority areas.
"We will of course be searching for the very best talent at all levels to join our team."
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National Tertiary Education Union Newcastle branch president Dan Conway said the union viewed "the action of actively headhunting while also cutting the jobs of high performing, passionate staff as distasteful and disgraceful".
"You simply cannot make an employee forcibly redundant unless the work is no longer required to be performed," he said.
"Here, management are admitting that the work does need to be done, they just don't seem to want current staff to do it."
Mr Conway said many staff had told the NTEU they had been "pressured in all kinds of ways to leave over the last 18 months" and many had departed without compensation, "despite knowing their job might go, as they couldn't stand to see the destruction of their university".
He said some had made allegations about harassment and bullying.
"There are numerous staff who would have loved to stay and who we believe were more than capable of fulfilling the requirements for these strategic priority areas."
The senior academic said they believed UON had cut positions without adequately investigating what the impact would be on research and teaching and "this top hiring is sort of trying to correct the mismanagement of the earlier process".
They said the new positions did not appear to have been included in the change process documentation or discussed with staff and had appeared "out of the blue".
Mr Jones said the university's enterprise agreements set out rigorous processes for organisational change.
"As per the process, final change papers show the current organisational structure and the proposed new one.
"The Vice-Chancellor must sign off on the outlined changes before implementation can commence.
"Over time, requests can be made to add new roles according to business needs, but these go through thorough review processes and must also be endorsed by the Vice-Chancellor.
"Requests for new ongoing roles would not be considered while in the process of implementing organisational change."
Vice Chancellor Professor Alex Zelinsky said in May that changes to the colleges, schools and divisions would potentially affect 400 people and include 120 job cuts, as part of the restructure to find $35 million in annual recurrent savings to ensure long term financial sustainability.
The senior academic said staff were now questioning the reasons given for the restructure.
"The idea that they've started engaging in this [hiring] when the institution is absolutely still upset about what they've just done is really very bad and it's distasteful," they said.
"It's also inconsistent with the narrative about restructuring, which was initially a financial one.
"People grow professionally and tend to move up the ladder, but [the restructure] was a way to move everything down and make it cheaper and run the bulk of the activities with junior people.
"This idea of going and hiring a few superstars is absolutely inconsistent with the idea of going junior and the idea of a financial mandate to this process."
They said the restructure and recruitment had also sent mixed messages to junior staff.
"This logic of the superstar is against the idea of actually growing your own people," they said.
"What do we tell the young people? 'Keep your head down, don't go for promotion because the more you go up the more you're at risk of being identified because you're too expensive.
"Just do your job, shut up and let the big stars bring the prestige'."
They said previous Vice Chancellor Professor Caroline McMillen had headhunted staff from overseas and the process was "hit and miss, because you're really going for the top people in the world and it's not easy or cheap to attract them".
Mr Jones said UON was working on a "case-by-case basis to agree end dates" with staff.
"Our aim is to minimise disruption for our students, while also being sensitive to the personal circumstances of our staff," he said.
The senior academic said negotiations were still centered on staff finishing as soon as possible, even though some had asked to stay until the end of semester and were in a "state of limbo".
"There is a strong expectation one will continue on long term commitments like Research Higher Degrees supervision and research grants for free in a conjoint status, fuelled by the love for our job and the commitment to our students and colleagues," they said.
Mr Jones said conjoint appointments would be made and "negotiated on a case-by-case basis and are subject to an approval process that includes the relevant Head of School and College Pro Vice Chancellor".
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