Management has extended consultation by a week

There was uproar at Deakin U when VC Iain Martin announced another job-shedding restructure a fortnight back. Last year’s cut 300 positions and now the university proposes a further 180-220 to go (CMM September 1).

There are staff who are especially upset that management allocated 14 days for consultation and so on Friday Professor Martin announced a university wide extension from this Friday to next.  The VC was keen to assure the DU community that “consultation continues to be at a university-wide level … nothing has been finalised and there are opportunities to contribute to the final decision.”

This might be a move to avoid a repeat of last year, when the campus branch of the National Tertiary Education Union went to the Fair Work Commission, disputing management’s preference for consulting by operating unit, rather than at a whole of university level. The FWC ordered all of university talks and management agreed, although it complained this would slow the process (CMM July 6 2020).  But in the end the university still did it pretty much what it had proposed in the first place, just later (CMM September 7 2020).  Avoiding another such delay might be what it has in mind now.