Stage two recovery plan announced today

This is the one that will impact where people work, detailing savings in colleges and admin portfolios – the one which is expected to start the process to remove a planned 215 positions. That’s on top of the 250 FTE already gone, or scheduled to go (CMM September 17).

But while what proposals are not out, staff have a fair idea what they will and won’t be.

 The campus branch of the National Tertiary Education Union proposed protecting jobs by;

* abolishing annual leave loading, which would save 33 FTE positions, if applied for all three years of the recovery plan. Adopting this would require staff approval of an enterprise agreement variation.

* staff taking annual leave for the three days at Christmas the university now gifts.

Management is happy to discuss both.

Ideas that aren’t happening include;

* freezing pay-rises. This won’t work because the pay-rise staff agreed to defer in July was the last of the existing agreement.

*  pay cuts, “not likely to be supported by a vote of staff,” management suggests.

* mandatory leave, “not feasible in a way that would support individual staff choices and local operational requirements”

* “reconsider” academic promotion rounds: “negligible savings” if done this year and “we wouldn’t be paying our staff at the level which they are working,” ANU management states

Operating change are also expected;

* “removing red tape, reducing duplication and complexity” in service delivery and research services

* and then there is the one that will cost jobs. “consideration of … changes in academic organisational units, programs, resource allocations and/or a reduction and rebalancing of both academic and professional staff workforce which may be required.”