When it comes to counting heads the HE establishment thinks FTE – not your actual individuals

So, to find out how many people, actual people, will lose employment in Uni Melbourne COVID-cuts to casual/fixed term staff the campus branch of the National Tertiary Education Union is FOIing management. It is asking for stats on academic and professional staff and de-identified diversity and inclusion data.

The union is also requesting financial information – this goes to the argument that Uni Melbourne’s reverses are such that it need not go so hard on staff cuts.

It’s a new stage in the “open the books” campaign. “If the vice chancellor wants staff, alumni, donors and funding partners to trust him and his management on the response to the financial pressures facing the University of Melbourne, he must commit to financial transparency,” union branch president Steve Adams said last month (CMM July 24). Vice Chancellor Duncan Maskell provided information on the university’s expected deficits this year and next in a message to staff but evidently this is not enough for the union, (CMM August 6).

The university is subject to Victoria’s FOI Act. While Uni Melbourne may find protection therein not to reveal the requested information this would only encourage the union to argue the books are not as red as management warns.