CQUniversity has rejected the National Tertiary Education Union's proposed Jobs Protection Framework in favour of more redundancies sooner and will be rolling out a University-wide restructure shortly. Jobs that otherwise might have been saved in regional Queensland, will be lost.
"It's a slap in the face for university staff who offered to take leave, forego pay rises, take part-time appointments and even take a temporary pay cut to save their colleagues' jobs," says NTEU Queensland Secretary, Michael McNally. "Our members will be devastated by the decision of the Vice-Chancellor, Nick Klomp, to cut deeper and sooner than he had to."
"The Job Protections Framework was never supposed to solve all the problems of the devastating impact of COVID-19. We hoped to save at least 12,000 of the forecast 30,000 job losses across the sector, but universities not signing up will make that impossible," McNally added. "CQUniversity has opted for job cuts over job security."
"I don't expect that this will destroy the working relationship with the local Branch, which has been very good, open and constructive, but it's disappointing to say the least," said NTEU CQU Branch President, Bruce Young.
"We were hoping to provide Job Security and even get some of our casual and fixed-term staff that have lost work back to CQUniversity, and it looks like that will be far more difficult now."
