21 general staff may go in 'unprecedented' upheaval

Twenty-one general staff jobs at Canterbury University are in doubt, with more positions under threat in the new year.

The Tertiary Education Union (TEU) says the restructuring of non-academic roles at the university is "unprecedented".

The restructuring, called Project Star (supporting teaching and research), began in June and aims to improve declining academic staff-student ratios.

Twenty years ago there was one academic for every 13 students, but that has dropped to one for every 19 students.

The university says cutting the number of general staff will allow more academics to be employed. There are now about 1200 general staff and 620 academics.

The human resources (HR) department, which is carrying out the restructuring, last week handed out restructuring notices that propose slashing 58 positions and replacing them with 37 new posts. More notices will be handed out in the new year.

HR director Paul O'Flaherty said it was not known yet what the total number of general staff redundancies would be.

Threatened jobs include those in the conference office, continuing and bridging education, the University Centre for Teaching and Learning, the postgraduate office, financial services, the planning, information and reporting unit, audio-visual services, HR and student administration.

Tertiary Education Union (TEU) Canterbury University branch president Megan Clayton said the union was unhappy with the university's approach to redeploying affected staff.

"At present there's no intention to redeploy any of those disestablished, so people have got to apply on the open market. We are having an ongoing conversation with the university on that as we don't agree," she said.

O'Flaherty said the university was obliged by the State Sector Act to go to the market to find the best candidate, unless there were compelling reasons why that was impractical.

Clayton said it was a difficult time for staff and union members.

"This is the largest-scale restructuring of this kind general staff have ever experienced.

"Where we can, we will be mounting arguments about the retention of roles in the structure."

She was unconvinced by the university's comments that reducing the number of general staff could make more money available for extra academic staff.

"It's an attractive argument for academics, but I think we are sceptical in the union about an argument like that."

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