Staff and Students Protest Job and Course Cuts
Roisin Murphy reports.
Close to 100 staff and students held a (socially distanced) rally organised by the Education Action Group (EAG) yesterday afternoon, protesting the proposed cuts to staff jobs and courses. The cuts, to be announced on June 1, are said to be worth up to $93 million dollars, cutting 30% of courses in some faculties and causing significant job losses. The cuts occur while Vice Chancellor Michael Spence’s $1.5m salary remains unwavering.
On top of this, the government has gone out of its way to ensure the University of Sydney’s ineligibility for the JobKeeper scheme, leaving many casual staff without pay. This is particularly an issue for Indigenous staff who, as highlighted by Yaegan Doran who represents USyd’s Casual’s Network, are “vastly over-represented when it comes to casual and fixed-term employment, meaning they are often first for the chopping block”.
The crowd marched through to the quad to cries of “cuts, job losses, money for the bosses”.
Nina Dillon Britton, one of the students who spoke, is a research assistant in the Government and International Relations Department. She told the crowd that Michael Spence’s salary alone could fund her salary “60 times over”, putting into question his claims that a salary cut would not impact the crisis.
The final speaker was Liam Donohoe, who addressed the crowd outside the F23 Administration building (described by SRC Education Officer Jack Mansell as “Spence’s Panopticon”). Donohoe asked the crowd: “what is an education?”. “An education is not studying a pre-set program designed by bureaucrats”, he answered, an education is “sitting at the benches of Hermann’s getting overly defensive of topics you learnt an hour ago, and probably won’t believe in a month”.
Following Donohoe’s speech, the group briefly blocked off City Road outside the F23 administration building, angering commuters with their chants of “no cuts, no fees, no corporate universities”. Shortly after, they were moved on by police.