GOTAFE staff members have been left fearing for their livelihoods and frustrated by the handling of the recently proposed 61 job cuts, which they say will have wide-ranging knock-on effects not only to staff, but students and the wider community.
The cuts, which will see close to 30 per cent of administration jobs lost and 14,000 course delivery hours scrapped, have been panned by National Tertiary Education Union Victorian secretary Sarah Roberts, who said the fourth restructure at the institute in five years was not the way to move forward.
“After so many restructures at GOTAFE in recent years, more job cuts can’t be the answer — I don’t think management even knows the question,” she said.
“GOTAFE is a vital educational resource for local people across the region, and it can’t be allowed to be run into the ground like this.
“We call on management to urgently reassess and reconsider a more equitable and transparent process, one that prioritises the wellbeing of rural communities, the livelihood of staff and the future of GOTAFE as a vital educational institution in our regions."
One GOTAFE staff member, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of repercussions, said the proposed cuts had left many feeling anxious and uncertain about the future.
“There’s 220 staff across seven campuses, so spread pretty thin in some places, and they’re talking about reducing it by 60, but the workload is not going to change,” they said.
“People are already swamped now, there’s departments that have put in business cases for more staff that have been knocked back for the past six months, and now they’re talking about reducing it, it’s just crazy.
“People are frustrated, people are scared, people are obviously worried about losing their jobs.
“The market we are in trying to find (new jobs), you’ve just had Dhurringile (prison) lose 150 people, you’ve got SPC that have laid off 12 or about that about a month ago, it’s scary.”
The same staff member said a lack of transparency was particularly frustrating, considering other organisations were going through similar job cuts; however, their staff were provided with a much better understanding of how and why the job losses were occurring.
A lack of information is also making it hard to plan both professionally and personally, as staff continue to be left in the dark as to which campuses will bear the brunt of the losses.
“(Another business in the region) is going through something similar, (but) their management have been very upfront with them about the reasons why,” they said.
“They’ve taken them into presentations, they’ve shown them the P&L statements, where things are going and what’s projected, why the cuts need to be made.
“Our staff, we got a seven-minute speech from the CEO, she just read off a script and quite frankly I’m surprised she didn’t read the page numbers as well. It was a complete shock.
“They’re talking about that they’re doing it to set the institute up for the future and for the benefit of the students and what not, but nobody said anything about the fact that the institute is really badly in debt and could stop operating.”
GOTAFE was recently identified in a report from the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office as one of two institutes to have “a number of negative indicators, including a liquidity ratio of less than one, consistent negative trends when comparing budget to actual results over the last three years, and budget forecasts that show significant cash deficits for each year out to 2027”.
The reluctance by management to acknowledge the financial motives for the decision remains a disappointment for those affected, who simply want to be told what is happening in an open and honest manner.
“I’d like to see people dealt with like adults and actually told the truth about the situation, rather than trying to hide behind this namby pamby ‘we’re doing it for the students’ rubbish,” the staff member said.
“Ultimately, if this is going to affect anybody, it’s going to be the students. They are reducing teaching staff by 20 full-time equivalent, which equates to about 14,000 hours of teaching delivery, and that’s across a number of courses that may not be profitable anymore, so I can understand why they are doing it.
“But again, those students, if they want to study those courses, and I’m not sure which ones they are yet, they’re going to have to go further afield.
“They won’t be doing it in Shepp and or in Wangaratta or wherever those courses are delivered, so this is going to affect our community, it is going to mean people out of work, and there will be places that struggle.”
It is a sentiment shared by Ms Roberts, who said the threat was not just to education, but everyone in the region.
“GOTAFE serves everyone, supporting students’ aspirations, staff livelihoods and local businesses, and these job cuts are not just a threat to regional education but a threat to this whole community,” she said.
The News contacted GOTAFE for comment but it declined the opportunity to add to comments made by the Victorian Government about the matter on August 8.