ANU staff and students brace for further budget cuts

ANU Students' Association president Lachlan Day said he was worried what impact the loss of 465 jobs would have on students and staff at the institution.

"Particularly I'm worried about if these are professional staff that lose their jobs, the impact that that will have towards student-facing services. Things like degree planning to more wellbeing-based services and things like that," he said.

"If these job losses mean less staff working in those areas, an already overburdened system is just going to get more much much busier."

Casual staff have already borne the brunt of budget cuts.

The National Tertiary Education Union estimates 50 per cent of casuals in the College of Arts and Social Sciences were denied work this semester.

A casual academic who has lost work at the ANU and did not wish to be named said casuals felt devalued and have been forced to look at building a career outside of the university sector.

"It's been frustrating feeling very sidelined and not acknowledged that it was a job loss, because they don't have that obligation to hire me," they said.

READ MORE:

A university spokesman said it was difficult to put an exact figure on how many casuals may have had reduced hours during the COVID-19 crisis.

"Undoubtedly, our current financial situation will see a reduction in the number of casual staff we are able to employ for a period of time," he said.

"What we do know is that casual staff account for 7 per cent of the university's salary budget, a slight decrease from the same time last year.

"However, not all of this reduction can be explained by the pandemic as we have been working to provide more ongoing work opportunities for our casual staff."

In June when the university was holding a ballot on a pay-rise deferral, ANU counted about 2000 casual staff who had received pay within two pay cycles.

The latest ANU data shows the university employs 1500 casuals, which represents 24 per cent of the total workforce.

Of the casual workforce, 21 per cent are on a scholarship which means their employment conditions are unable to be converted to a non-casual arrangement.