Unitec job losses: press commentary

Unitec job losses

Unitec has announced 300 job losses in the next 3 years. In QPEC's view, the decision is the outcome of two factors. One is consistent government underfunding of tertiary education. The other is Unitec management's blind faith in neoliberal solutions to its problems.

In the face of government shortfalls and other pressures, Unitec has resorted to outsourcing, privatising, and casualising its staff. In December 2013, management sacked 50 very experienced staff in Design, in order to import casual staff from "industry," to teach the very successful programmes that the former staff had spent many years developing.

Now it says that it will outsource its student services to Concentrix, an overseas company. This move will put administrative oversight and control at risk. One major effect is that Unitec is discarding its institutional knowledge and specialisation, built up over decades.

Unitec's decisions undermine tertiary education as a public institution. For many years, NZ taxes have enabled Unitec to construct a very responsive and dynamic institute. In the process, staff have become highly qualified, able to span academic, professional, pedagogical and industrial worlds.

But Dr Rick Ede's announcement makes it clear that he foresees further losses of academic staff in the near future.

The sackings, privatising and outsourcing may bring short-term “savings” but at the expense of quality education. New staff employed for teaching or student services in place of those fired will be paid less, have less job security and poorer conditions of employment. As a result, Unitec will systematically slide away from a focus on quality public education to offering a haven for private profiteers.

The National-led Government will be only too happy to see privatisation within the tertiary sector. And other tertiary institutions will be only too keen to follow Unitec's lead. The result is deterioration of tertiary education.

To avoid further decline of tertiary institutions, QPEC calls on Government to restore healthy funding to the sector. And it calls on Unitec management to abandon its "free-market" mindset, in order to look for more creative solutions to its problems – in particular, to value its own institution and retain staff, who make the polytechnic viable.

ENDS

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