AUT VC Damon Salesa responds over 170 academic staff cuts

Yesterday RNZ’s Nine to Noon programme looked at the impact of redundancies at Auckland University of Technology (AUT) among academic staff — particularly on post-graduate students who are losing their supervisors.

The university has announced that 170 academic positions are being cut, but there are concerns about whether the criteria by which staff were selected to lose their jobs was fair.

Legal proceedings have been launched by the Tertiary Education Union (TEU), which says the university has truncated the processes for dismissal set out in the collective agreement.

• LISTEN TO RNZ NINE TO NOON: Professor Damon Salesa’s reply
• ‘Huge distress’: Postgrad students feel impact of AUT academic staff cuts
• The reinstate AUT staff petition
• The TEU legal action against AUT
• More job cuts at AUT
• Māori and Pacific academics at AUT concerned about impact of job cuts
• AUT’s Pacific Media Centre gutted in blow to journalism on the Pacific Islands

It argues staff were selected because they failed to meet teaching and research requirements they did not know they were subject to.

Presenter Kathryn Ryan speaks to Professor Damon Salesa, who is vice-chancellor of AUT.

• Pacific Media Watch reports that Professor Salesa, who is the first Pasifika vice-chancellor at a university in Aotearoa New Zealand, has also faced criticism from Māori and Pacific staff worried about their futures. Yesterday on RNZ TEU organiser Jill Jones outlined how Dr Salesa had declined to face academic staff over the cuts and refused to negotiate with the union.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.