Job security is emerging as the key battleground as Australian universities strive to offset the billions of dollars the Covid-19 crisis is costing them. Universities are scrapping construction and refurbishment plans, and deferring discretionary spending. Institutions are also courting banks, those with contingency funds are raiding them and every institution is eyeing its cash reserves.

Those reserves totalled A$4.6 billion (Rs.23,035 crore) across the sector at the end of 2018. Representative body Universities Australia estimates that its members could lose that sum this year alone – a likely underestimate. Some 18 of Australia’s 40 universities having outlined their projected losses, with the tally already reaching A$3.9 billion and bigger losses anticipated next year. More savings will be needed.

Salaries, universities’ biggest cost, are an obvious target. Executives at many universities have taken temporary pay cuts, typically 20 percent, and some have invited staff to do likewise. Staff has also been asked to consider cutting their hours, relinquishing claims for time off in lieu, retiring early and even making salary contributions to their employers.

UNSW Sydney vice chancellor Ian Jacobs says while more than 1,000 staff have agreed to cut their hours or retire early, these concessions will yield just A$13 million of the A$600 million UNSW expects to lose this year alone. Stand-downs and “a reduction in staff numbers” are inevitable, he warned staff.

To stem the bleeding, the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) is trying to negotiate a “national jobs protection framework” to win safeguards unavailable under current university enterprise agreements and industrial relations legislation. Top of the union’s wish list is averting stand-downs without pay. It also wants external appointments stopped, fixed-term contracts renewed, redundancies applied only where work is ceasing permanently and casuals given priority in redeployment, along with other safeguards. In return, the NTEU would limit restrictions on universities’ ability to save money through deferring pay rises and promotions, cutting work hours and changing staff duties. “We are doing everything we can to save every job we can,” the union explained in its Sentry magazine, warning that as many as 30,000 positions are at stake. “Our sector is facing an unprecedented crisis,” it says.