University of Wollongong staff and students protest against further job cuts to potentially more than 10% of UOW staff. Video by Anna Warr
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Not only do they want to cut jobs, but they also want to split those staff together who work together, work very hard together to make sure that students and staff are supported in our public institution.
00:11And one of the plans that's on the table at the moment is to break up those staff, some centre, some central office, some not here anymore, some isolated by themselves.
00:21That is causing a huge amount of stress for people.
00:24So I do want to give you a massive round of applause for AJ from the library, who's going to say a few words.
00:35So thanks for coming out today.
00:37I'm AJ Corradini and I'm a librarian here at University of Wollongong Library, where we support teaching, learning and research at UOW through excellent study spaces, a robust collection of physical and digital resources and access to expert information literacy support.
00:53We have 58 staff, which might sound like a lot, but actually University of Wollongong Library is already in the bottom 10 to 25% of all university libraries in terms of both staffing and budget.
01:08Despite this, we serve this community with a very robust, sustainable, scalable service model that this proposal seeks to dismantle.
01:20I lead the client services team, which is made up of seven permanent client services, trained, qualified librarians, one shelver and 16 excellent casual staff.
01:32If you've ever come to the library on a night or a weekend, you would have engaged with our excellent casual staff.
01:39Now, despite the EA stating that all impacted staff should be consulted about any workplace change, our casual staff, who are our least secure, lowest paid and most diverse staff, have not been consulted.
01:55The proposal seeks to remove my whole team, so all of those people, and station them outside the library.
02:04This is the team that answers 92% of all inquiries that come through library service points.
02:11Who is university?!