BETTER
MQ!
Can you take action for staff and students by writing to the VC and University Council?
MQ should be a world class education.
Macquarie University management has proposed a radical restructure. If implemented, it will result in:
- Over 200 academic staff facing the prospect of ‘spill and fill’: reapplying for their jobs knowing that some of them will be sacked
- the loss of 70,000 hours of teaching, and
- the effective destruction of dozens of degrees and majors
This is brutal, cruel, and unnecessary.
So far, consultation on the change has been rushed and disingenuous. Evidence has been withheld. Union members and critics have been targeted. Some staff describe these cuts as “the human equivalent of burning books.”
Staff are real people whose lives are being turned upside down for the sake of thin arguments about budgets and prioritisation.
That’s why union members are mobilising and fighting to fix this crisis manufactured by overpaid, out of touch corporate executives who have taken over Australia’s university system.
EMAIL THE VC & UNI COUNCIL
Honour YOUR Agreement.
No forced Redundancies.
Over 200 academic staff are facing the prospect of ‘spill and fill’: reapplying for their jobs knowing that, in hunger games style, some of them will be sacked.
This is brutal, cruel, unnecessary, and fails to comply with the Enterprise Agreement the University signed in 2023 (where the EA commits to retrenchment as being “a last resort”).
We know that the Uni Executive had viable plans to make its $55 million budget saving without forced redundancies. Clearly, these redundancies are not a last resort.
There are only weeks, potentially days before these forced redundancies will begin, but leadership at MQ can stop this from happening.
We’re calling on the Vice Chancellor, Chancellor, and University Council to immediately and publicly declare Macquarie commits to “no forced redundancies”.
TIPS FOR WRITING YOUR EMAIL!
We have a simple email draft automatically prepared for you when you fill in the form on the right hand side of this page.
But you can make your email your own! You might consider making the following points:
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- Your role and who you are—make it personal.
- How you feel (e.g., concerned, distressed, angry).
- Emphasize the urgency of the situation (weeks or days).
- Urge them to treat staff with the respect they deserve.
- The human stakes: the well-being of staff, their families, and the University community.
Remember, your email address won’t be shared with recipients, so rest assured that your privacy is safe. While name fields are required, you can use initials or ‘Anonymous’ if you prefer not to share your name.
SEND YOUR EMAIL
Your email address won’t be shared with recipients, but the name you enter will be.
If you prefer to remain anonymous, make sure you enter ‘Anonymous’ into the ‘First’ and ‘Last’ name fields.
The NTEU have formally lodged two disputes with Macquarie, claiming that management have violated the enterprise agreement in at least two key ways:
- Management is breaking the rules: The University has not followed the agreed-upon procedures for workplace change. This failure to consult is so significant that SafeWork NSW has issued a formal Improvement Notice against the University.
- Redundancy must be last resort: Information obtained by an NTEU Freedom of Information request shows that the University’s own financial documents had scenarios where they could achieve budget savings without redundancy. Management is choosing redundancies. It is not a budget necessity. Retrenchment is not being treated as the “last resort”.
