Is UQ using Howard's IR laws?

Yesterday I had my final prac for food chemistry. While my group was being assisted with a filtration by the lab technician, Ian, he announced to us out of the blue that this would be the last time we'd be seeing him. Ian has worked in this capacity for over 30 years, and is not only incredibly good at his job but also has a great relationship with the students. He's always been there to help out anyone who needs it, whether it's with a dodgy piece of lab equipment, the best way to get bubbles out of a microburette or a particularly confusing calculation.

But he's not going out in the way you might expect for a university employee of 30 years who is so highly-regarded by the students and, I would imagine, by his colleagues. He still keeps in touch with students from decades ago, and they even have reunions from time to time.

It turns out that UQ has emailed a whole bunch of employees (23 out of around 60, I think) in the School of Land and Food Sciences, Ian among them, that they must submit resumes and reapply for their jobs. Ian told us that the position he would be compelled to apply for under this directive would involve around four times as much work, including new prac subjects that have never been under his jurisdiction, and his salary would be cut by 20%.

Rather than going through this, Ian and almost every other lab technician that the food tech and food science & nutrition students have worked with over the years have decided not to reapply. This action by the university doesn't only affect the technicians; it affects the students. Next year our pracs will probably be staffed by people who don't have the same experience and don't know their way around our labs.

The university has also decided that the lecturer who serves as course adviser to the food science and nutrition students is 'surplus to requirements' and has to go. I'm not sure if these retrenchments have anything to do with the new IR laws, but it sure sounds like it. Honestly, I thought the universities would be among the last employers to take advantage of them. I had the impression, however misguided, that such institutions still had principles that weren't first and foremost guided by ruthless profit-seeking. Was I wrong?

It took me a while to figure out exactly what I wanted to do at uni and with life in general, and my experience in the School of Land and Food Sciences has been a good one up until now. They have some of the best lecturers in the university, and an environment where I feel more like a student and less like a number, in sharp contrast to the other schools I have studied under. Of course, like most Australian universities, UQ is progressively being run more like a business and less like a respectable education institution. It's not all their fault; it's the environment they are forced to operate under by the government of the day, and it so happens that the School of Land and Food Sciences is one of the least profitable schools.

Such cutbacks could well result in courses being less well-run, and disillusioned students deciding to go elsewhere to fulfil their ambitions. Lower student numbers will prompt more cutbacks and so the cycle continues.

I'd also be willing to bet that just as the Qant-ass and Telstra executives who are so keen to 'sacrifice' employees' jobs and salaries are never forced to endure the same cutbacks to their own source of livelihood, the people who are in charge of 'streamlining' the School of Land and Food Sciences to keep more money in the University's coffers have not been forced to reapply for jobs with an increased workload at 80% of their current salaries. I suppose there'd be nothing left of the institution if that were the case.

I don't want to graduate next year with a sense that I'm escaping the place as it crumbles around me. There are aspects of the School and the course that can be improved, but none of them involve retrenching valuable staff with decades of experience.

To say I'm disappointed would be a vast understatement.