A key union claims the vice-chancellor of Victoria University has been given a massive pay rise while the uni is slashing jobs.
The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) told Star Weekly it had calculated that vice-chancellor Peter Dawkins’ salary rose 35 per cent to about $735,000 in 2013.
“Although [his salary] is at the lower end of the range . . . it’s pretty massive when you consider the very dire straits that are being reported by the same administration,” NTEU president Jeannie Rea said.
“Staff are continually being told the university can’t afford to employ them full time.”
The union calculated the figure from the university’s 2013 annual report.
“We’re still waiting for them to dispute what we’ve come up with,” Ms Rea said.
“The average person can’t understand the annual report . . . if they want to behave like a big corporation, they have to make the CEO’s wage clear.”
A VU spokesman said the university would not discuss an individual’s pay.
But the NTEU slammed the lack of transparency, saying it was sending the wrong message to the community.
“You’d think that to promote goodwill while dealing with difficult financial circumstances, they’d show their interests are in the university as a whole, not giving one person more money while the belt is tightened for everyone else and people lose their jobs,” Ms Rae said.
In April this year, Victoria University announced it would cut about 300 jobs in a bid to save up to $50 million by 2016.
Professor Dawkins said about 200 of the cuts would affect professional staff, the rest affecting academic staff.
He said the university was aiming for a “sustainable future” through a range of measures, including minimising red tape and reducing staff numbers. He said the university needed to find $40 million to $50 million of “recurrent savings” by 2016.
“Without decisive action to streamline our operations and cut costs, our cost pressures will race ahead of revenue growth,” he said.
– with The Age
