Australian universities are overhauling their casual staffing amid legislation that entitles workers to apply for permanent jobs after six months of insecure employment.

University administrators say the new arrangements will ensure compliance with the law while reducing their reliance on precariously employed academics. Union representatives claim executives are cutting costs by foisting more teaching work on to permanent staff under cover of legislative change.

Macquarie, Monash and Newcastle universities are among the institutions reviewing their casual staffing. Macquarie’s Faculty of Arts will only allow casual appointments “by exception” for people with specialist industry expertise or externally funded jobs.

“Macquarie University is implementing measures to more closely regulate the engagement of casual academic staff from 2025 and create opportunities for more secure…employment,” a spokeswoman said.

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Monash has replaced its “periodic academic employment” category with “continuing (defined period) academic employment” (CDPAE) – a new work mode offering “continuing part-time employment” where staff are needed for “discrete teaching periods” and perform at least 60 per cent of a full-time workload “during defined work periods”, according to Monash’s enterprise agreement.

Ben Eltham, Monash branch president of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), said the university had massive capital works commitments and planned to save money by scrapping casual contracts. “They’re going to try and make all the ongoing academics teach more,” he said. “They’ll try and fill the gaps with…‘ad hoc’ casuals who might only do marking.”

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A Monash spokesman said the university had recently renewed hundreds of casual contracts. Casual engagement would continue where it was “compliant with employment legislation and the most appropriate mode”, he said. CDPAE “will not be used to reduce the proportion of other forms of continuing teaching and research employment”.

But Dr Eltham said CDPAE arrangements were limited to 40 weeks a year with no obligations to allocate work. “What they look like, in my view, is a zero-hours contract from the UK. It would presumably be within the university’s remit to say, ‘We don’t have any teaching for you this semester.’ It’s not a good faith solution to…the [job] security issue.”

The row has emerged as universities brace for applications under the “employee choice” provision of the Fair Work Act. From late February, casual staff can request permanent employment after six months of reasonably regular work of a type that their employers are likely to continue to need.

Macquarie’s NTEU branch president, Nick Harrigan, said the new employment law had little to do with the arts faculty’s changes. He said management was trying to shift more work on to permanently employed academics by increasing their teaching allocation to 50 per cent of their hours.

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Macquarie was also cutting costs by discontinuing subjects with low enrolments and limiting majors to eight units. “They’re literally trying to reduce their staffing costs in arts to make…a bigger surplus.”

Macquarie’s spokeswoman said the changes would support “high-quality teaching” and “a more impactful learning experience. There are currently no changes to units, courses or majors as a result of these measures.”

Southern Cross University, which is discontinuing its stand-alone arts courses, said the new employment law had not driven the decision but had contributed to funding problems. “The legislation…has caused us to have to do an enormous amount of work on systems and processes,” said vice-chancellor Tyrone Carlin. “That’s dollars that we never get back.”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com