Saturday 9 November 2013

CSIRO may lose 1,400 jobs in freeze, says staff association

Extract from The Guardian website:

Staff fear innovations such as Wi-Fi technology and plastic banknotes will be curtailed by recruitment freeze.


A government-imposed recruitment freeze on the CSIRO will imperil up to 1,400 jobs and “threaten the next generation of Australian innovation”, the science agency’s staff have warned.
The hiring shutdown, which has been applied across the public service as part of the government’s plan to cut 12,000 positions, is likely to have a particularly large impact on the CSIRO, given its large number of temporary and casual staff.
The CSIRO Staff Association said up to 1,400 casual jobs and term appointments for specific projects were at risk. CSIRO disputed this as a “significant exaggeration”, saying there were only 300 non-casual staff whose terms finished in the 2013-14 financial year and a similar number in 2014-15 who would be affected.
The staff association said it feared job losses would be at the upper end of expectations because there was no confirmation of how long the recruitment freeze would last.
The secretary of the staff association, Sam Popovski, told Guardian Australia the jobs freeze was an indication of the Coalition government’s antipathy towards science.
“This has created a sense of uncertainty among staff,” he said. “We feel that the CSIRO is getting hit twice by this particular government. Firstly, through certain members of the government not being very fond of science, the scientific method and the role it plays in our lives; and secondly, the fact we are in the public sector. Neither science nor the public sector seems to be valued by this government.”
Popovski warned that vital research projects would be hampered or even scrapped by the hiring ban, potentially jeopardising long-term innovation.
“CSIRO has projects with a defined lifetime that have to deliver research milestones,” he said. “It’s very unclear whether there will be exemptions to this in order to deliver these projects, as we legally have to deliver on contracts.
“The easiest answer will be to get ongoing staff to handle this work, but they are already working at capacity. The best we can surmise is that this will last for the current financial year, maybe the next.”
The staff association says landmark CSIRO innovations – such as work that led to Wi-Fi technology and plastic banknotes – may be curtailed by the jobs freeze. It said it had written to Ian Macfarlane, the industry minister who also has responsibility for science, but had yet to receive a response.
Dr Megan Clark, chief executive of CSIRO, said in a statement to staff that it was “noteworthy” that some staff on termed employment were not renewed in any normal year.
“There are approximately 300 non-casual contracted staff whose terms finish in the 2013-14 financial year,” she said. “In normal circumstances, a proportion of these terms are not renewed in any given year; however, we recognise that this temporary suspension will result in a higher than usual number of non-renewals.
“Regarding casual staff, CSIRO recruits casual staff primarily for seasonal work or for covering absences of administrative support staff – which provides employment opportunities for people who prefer this mode of employment or who may not be able to commit to full-time employment. In this financial year, we have around 150 casual staff whose contracts are due for renewal.
“I want to remind everyone that, with approval, we can still renew contracts and recruit to positions that are critical for our work. We will not be compromising on our commitments to industry or other key stakeholders through these changes.”
The Coalition government has come under fire for its lack of a science minister, and its stance on climate science, with both Tony Abbott and the environment minister, Greg Hunt, downplaying or ridiculing the link, established by CSIRO and other scientific bodies, between rising temperatures and the probability of extreme weather events.
But Abbott defended the government’s credentials when awarding the prime minister’s prizes for science last month, strongly backing the role of science in Australian life.
“It’s been remarked upon that we don’t have a minister for science as such in the new government and I know that there are people in the room who may have been momentarily dismayed by that,” Abbott said.
“But let me tell you that the United States does not have a secretary for science and no nation on earth has been as successful and innovative as the United States. I’d say to all of you: please, judge us by our performance, not by our titles.”

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