An Australian university has tripled its tally of proposed job cuts just two days after asking staff to preserve jobs by forgoing a pay rise.

New restructures flagged at the Australian National University (ANU) would eliminate 108 positions, 87 of them currently filled, while creating 21 new posts.

The announcements came a day after hundreds of National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) members rallied to protest against another 50 job losses announced?almost a fortnight earlier.

A day before that, vice-chancellor Genevieve Bell had asked staff to?waive December¡¯s 2.5 per cent salary increase, saying it could reduce the need for salary savings by 15 per cent. ?

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Professor Bell said the newly announced restructures would be ¡°the final change proposals for 2024. They provide a strong strategic framework for how we intend to move forward with the renewal process,¡± she told staff in an email.

The university¡¯s NTEU branch president, Millan Pintos-Lopez, said colleagues were ¡°furious that a vice-chancellor is promising to save jobs while cutting them¡±.

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¡°Staff were asked to give up pay to save jobs in 2020. It didn¡¯t save jobs then and it won¡¯t save jobs this time around.¡±

ANU convinced staff to postpone salary increases scheduled for 2020 and 2021, just months before announcing?215 redundancies?during the darkest days of the Covid-19 pandemic. At the time, the university said up to 90 more jobs would have gone ¡°but for the deferral of the pay rises¡±.

The union estimates that the university¡¯s latest salary savings target of A$100 million (?51 million) equates to 638 jobs. ANU has indicated that ¡°further changes¡± will be required in 2025.

Observers fear the rolling job cut announcements at ANU could be a?taste of things to come?elsewhere, as a sector already struggling with inflation, rising compliance costs and the after-effects of Covid incurs losses of hundreds of millions of dollars due to the federal government¡¯s international education crackdown.

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The proposed restructures at ANU affect the university¡¯s facilities and services division and its research and academic support sections.

Staff have been given two weeks to provide feedback on the proposals.

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com