Dear Doctor Spence and Professor Jagose,

As casualised staff members from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, we ask that you immediately reverse your decision to cut up to thirty percent of units of study in FASS.

These cuts will not only undermine the scope and integrity of students’ degrees. They will also have a devastating impact on some of the most vulnerable members of our University community—those hundreds of casualised staff who do the bulk of teaching in FASS, often in difficult conditions and without full financial compensation.

We know that the decision to cut units of study was taken in order to reduce the Faculty’s spending on casualised staff. Yet, this decision means that many of these staff members will soon be unemployed during what is projected to be Australia’s worst economic recession in decades. To make matters worse, these workers will have no access to the Jobkeeper payment.

There is no University of Sydney without its thousands of casualised staff. In FASS, we are responsible for coordinating units of study, delivering lectures and tutorials, marking students’ work, and guiding students individually in their university education. For the vast majority of students, their university experience is absolutely indissociable from their relation to casualised staff and to the roles they play as tutors, lecturers, and mentors. We bring many years of experience—in some cases decades—to our teaching and research. Just this semester we have done crucial work helping the University transition to online delivery, putting in even more unpaid hours than usual and investing financially in the infrastructure needed to run online classes. To find ourselves on the precipice of unemployment after performing this important but mostly unpaid work is profoundly disappointing.

We want to continue making our essential contribution to the University community. We want to keep teaching our students and supporting them through their studies. We want to deepen our research experience and produce knowledge for the public good. And we want to do all of this in secure jobs without the ever-present threat of unemployment.

Doctor Spence, Professor Jagose, the University has a choice about how to respond to the present crisis: it can either use casualised staff members as financial shock absorbers, or it can invest in those who have worked so hard and with such passion to make the University of Sydney as successful as it is.

As FASS casualised staff, we call on you to reverse your decision to cut units of study and instead to give us the secure jobs we deserve.

Robert Boncardo, SLC, SLAM
Marlena Lutz-Hughes, SLAM
Toby Fitch, SLAM
Corinne Mesana, SLC
Nicole Lee, SLC
Shima Shahbazi, SLC, SLAM, SOPHI
Maryam Alavi Nia, SLAM
Nicole Fidalgo, SLC
Anna Sturman, SSPS
Natasha Heenan, SSPS
Cameron Lawrence, SSPS
Meera Atkinson, SLAM
Julia Cooper Clark, SLAM
Natalie Kestecher, SLAM
Angharad Hampshire, SLAM
Victoria Souliman, SLC, SLAM
Aisha Malik, SOPHI
Nanda Jarosz, SLAM
Briony Neilson, SOPHI
Alyce Cannon, SLAM
Sun Young An, SLC
Liliana Zavaglia, SLAM
Phillip Poulton, SSESW
Nabila Chemaissem, SLAM
Lauren A Weber, SLAM
Laura Sumrall, SOPHI
Andrew Shields, SOPHI
Judith Rozeboom, SOPHI
Abigail Taylor, SSPS
Anna Ahn, SLC
Bruno Rodriguez Armesto, SLAM
Carla Bray, SLAM
Venetia Robertson, SLAM
Nicky Hannan, SLAM
Ella Collins-While, SLAM
Gabriela Bourke, SLAM
Nina Dillon Britton, SSPS
Dr. Mark Tredinnick, SLAM
Martin Kear, SSPS
Jennifer E. Nicholson, SLAM
Yvonne Low, SOPHI
Ekaterina Heath, SLAM
Isabelle O'Keefe, SLAM
Robert Sternhell, SOPHI
Sophie Frazer, SLAM
Alyce Cannon, SOPHI
Edward Durie, SSPS, SLAM
Kit Catterson, SSPS
Billy Kennedy, SOPHI
Aurelie Mallet, SLAM
Drew Rooke, SLAM
Amelia Kelly, SLAM
Mick Warren, SOPHI, SLAM
Weiyi Hu, SSPS
Katrina Kemp, SSESW
Eda Gunaydin, SSPS
Emilie Kolb, SLC
Nada Labib, SSESW
Edward Chan, SSPS
Tristan Bradshaw, SSPS
NIcholas Dobrijevich, SLC
Anthony ALexander, SOPHI
Ebony Nilsson, SOPHI
Imogen King, SLAM
Anna Maguire, SLAM
Georgia Carr, SLAM
Kyle Moore, SLAM
Juliet Bennett, SSPS
Leanne Stevenson, SSPS
Pamela Maddock, SOPHI, SSESW
Markela Panegyres, SLAM
Caitlin STill, SLAM
Paul Esber, SLC
Dr. Alix Thoeming, SOPHI
Lynn Cook, SLAM
Diana Shahinyan, SLAM
Blythe Worthy, SLAM
Lee Cheng Koay, SLAM
Alexandra Pinkham, SOPHI
Christopher Malone, SOPHI
Natalie Maystorovich, SSPS
Greta Werner, SSPS
Mathew Toll, SSPS
Dr. Tanya Peterson, SLAM
Thomas Melick, SLAM
Andrea Duvall, SLAM
Mykaela Saunders, SLAM
Georgia Carroll, SSPS
Dr. Aleksandr Wansbrough, SLAM
Roberta Ivers, SLAM
Dr Jodie McNeilly-Renaudie, SLAM
Samantha Xu, SLC
John Coombs, SLAM
Emma Louise Barlow, SLC
Elena Carletti, SLC
Katarina Rahikainen, SLAM
Andrew Ward, SLAM
Antonella Beconi, SLC
Natalie Maystorovich, SSPS
Panita Silapavithayadilok, SLC
Lindsay McCabe, SSPS
Tom Paech, SLAM
Shiva Chandra, SSPS
Ken Fraser, SSPS
Rachel Yoo, SSESW
Janek Drevikovsky, SOPHI
Carl Bodnaruk, SLAM
Holly Raiche, SLAM