Defend Medical Science Education

"Staff, students and unionists all appear to agree on one thing: FMH management have, for multiple years now, been engaging in a campaign of obfuscation, bullying and managerialism."

In this week's Honi Soit, a detailed exposé of the Faculty's "toxic" management style and its devastating impact on staff in the School of Medical Sciences.

Crisis after crisis: The ‘toxic’ managerial culture in the Faculty of Medicine and Health - Honi Soit Three and a half years ago, I picked a medical science degree, like many confused seventeen-years-olds before me, because I’d always loved biology in high school but couldn’t quite close the deal on undergraduate medicine. I quickly found a genuine love for medical science. While it is true that...

Medical Science staff ended the year with a final protest today, participating in a National Tertiary Education Union “Christmas without presents” action alongside staff and students from across the uni who have spent the year resisting a barrage of destructive attacks from management.

The Med Science campaign has successfully stopped 20% of the planned job cuts across the school and prevented all forced redundancies; and helped win back the right to protest in NSW in the face of police repression.

Shamefully, management have continued to push through the rest of their planned cuts despite overwhelming opposition from staff, students and the university community. Today showed they will continue to be resisted every step of the way; in Med Science and everywhere else cuts are brought down.

Medical Science staff member Associate Professor Bill Phillips captured the mood, telling the crowd:

“Managerialism is like a cancer. It grows and it spreads unless you do something to counter it. A tumour grows by diverting blood from healthy parts of the body. Managerialism similarly drains the energy and life force of the organisation. Instead of devoting out time to teaching and research we have to spend it fighting the people who should be supporting us...Fortunately nearly all cancers that spring up in the human body are quickly killed off by our immune system. The thing we’ve got to remember is that we are the cells of the immune system. We need to work together like the lymphocytes of the body to defend the healthy workplaces we work in from this malignant managerialism."

To coincide with the action, the Defend Medical Science Education campaign released a survey that exposed the relentless bullying management have resorted to in order to push through their attacks on the discipline. The results are damning.

Of the 134 staff participated:

- 85% had no confidence in the ability of senior management
- 86% felt as though their job had been at risk this last year
- 69% said they directly had experienced fear, intimidation or bullying by things said or done by senior management in the Faculty of Medicine and Health.
- 89% though senior management were not doing a good job of supporting staff
- 92% thought senior management in the faculty did not have a good understanding of the area they work in

In the coming period management will undoubtedly blame staff for the problems that arise from the cuts which will increase workloads, increase student dissatisfaction and erode the quality of education. This survey shows management have been overwhelmingly condemned in the eyes of those qualified in the discipline and have resorted to bullying to crush legitimate dissent.

In addition a petition opposing the cuts to Medical Science was presented to management, signed by 638 staff, students and supporters and a motion of no confidence in the management process was publicly released for the first time. (see below in comments)

Shame on The University of Sydney. You will be fought every step of the way. No cuts, no fees, no corporate universities!

USyd Casuals Network USyd NTEU Community Sydney University Education Action Group Staff & Students Say NO CUTS Honi Soit

The Final Change Plan (FCP) for the Medical Sciences restructure has just been released early, as management attempts to ram these changes through before staff opposition can splinter them.

While one more position in Physiology has been saved, shamefully, management has seen fit to balance this out by chopping one more position from Pathology. This means a proposed decrease in full time equivalent positions from 29 to 18.8 in Physiology and 11.8 to 3.6 in Pathology – cuts of 35% and 69% of staff, respectively.

Disgustingly but perhaps unsurprisingly, management has only become more and more openly hostile and dismissive of students and staff as this process reaches its final stages.

At a meeting on Monday, management told staff to their faces that they were not interested in hearing anything they had to say about the loss of their jobs. And almost four hundred pages of staff and student feedback, in which lie after lie is exposed and refuted, and explanations and amendments are demanded, have either been dismissed with patronising and evasive comments or, disgracefully, ignored and given no response at all. In at least one instance, student feedback submitted well before the deadline has not even been included in the change document.

This is a direct breach of management’s own assurances that responses to all feedback ‘will be listed in the Final Change Plan document’, it is very possibly in contravention of the University’s industrial obligations to participate in genuine consultation with staff about the proposed changes, and it is undeniably in contravention of the most basic standards of decency and honesty.

The National Tertiary Education Union will be challenging this in court, but as students, we need to keep up the phenomenal solidarity with staff that was witnessed at last Wednesday’s rally, as they fight to keep their jobs, disciplines, research and teaching activities. The semester may have ended, but the fightback certainly hasn’t. Stay tuned as we plan more actions to show management that they won’t get away with their money-hungry ransacking.

Sign the petition to protect support for Indigenous students in the Faculty of Medicine and Health!!

Defend First Nations Student Support in the Faculty of Medicine and Health. The DVC (Indigenous Strategy and Services) have presented the Yooroang Garang Indigenous Student Support Unit (YG) at very short notice with a change plan that will forcefully amalgamate their team with the Mana Yura Student Services team, effectively: * dissolving Yooroang Garang, thus ending the h...

Coverage of yesterday's protest in the Sydney Morning Herald!

We also appeared on page 15 in print this morning.

Academics fear Sydney University job cuts will threaten medical research About 39 per cent of full-time positions in the university's pathology and physiology disciplines - which study diseases and how the human body works - will be made redundant.

Great write up in Honi Soit about yesterday's action!!

Hundreds rally outside Anderson Stuart Building against Medical Science cuts - Honi Soit Academics and students from the School of Medical Sciences hosted an afternoon of action today to protest against proposed cuts to staff and courses, which will have a tremendously detrimental impact on the quality of both MedSci research and teaching at USyd. This is the first action of the newly l...

Phenomenal stand against the Medical Science cuts today. An absolute credit to everyone involved.

A strong and united turn out of 20+ staff from the discipline was joined by well over 100 supporters, many students from Medical Science, staff from Arts, a contingent from Engineering, Casuals and many more. We were all united behind our mega banner with a clear, simple message for Usyd's job killing management- DEFEND MEDICAL SCIENCE EDUCATION!

It was great to see students and staff march up from a job cuts rally at UTS and join the protest.

Today was a courageous escalation, going beyond a protest to an afternoon of action and teach-in that sent a message that business as usual cannot continue if it means the destruction of the discipline and jobs. Staff spent the afternoon telling us about the vital research into Covid-19 transmission, Parkinsons disease and cancer under threat from these cuts.

The uni is projecting a surplus. There is no excuse for these destructive attacks on jobs, the discipline and public health.

Guest speakers also spoke about the attacks on the learning Centre and Maths Center , cuts to jobs across the uni, wage theft and the need to break unjust industrial laws.

Check out the media coverage here:
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/academics-fear-sydney-university-job-cuts-will-threaten-medical-research-20201118-p56fre.html

Keep following this page as the fight continues with even more strength after today!

Photos of motions passed in classes and people supporting the upcoming day of action against attacks on our education! Don't dumb down our doctors!

Photos come from classes, e.g. Ecop1003, and from groups of people, like students, ex-students, doctors, education staff, activists, and from general supporters without affiliation.

Thank you to the new supporters of the day of action! Here are more photos to show the amazing people and classes supporting the cause.

Carslaw 356 [unknown class]
Morning Zoom class [unknown class]
Math1013
Ecop1003
Lg19 class [unknown class]

Thanks to the everyone who contributed to the flood of solidarity photos we have received for the Defend Medical Science Education action on Wednesday! Well done to the following who did group photos and motions in solidarity with the action:

Project Management Students
Stucco Housing Co-Op Students
HSTY1003 Thurs
MECO1002 Friday #1
MECO1002 Friday #2
MECO1002 Friday #3
MECO1004 Friday #4
MECO1002 Thursday
MECO1002 Thursday #2
GCST2612
FASS2100
FASS2100 #2
FASS3999
GCST3635
BIOL1997
UNSW Students