On July 7 CAUT sent the following letter to Dr. Graeme Fogelburg, Vice-Chancellor of Otago University at the request of the Association of University Staff of New Zealand:

We have learned that Otago University is about to reorganize and to reorder the departments in its Humanities Division. No one would dispute the need for every university to look periodically at all its offerings, provided that this is done in a fair and equitable manner, that academic departments are judged not just on profitability, but also on their contribution to the educational and research mission of the university, and that the academic staff are treated properly in the process.

We understand that in the case of the Classics Department it is your intention to close the department and to terminate all seven members of the academic staff with two weeks' notice and then to invite them to apply for five new jobs. The result will be that two of the academic staff will be fired with two weeks' notice. This procedure is inhuman and dishonest. It is contrary to any reasonable regime of labour relations. If redundancies were necessary (and that seems doubtful in light of the university's operating surplus of $8.6 million), it would have been fairer and more equitable to offer early retirement packages or possible redeployment or retraining.

We also understand it is the intention of the university to merge French, German and Spanish languages and literature into one department and to require all of the academic staff to teach two of these languages. This has the effect of rendering all or virtually all the existing staff redundant because they do not meet the new language requirement. "Crude" and "dishonest" are the only adjectives that can reasonably be applied to such a manoeuvre. I gather the positions will then be advertised internationally. Should this occur and should the AUSNZ so request, we will ensure that faculty in modern languages across Canada are informed of the kind of institution that Otago University seems to have become. That kind of reputation is, as I am sure you are aware, very hard to dispel once it has taken root in the academic world.

It seems to me most unfortunate that New Zealand's oldest university should have taken this plunge into such dubious academic practices and labour relations. I urge you to reconsider and, at the very least, offer serious retraining possibilities for the staff affected in modern languages.

William Bruneau
President, Canadian Association of University Teachers