Research staff call for Collins to act over job cuts
Callaghan staff expected to learn today about plans
Staff at one of New Zealand’s largest research organisations have called on Government minister Judith Collins to step in over a wave of job cuts expected to be announced today.
But there’s no sign the Research, Science and Innovation Minister will intervene in Callaghan Innovation’s “strategic reset”, which staff fear will lead to a “substantial number” of science and engineer roles going.
The Herald understands details of the restructure, which went before the Crown agency’s board last week, will be shared with staff in meetings today. Lower Hutt-based Callaghan employs about 382 people, including around 200 scientists and others who wrangle grants and connect businesses with researchers.
The Government has asked agencies to cut 6.5 per cent to 7.5 per cent of their costs in a bid to slash overall public service spending by $1.5 billion a year.
Callaghan grants are administered by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), which falls in the 7.5 per cent camp, but Callaghan, which has an annual budget of $187 million, has so far not confirmed any savings target.
In a bluntly-written letter to Collins, supported by nearly 90 engineers, scientists and support workers at Callaghan, staff said they were “hugely concerned” over the reset, which they called a “genuine risk” to the future of science at the agency.
They worried many jobs could go and that those remaining would have to focus on commercial revenue “at the effective exclusion of all else”.
“There will be narrower expertise and fewer research teams to carry our overhead costs,” they said.
“We do not see this as a change to a new sustainable science organisation, but rather a first step that will lead to inevitable decline.”
The staffers said the restructure would make it harder to attract and retain staff and for the agency to meet its goals of generating new high-tech businesses.
“We call on the minister to ensure that people are retained in the system, and to save this sector of our science capability from being lost to New Zealand for a generation.”
Callaghan chief executive Stefan Korn said the purpose of the reset was to return the agency to its “original function” of delivering commercial science, engineering and innovation support for industry. Korn said Callaghan’s board and senior leadership were “acutely aware this is a particularly difficult time for many of our people and we are focused on completing the consultation process so that we can give clarity as soon as possible to our people”.
The New Zealand Association of Scientists (NZAS) has shared its own worries over the reset.
“[Callaghan is] a unique hub and these cuts will cause them to fall below a tipping point where they cease to be viable,” co-president Dr Lucy Stewart said. “Frankly it appears they already have, but no one is willing to outright say that.”
NZAS co-president Professor Troy Baisden said Callaghan’s problems were “unfortunately representative” of what was happening in the wider research system.
“We now lack transparent understanding of what research is for and what capability will be lost without ongoing funding,” Baisden said.
“We don’t know where important work is failing because it has half or a quarter of the funding it needs.”
The association has already voiced concern over sector funding heading off a “fiscal cliff”, with the looming end of the country’s decadeold National Science Challenges and the scrapping of the former Government’s $450m “Science City” plan for Wellington. That had involved creating three “science hubs”, one of which would have housed a new health and pandemic readiness research project involving Callaghan.
It’s not clear what will replace the science challenges, with the Government also cancelling a major reform programme that was to have succeeded them.
Former chief science adviser Professor Sir Peter Gluckman has meanwhile been tasked with chairing separate groups advising on how the science and tertiary sectors can help boost the economy.