Staff at La Trobe University don’t know whose job will go next. However, they do know that at least 350 jobs will go over the course of this year. The cuts are part of a “root and branch restructure”, in the words of Vice-Chancellor John Dewar.

Announcing the cuts, the VC admitted that the university has a healthy operating surplus.

This restructure will merge five faculties into two colleges. It doesn’t take a professor to work out that this will decimate the existing administrative staff. A process is already well under way for IT staff to be condensed into one department.

The distribution of academic cuts across the faculties is not yet known. But it is clear that they will all be “involuntary redundancies”. Dewar has accused 500 staff of being “research inactive” – a label that does not take into account huge teaching workloads.

In fact, the method of calculating workload is still the subject of a dispute in ongoing negotiations for a new union agreement. Management is hiding the actual time staff work by instituting a points system for every task performed.

Point allocation is arbitrary and almost impossible to convert into hours. Importantly, the proposal provides no upper limit on the amount of hours an academic can be directed to work.

In the world of John Dewar, what counts as productive? Serious preparation for lectures? Spending time with individual students? No. What counts is getting published. If you’re not doing that, your job is on the line.

Dewar’s vision for a university with more and more students but fewer staff was spelled out at a March Academic Board meeting. He predicted that there will be 15 percent fewer staff and 50 percent more teaching. It is not a pretty picture for students or staff.

Students have been told that if their course is cut, they will be “taught out”, i.e. the course will be offered long enough for them to graduate. This creates problems for the many students who do not finish their courses in the allocated time for a full time degree. Those who study part time or defer will be in trouble.

In any case, past experience at La Trobe shows that to be “taught out” in, for instance, archaeology, is to be offered a random selection of history subjects and an archaeology degree at the end of it.

Staff are understandably worried. Last time there were cuts like this, the process was often: Take a department of three people. Fire them. Make them all apply for their old jobs. Hire two of them.

But staff are not going quietly. Members of the National Tertiary Education Union have voted for a 48-hour strike. This is an unprecedented move by the NTEU at La Trobe.

Although a lot of building work is necessary to make this a success, the announcement sends a strong message. It’s a message that staff can and should fight these cuts.

The strike will begin at noon on 26 March. It’s no coincidence that it falls on the day of the national rally for education rights called by the National Union of Students.

Abbott and Pyne’s attacks have given the green light to vice-chancellors around the country to slash jobs and courses. We need to fight these cuts on our campus, and we’re going to come out with other campuses to fight the national attacks.