By IANS,
Melbourne: Australia’s top scientists are bracing for up to 500 job cuts as the government may reduce financing for the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in the budget.
Any staff changes would be reflected in next week’s federal Budget, a spokesman for the CSIRO said.
“We’re not commenting,” he said when asked if jobs would be lost. “There’s workforce planning going on at the moment.”
Information from a meeting of senior CSIRO executives indicates there are plans for widespread redundancies at the national science agency.
Sam Popovski, secretary of the CSIRO Staff Association, urged the organisation to come clean on any job cuts.
“There’s been some information that’s been released that indicates that there may be up to 500 redundancies at CSIRO in the next financial year,” Popovski was quoted as saying by the Australian news agency AAP.
Staff were anxious about their jobs, he said, however, it was possible any redundancies would not lead to net job losses, as resources might be shifted from one research area to another.
“We really want CSIRO to go onto the public record so that staff can be reassured. People need to know to plan their science careers … and to be certain of their job security.”
The CSIRO, which depends partly on government funding and partly on private sources, has 6500 employees working at more than 50 sites around the country and overseas on various research projects related to climate change, agriculture, health, manufacturing and minerals.