TAFE NSW update regarding Jon Black – October 2018 (PDF version)
On Friday 28 September TAFE NSW Managing Director Jon Black resigned and Acting Managing Director Dr Caralee McLeish was appointed by the NSW Government.
This resignation was unexpected. However, it comes after widespread criticism of how the NSW Liberal/National Government has mismanaged TAFE NSW, including an interrogation by the NSW Parliament over TAFE NSW in the recent budget estimates.
Both the Assistant Minister for Skills Adam Marshall and Jon Black appeared at the parliamentary inquiry and had trouble explaining the effective closure of TAFE campuses; the increased travel times regional students would be required to access some courses, in particular for their apprenticeships; and how costly exiting the various IT services from the Department of Education has been.
You can find the transcript HERE.
The CPSU NSW has written to Dr McLeish requesting an urgent meeting to discuss members’ current issues, including the high levels of insecure employment as top priority.
CPSU NSW has recently launched our Rebuild Our TAFE Campaign. This follows the Save Our TAFE campaign your union has previously run and the AEU Stop TAFE Cuts campaign.
We need to make sure the NSW Government hears loudly and clearly that it is time to REBUILD OUR TAFE and that the people of NSW do not want to allow this invaluable institution to become a second-rate public education service. Instead of admitting that their ideological attempts to commercialise public education has failed, the NSW Liberal and National Government has chosen to use Jon Black as a scapegoat for its failures.
We have visited more than 50 colleges in the past six months, and handed out thousands of Rebuild Our TAFE flyers and postcards at train stations. You can see more about what your union has been doing on www.facebook.com/OurTAFE.
