section_path: History/2020 – 2023: COVID-19 impacts, further expansion plans and workforce tensions
section_name: 2020 – 2023: COVID-19 impacts, further expansion plans and workforce tensions
paragraph_text: 2020 – 2023: COVID-19 impacts, further expansion plans and workforce tensions
  
  In 2020, on-campus teaching was limited to selected clinical placements as a result of social distancing restrictions required by the Victorian State Government in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The majority of teaching was moved to online delivery during the first semester. Like many other institutions and workplaces, university faculty members elected to use telecommunication platforms such as Zoom Video Communications, Microsoft Teams, or Skype to conduct live tutorials and provide interactive online learning experiences as a result of the suspension of face-to-face teaching during this time period.
  
  In 2020 the university announced it was axing 450 staff in the institution's largest ever layoff of academic staff, despite a planned expenditure of $4.2 billion for capital works over the decade from 2020. Similarly, in semester two of 2021, the majority of teaching was once again moved to online delivery due to the outbreak of the Delta variant of COVID-19 and ensuing lockdowns in Victoria. In response the university announced further job losses, despite the university running an $8m surplus in 2020. Eleven subjects were cut as part of the savings measures including a number of specialist scientific subjects, a move criticised by Nobel Laureate Peter Doherty and others. The halting of international student arrivals as part of the Australian pandemic response was projected to cause a major loss in revenue for the university.
  
  In 2019 and 2020 the university was also involved in wage theft and underpayment controversies towards its large teaching workforce of casual staff, and began repaying casual tutors for unpaid marking. The university was accused of owing Faculty of Arts teaching staff an estimated $6 million. In 2021 the Vice-Chancellor issued an apology for systematically underpaying staff, saying there was “a systemic failure of respect from this institution" towards casual staff that resulted in underpaying 1,000 staff members and requiring the university to pay back $9.5 million. This followed a campaign by the National Tertiary Education Union's University of Melbourne Casuals Branch, which engaged in a series of protests, including one outside the Vice Chancellor's residence. The university came under sustained criticism over the poor employment and financial conditions of its highly casualised academic workforce. Over the 2010s the university increasingly casualised its workforce, with reports that between 47 and 72 per cent of its 11,000 employees were on casual contracts by 2023.
  
  In 2021 the State Government granted planning approval for a new campus for the university at the urban renewal precinct Fishermans Bend. The $2 billion campus, planned to open in 2026, will focus on engineering and forms part of a large capital works program by the university, which included the demolition of the Student Union Building and the creation of a new student precinct on the south-east corner of the Parkville campus.
  
  In June 2021, a new speech policy was implemented with the stated purpose of protecting transgender individuals within the university while preserving freedom of speech principles for staff and students. In 2023, windows of the university's Sidney Myer Asia Centre Building were broken and the building was graffitied with a message accusing the university of contributing to an unsafe environment for transgender individuals.
  
  In August 2023, all National Tertiary Education Union members who work in the Faculty of Arts, Melbourne Law School, the Victorian College of the Arts School of Art, student services, stagecraft and the library will start a-five to seven day strike. Union members are seeking a 15% increase in wages over the course of 3 years.