Marching through the Dunedin campus to the clocktower, participants in the Tertiary Education Union (TEU) stopwork meeting waved protest signs and chanted slogans such as "when uni jobs are under attack, stand up, fight back".
This follows the university’s announcement last month that it is seeking to save money because of a $60 million budget shortfall, options including asset sales, reduced course offerings and potentially "several hundred" job losses.
Voluntary redundancy applications close on June 2, and further redundancies are expected to follow over the next 18 months.
Māori studies professor Lachy Paterson said he applied as he planned to retire anyway, but it was "terrible" for staff who would not be given a choice.
He did not blame the university so much as the successive governments which had neglected and underfunded it.
Senior technician Fraser Brown said his department was already significantly under-resourced, and without technicians available to help, there was a risk lectures would be cancelled.
"Across the university there is deep down fear. People are really, really worried.
"Some staff are so anxious they can’t even speak about it — I work across the university and see the stress in lecturers’ eyes daily."
A law faculty member, who did not wish to be named, said job losses would be devastating not only for hundreds of staff, but also for hundreds of families.
"We need more government funding if we are to keep up with inflation — there clearly needs to be more value on education."
Human nutrition professor Sheila Skeaff said the university needed to listen to staff in all roles across the university.
There had been cuts before and it was "so discouraging" to go through it all again, she said.
A recent addition to the humanities staff, who did not want to be named, was worried at the prospect of losing the new job they had moved to Dunedin for and predicted humanities would be "first on the chopping block".
Enrolments at the University of Otago this year were 4.9% lower than university management budgeted for, and the institution was one of five universities nationally to have experienced a drop in enrolments.
Inflation outstripping government funding has been cited as a major cause of financial trouble by both the university and the TEU.
Acting vice-chancellor Prof Helen Nicholson said last month a strategy that outlined which areas to strengthen and which areas it might "need to reduce" would go to the university council in May.
The TEU protest — which members of the Public Service Association and Etū unions also joined, along with supporters including students and local politicians — was timed to coincide with yesterday’s meeting of the university council.
Chanting could be heard from the council meeting room inside the clocktower building, between the speeches of several people who addressed the crowd.
Associate Prof Brian Roper said the idea the university could do better with fewer staff was "nonsense".
National TEU president Julie Douglas warned cuts to education did "not heal" and would not improve the situation.
Management had made "absolutely unrealistic" enrolment predictions, but Otago was part of the national problem of undervaluing tertiary institutions.
Otago TEU organiser Philip Edward told the Otago Daily Times about 600 people had taken part in the protest.
The TEU wanted more information about what was being proposed and believed the university should look to save money in other ways.
This message was conveyed by TEU representatives, who addressed the university council during the public-excluded section of its meeting yesterday afternoon.
Chancellor Stephen Higgs welcomed staff and union representatives to the meeting, and said he appreciated the constructive relationships which were especially important at this difficult time.
The meeting continued into the evening, and a university spokesman said staff would be informed of any key decisions. — Additional reporting Mary Williams.
