GNS Science proposes job cuts in major shake-up

Crown Research Institute GNS Science specialises in geo-science and is responsible for monitoring natural hazards like volcanoes.

• GNS Science plans to cut 103 jobs, affecting 77 staff.
• Public Service Association criticises the cuts, highlighting recent profitability and lack of a government science strategy.
• Over 350 science jobs have been lost recently, risking significant long-term damage to the sector.

GNS Science is proposing to axe dozens of jobs – the latest in a rolling series of shake-ups that have rocked the public and science sectors.

The Lower Hutt-based Crown Research Institute has begun consulting staff on its cost-cutting proposals, which would disestablish 103 positions, of which one-quarter were vacant.

While 77 staff were affected by the plans, GNS was also proposing to establish 37 new roles, which it said would help the institute to “address its challenges and rise to its opportunities”.

“The change process anticipates these new positions will offer redeployment opportunities for some of our impacted staff,” GNS said in a statement.

The agency, which employs a total 528 positions, said it’d been focused on operating with fiscal prudence, seeking cost savings where possible and looking hard at any discretionary spending.

“Now, considering the size of our workforce alongside other cost-saving measures is a difficult but necessary step on a longer journey to financial sustainability,” it said.

“We are now encouraging staff to engage and provide feedback on the issues we face and our change proposals.”

It wasn’t yet clear how some of the agency’s vital functions - such as monitoring natural hazards or climate change research - might be affected.

The Public Service Association has hit out at the plans, calling it a “sad day for science”.

“The proposed cuts make little sense when GNS was profitable only a few months ago,” said the union’s assistant secretary Fleur Fitzsimons, referring to statements made in March by GNS chief executive Chelydra Percy.

“How can the situation deteriorate so quickly to justify these wholesale cuts?”

Fitzsimons also pointed to job cuts at Callaghan Innovation and Niwa, where dozens of roles were announced to go this year.

“Like cuts at Callaghan Innovation, Niwa and elsewhere, this is happening in the absence of a science strategy from the Government which is being prepared by Sir Peter Gluckman’s Science System Advisory Group (SSAG),” Fitzsimons said.

“Once again we are seeing the Government’s misplaced priorities.

“It says science matters, but is ploughing ahead with cutting our best and brightest scientists and researchers who will now be forced to go offshore to find jobs, ultimately benefitting other countries.”

This month, the newly-formed Save our Science coalition reported more than 350 jobs had already been shed across the system – and that it could take decades to reverse the damage.

The coalition’s spokeswoman, New Zealand Association of Scientists (NZAS) co-president Dr Lucy Stewart, said news of the latest cuts was “sad but unsurprising”.

“The significant funding cuts to the science sector over the last year, as documented by the Science Under Threat report, were inevitably going to lead to organisations seeking to reduce spending in the fastest way possible - reducing staff numbers,” she said.

“Our only hope is that as many staff as possible are redeployed within the organisation and scientific expertise is preserved.

“It takes years to decades to develop scientific teams with appropriate expertise in our local systems and problems, but apparently only a few months of uncertainty to lose them.”

NZAS co-president Professor Troy Baisden added that public good research required “a stable foundation, and that’s particularly important for responses to natural hazard events”.

“A hundred positions is roughly 10 years of growth at GNS Science, responding to the Christchurch and Kaikoura earthquakes, as well as recognition of climate change,” he said.

“Destabilising science and scientists could put us all at risk, even if new jobs are eventually created.

“Questions have to be asked why so many new roles would be created before new strategic directions are confirmed, and there are no verifiable reports or recommendations from the SSAG.”

A spokesperson for Minister for Space and Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins declined to comment on the latest proposal, referring the Herald to GNS.

Jamie Morton is a specialist in science and environmental reporting. He joined the Herald in 2011 and writes about everything from conservation and climate change to natural hazards and new technology.