The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) has labelled Universities Australia's threat to 14,000 jobs a cruel and unfair attack on higher education staff.
At a Senate inquiry on Tuesday, Universities Australia warned 14,000 staff could face job cuts under the federal government's proposed changes to international student numbers.
NTEU National President Dr Alison Barnes said university managements and the federal government must rule out any job cuts.
"Threatening to slash 10 per cent of the university workforce as a bargaining tool against the federal government is a cruel and callous way to treat staff," she said.
"It's absolutely outrageous for the vice-chancellors' lobby group to be threatening the jobs of 14,000 academic and professional staff who are an indispensable part of our higher education system.
"Uncertainty around these changes have created a vacuum allowing opportunistic vice-chancellors to put job losses on the table.
"Australia's broken governance model has fostered an insidious culture in which staff are always the first to pay the price when policy changes are on the horizon.
"It's simply not good enough to use university staff as political footballs that are regularly subjected to wage theft, insecure work and unmanageable workloads.
"The federal government must step in to ensure university leaders are held to account, and don't ram through damaging cuts that hurt students, staff and society.
"The NTEU has told the Senate inquiry there needs to be changes to the bill before parliament to remove extraordinary powers it gives to ministers to make changes to international student levels.
"The federal government must fully fund universities to ensure there's no job losses because of changes to international student numbers."
