The Hong Kong Institute of Education has defended its plan to force up to 40 of its staff to accept compulsory retirement, despite bitter opposition from lecturers and teaching unions.
Today, the Professional Teachers' Union (PTU) will hold a general meeting for members who teach at the HKIEd. It is collaborating with the institute's Association of Lecturers, whose chairman, Kenneth Volk, stepped down at an association meeting this week amid growing controversy over the move.
The association has passed a unanimous vote of no confidence in the management.
'There is no stepping back from this. The HKIEd would not have a future if we caved in to the PTU demands to stop it, or if we accepted the union vote requesting management to resign,' said Paul Morris, HKIEd deputy director.
But he said management had erred in the way staff were initially told to stop teaching after they received letters selecting them for the Management Initiated Retirement Scheme, causing some lectures to be cancelled last month. The decision was reversed the next day. 'The motive was that when staff were told, of course it was going to be upsetting. Because no final decisions had been made, it was thought they could be relieved of teaching to prepare their challenges,' Professor Morris said.
The PTU has described the redundancies as the 'darkest moments' in the HKIEd's history, and the way teachers were informed as a 'white terror'. President Cheung Man-kwong said the PTU would discuss possible next moves with staff at today's meeting. 'We will fight for a mechanism so that no employees who had performed well should be unreasonably dismissed,' he said.
He also feared a precedent being set. 'Instead of having this redundancy plan carried out voluntarily they made it mandatory. We are concerned that this could become a precedent for other tertiary institutions,' he said.