The University of Tampere announced on Monday that it had initiated negotiations with worker representatives about aims to reduce up to 215 jobs at the institution.
Employees at risk of losing their jobs include support service staff. A total of 1,100 workers are part of the negotiations, but the university noted that research and teaching jobs would not be cut.
A portion of the reductions will be made through redundancies but some operations will be outsourced. The university said it aimed to save 14 million euros annually.
The university said it planned to partially outsource some of its financial, payroll, sales invoicing and travel management services to the accounting services firm Certia, starting next year. This change will affect 40 employees. Certia is owned by Finnish universities.
Negotiations between the institution and union representatives are scheduled to begin next week.
'Complete surprise'
The institution's support services include administrative-, library- and IT-related jobs. President Mari Walls said support services were central to the university's research and education efforts.
"We are striving to ensure that the workload for teaching and research staff will not increase. However, it is foreseeable that there will be a certain transition phase, but through that process we will work to ensure that we continue to provide the necessary support services for faculty in a new arrangement," Walls said.
The reshuffle and redundancies are expected to start rolling out early next year.
Operations Management Specialist and union shop steward, Jorma Viikki, said staff were notified about the university's plans via email on Monday afternoon.
"The news came as a complete surprise. It's dumbfounding that this news came in an email," Viikki said, who added that the administration's job cut demands were "shockingly large" in scope.
"I don't know how the University of Tampere will be run in the future. The amount [of planned cuts] is about as shocking as it could be," he said.
Last week, as the school opened for the autumn period, university president Walls said that the institution faced pressure to balance its finances through savings and increased revenues.
Basic state funding for the university is set to decrease from 196.5 million euros this year to 190.9 million euros in 2022.