TIGHES Hill TAFE staff who walked off the job on Wednesday say the institution's focus has shifted from students to dollars.
A long-term member of the NSW Teachers Federation, who the union requested to remain anonymous, said TAFE NSW is "not the organisation it was".
"It has become very much more dollar focused than student outcome focused," they said.
"The organisation will say student's learning is at the centre of everything they do, but everything behind the scenes is counter to that."
The union member spoke with the Newcastle Herald as part of Wednesday's stop-work action, organised by the NSW Teachers Federation, which saw staff walk off the job for an hour from 12pm.
The strike comes amid negotiations between TAFE NSW and the union for a year-long enterprise agreement.
Three quarters of TAFE Federation members rejected an offer of 2.53 per cent in August. Post schools organiser with the Federation Annette Bennett said the offer was "insulting" and that the union is calling for 7 per cent.
At the rally on Wednesday, Ms Bennett said casualisation and job insecurity are also major concerns for the union.
"The rate of casualisation has reached 77 per cent across TAFE NSW," Ms Bennett said.
"What teachers are telling me across the Hunter is that as Christmas approaches they are really panicking about saving up money to get them through until February next year.
"Casual workers do the same work as permanent teachers but if they do a full load of teaching over a normal year they are $22,000 worse off than a permanent teacher."
The anonymous union member said increased casualisation makes it "extremely difficult" to fill teaching positions.
"They say get a part-time casual, as if you can just turn people on and off like a tap," they said.
"You can't offer people any sort of certainty with that part-time environment because you can only offer them 34 or 35 weeks a year.
"The whole idea of TAFE wanting to attract the best and brightest to then be able to impart that knowledge to the next generation, it's not happening."
They also said a fall in teacher numbers has been felt in Newcastle and has come with a decrease in deliverable hours.
"Traditionally in the trade areas we would deliver eight hour days, for thirty-six weeks of the year which would work out at 288 hours," they said.
"Multiply it by three years at TAFE and that's 864 hours. The course content hasn't changed but we now deliver that in 720 hours over the three years."
Despite TAFE NSW objections based on "methodological reasons", the union maintains total TAFE teacher numbers have fallen from 17,000 to 8000 in the last decade. TAFE's most recent annual report put total employment at 10,599 in June 2021, down from 15,822 in 2012.
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