A management of change document provided to the Otago Daily Times has proposed that up to 15 jobs in the lecture room administration department could be cut in the latest round.
The university has said there would be more jobs created overall, with a shift to a more digital-focused approach.
It has proposed there would be 47 roles created, slightly more than exist now, nearly all of them "new roles".
Politics lecturer Dr Brian Roper said there had already been a lot of pain in the centralisation of administration services in 2016, and the proposed restructuring would only make it worse.
"They actually laid off a whole lot of embedded support staff and then they moved towards this more centralised service model.
"And what that meant was that the lecture theatre technicians remaining ended up being responsible for literally hundreds more rooms across the campus."
Dr Roper said his experience of the centralisation process meant poorer quality lectures without the direct assistance that the previous model delivered.
"The university is justifying it on the grounds that they can actually provide that support centrally.
"In other words, somebody can be sitting there at a desk on a computer and they can remotely access the system in the theatre.
"But in actual fact, it doesn’t work like that — you actually really need somebody going into the room in order to provide adequate support."
The university’s chief digital officer Steven Turnbull said it was part of a wider restructure which would actually generate more jobs across the entire ITS division.
"The proposal is designed to help transform our existing IT services to meet the future needs of the university, and to equip staff, researchers, students and other customers with the digital tools and support they need to thrive.
"Staff have been excellent in giving us their feedback and concerns. We are actively reviewing their feedback and have no intention of reducing the frontline support received in lecture spaces."
Tertiary Education Union organiser Phil Edwards conceded it had been a "confusing" process.
While the cuts were severe in one department, there appeared to be lots of new roles created in another, he said.
"The problem that the union has is that we believe the jobs are being removed from places where they actually provide essential services to the academics.
"So, for example, in desktop and AV support, they’re the people that actually help in the lecture theatres and when there’s problems with software and hardware. The union’s position is that the reduction in those spaces will make more work for already hard-pressed academics."
Mr Edwards said the university had come back to the union, and asked it to make more submissions.
"It absolutely gives us some hope that there will be a different outcome than their proposal."
