Victor Gordon was a fine arts teacher at the Orange campus until the NSW government ended subsidies for his courses, making them unaffordable for most students and giving the TAFE little option but to close the department in January 2013.

Mr Gordon said he and one other full-time art teacher were left with no classes, no work and asked to sell a new commercial course, which was watered down but came with a fee of $10,000, to students.

Both took stress leave, claiming they were mistreated and their requests for work ignored before they were offered redundancy in September last year.

Mr Gordon said while the government called it a voluntary redundancy, it was anything but.

"If they hadn't taken away the funding and taken the work away, I had planned to teach for another five years. I had been teaching at TAFE for 18 years. They gave us no realistic option other than to accept the redundancy," he said.

"When it came we were told if we did not take the redundancy, we would have to find our own re-employment, either within TAFE or the public sector. We were given a fixed period of time and if we didn't find anything, our employment would be terminated without any redundancy.

"If the government says no teachers have lost their jobs they are lying."

In response to Mr Gordon's claims, the Education Minister said his situation was a case of declining demand and stood by his claims no teaching positions had been lost as a result of the restructure.

"Teachers are employed based on student demand. That has always been the case and will always be the case. Nobody expects TAFE to keep teachers on when there are no students, this is business as usual," Mr Piccoli said.

"With regard to TAFE's business review, 30 positions were removed from the Western Institute in 2013 and 2014, none of which were teaching positions."

Mr Gordon said he resented suggestions the government made while closing down the fine arts departments across the state the course had no practical use.

He said many students who were getting into industrial design and fashion design took the course.

"Our students could sometimes jump into the second year of courses at universities because of this degree and save thousands in fees. Now the universities will probably want students to do a bridging course," he said.

The immediate future for TAFE looked bleak according to Mr Gordon.

"TAFE NSW is in dire straights. The funding cuts are stupid and the short term situation isn't good. The NSW government is following the model they used in Victoria but the new government down there is busy trying to fix those mistakes," he said.