GOVERNMENT ZONE
- Central government
- Defence Management
- Devolved government
- Education
- Health and social care
- Home affairs
- Local government
- Transport
AREA OF INTEREST
Email
Print
Digg
reddit
StumbleUpon
Facebook
DeliciousPublic sector job cuts 'will be huge'
Monday, February 15, 2010
The study was carried out with KPMG, whose head of public sector Alan Downey said: "It is now only a matter of time before we are faced with the deepest and most prolonged cuts in public expenditure that anyone can remember. In fact, many public sector bodies have already started to feel the pain and are drawing up clear and radical plans to reduce costs."
He added: "Plans need to be made now, so that the public sector is ready to respond immediately, whenever the incoming government decides it is time for the axe to fall."
Cutting public sector jobs would hinder rather than help Britain's economic recovery, Unite said.
The union's assistant general secretary for the public sector Gail Cartmail said: "Public services and their staff are integral to the UK's recovery from the global recession caused by reckless banking practices."
She added: "According to TUC analysis, a 10 per cent cut in 2007/2008 public sector expenditure equates to 200,000 jobs. In cities, such as Newcastle where two thirds of the economically active are employed in the public sector, the impact of such cuts would be devastating to the local economy – reduced taxation, reduced spending and, ironically greater reliance, on public services such as Job Centres and increased government expenditure on supporting the unemployed and their families."
Employment minister Jim Knight insisted: "We are investing £5bn to help people into jobs – opposed by the Tories. There are 450,000 fewer people currently unemployed than predicted in last year's budget and 70 per cent of people leave unemployment benefit within six months."
However, the Tory shadow work and pensions secretary Theresa May said: "It's deeply worrying that there are a million people on part time work looking for full time jobs, a record eight million who are economically inactive and more than 900,000 young people out of work."
So if up to 30 percent of posts have to go the first place to look will be management posts. The thinking being that management structures in the public sector are bloated and cutting management posts will have less impact on front line services. I think a dramatic cut in management posts will be very difficult for the public sector to deliver. Local Authorities for example have in the past had little appetite for making people compulsory redundant preferring instead redeployment, voluntary redundancy and vacancy freezes. But job loss of this order can't be delivered with out compulsory redundancies. How will organisations decide who to ‘let go’? Do you ask for volunteers, identify those you don’t want or simply remove a whole tier of management?
What if the volunteers aren’t the ones you want to go? What if they contain individuals with experience and skills that will be difficult to replace or have the very skills required delivering more with less. What about the well known cynics, those promoted beyond their level of competence or the square pegs in round holes. Surely they wouldn’t be missed! Can we agree who they are? Can we get away with this approach? After all if they were incompetent or ‘unsuitable’ shouldn’t we have dealt with them before? Can we even afford our current generous redundancy packages when the numbers are so big?
Blair Mcpherson - Preston
This Government has bloated the public sector, the BBC was running the usual "Frontline Services" tag at the top of every sentence reporting on possible cuts - As far as I'm aware, local government employees are not engaged in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan, so that lable is an affront to the armed forces who have to fight and die on the frontline. Just like ballooning individuals runaway spending on credit could not continue, Government borrowing has bought many of the jobs that now have to go. Voters are all aware of the barmy job ads for non jobs. Labours unwritten manifesto has been buy votes, one route with cosy, cushy jobs. The party is over, the private sector has had over eighteen months of high unemployment, and what is the real figure? Likely around six million plus unable to get a job. Total taxation per capita in this country is intolerably high and needs to come down. We need to get our public debt down.
Ken - Bishops Stortford / England /taxpayer