Wednesday, Jan 14, 2009
If they aren't needed now, why were they needed before?
Times: Councils start to shed jobs in their thousands
Tens of thousands of public sector jobs will be lost across Britain this year as councils struggle to cope with the impact of the recession.
Forty councils approached by The Times yesterday were planning a total of 7,000 redundancies, and unions fear that few of the 442 local authorities across England, Scotland and Wales will escape the cutbacks. Although most of the job losses will be among backroom staff, there is concern that services will be affected.
The scale of the proposed redundancies is the first indication that Britain’s six million public sector workers will not be protected from the slowdown. Health and education professionals fear that they may be next.
Posted by drewster @ 03:07 AM (524 views) Add Comment
6 Comments
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1. drewster said...
Slightly different problems faced by the US, where local governments actually have to factor in the cost of their gold-plated pension promises. Fairly long article but worth reading.
Hear hear. How about getting rid of defined benefit pensions in this country too? Starting with MPs of course.
2. drewster said...
In fact those enterprising Americans have already set up www.PensionTsunami.com
It looks like a HPC.co.uk-style site only for pensions. Sit tight, this financial crisis is just getting started....
3. stillthinking said...
7,000 out of 6,000,000 isn't such a large portion. Looks like a pretty safe job to have to me.
4. a saver said...
But on the other hand GB is creating lots of pointless new jobs.
5. tyrellcorporation said...
SPIN, SPIN, SPIN - We share your pain bolllox!!!
My bet it this 7000 were on short term contracts anyway. The state sector never sh** on their own people. It's them and us I'm afraid.
6. mark wadsworth said...
They weren't required, as StillThinking says, it's not even the tip of the iceberg, it's a snowflake drifting past the tip of the iceberg.
And (to continue yesterday's debate), this is not a Labour v Tory thing. If the Tories take over and create 2 million new public sector jobs for loyal party members, ex-MPs and so on (not unlikely), surely Labour will be up in arms? I will still continue to rail against this. The Tories invented quangoes, don't forget.
It's not 6 million, it's 8 million. There are two ways of measuring this, the literal legal way (is your employment contract with a local council or government department) and the economic way (is your job taxpayer funded - includes GPs, uni lecturers, charities, quangoes etc).