Queensland public sector unions say up to 20,000 workers employed by state government are losing their jobs as a result of the government cuts.
MORE than 2000 staff are being sacked at Queensland Rail, with the State Government 30 per cent of workers to be placed on the dole queue.
Looking at the politics of the job cut decisions, WBT wants to give workers a chance to tell what effect this has on our lives. If this continues the destruction that the previous government commenced by privatising Queensland Rail will be finalized by Camp-Newman destroying the economy.
It is all very well for unions to say that they are going to educate the public about the need for service delivery and for the jobs that are to be lost. However we need to educate ourselves first and the first lesson to be learnt is that the boss should not have the right to hire and fire workers. We should never accept that the employer has this perogative because it is the workers who produce the wealth not management.
Also the union response is lacking because there has been no strategy put forward to organise a fight back. The unions say that they are going to employ an economist to put the case for keeping the jobs but this just feeds back in to another Labor government that privatised many of the jobs and created circumstances that led to the sackings.
There is not point in having the endless debate between Milton Friedman and John Maynard Keynes rehashed everytime there is a recession or crisis in capitalism. Neither have the answer because the causes are systemic to the capitalist system and workers have to find a way to build a system designed to fulfill human needs not profit.
You can’t take out 20,000 wage packets and expect the economy to survive (even if you are a follower of Milton Friedman). Campbell Newman seems hell bent on converting a garden-variety recession, although perhaps a fairly severe one, into a major catastrophe.
If you lost your job in the Queensland public service or you know someone who has, please leave your comments below.
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First names only please to protect ourselves from the bosses who monitor this site and others.
in solidarity,
Ian Curr
0407 687 016
Queensland public servants will rally outside Parliament House on Friday 6 July 2012 to protest government changes to rules for sacking workers.
The state ALP opposition (that privatised nearly everything) argues that the new Queensland government directive surrounding early retirement, redundancy and retrenchment makes it easier to remove permanent public servants. Wonderfull logic, brillant deductions.
What is the point of a union that will not act even when 20,000 workers are sacked?
Word just in from a worker in the Department of Education who is losing his job.
Management in the Dept of Education are busy.
They have just sacked 20% of all permanent.
Human Resources got rid of the temps, then the contract workers, and now they are sacking permanent staff.
Plenty of psychos in HR.