Posted by John, April 2nd, 2010 - under Jobs, Katy Gallagher, Wage cuts.

Tags: ACT politics

Katy Gallagher, the ‘leftwing’ ACT Treasurer, has offered public servants pay increases of 4.75% over two years, 2.25% in the first year and 2.5% in the following one.

The Reserve Bank predicts inflation (both core and headline) this year will be 2.5% and a little more in 2011.

In other words the Government’s revised pay offer is actually a real pay cut of a bit under one percent. That’s how much this left-influenced Stanhope Labor Government thinks of its staff.

‘But we can’t afford any more’ squawks Gallagher in the tradition of all conservative politicians.

‘Anything more and we’ll have to cut jobs’ says the Irony Lady, Canberra’s own version of Margaret Thatcher.

Actually, Canberra Labor is already cutting jobs with its recruitment freeze. This means, assuming separations are running at 5% per annum, that the remaining staff are doing that extra work – enough justification on its own for the Unions ACT claim of 4 and 4.5 percent over two years.

Add in a local ‘efficiency” dividend of 0.5% per annum and the only result Labor is offering its employees is working harder for less.

Factor in inflation and the claim of the union bureaucrats for 8.5% over two years looks, typically, very miserly indeed.

The Community and Public Sector Union has already broken ranks and ‘moderated’ its claim to 3% and 3.25% over the next two years.

No doubt that’s a consequence of the great and clearly successful strategy of the CPSU affiliating with the ALP around the country.

The only beneficiary of this so far appears to have been former National Secretary of the CPSU Stephen Jones who has been given a nice little sinecure in federal parliament for keeping industrial peace, forcing his members to accept the calamities that flow from the Federal efficiency dividend and delivering meagre wage outcomes for public servants.

Like all conservatives, the ACT Government wants to make its workforce pay for the global financial crisis.

Workers didn’t cause the crisis; we shouldn’t pay for it.

ACT Labor wants to strangle its public service to cut costs. There is only one way public servants here can win a real wage increase and defeat Gallagher’s threat of job losses.

A strike of public servants that stops all services (and calling on other unions like the nurses, teachers and bus drivers to join in solidarity) is the only way forward.

Given the pussy cats who currently run most of the unions in Canberra won’t do that, it means ordinary members are going to have to regain control of their unions and call mass meetings to vote on such action.