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Threatening local government jobs is ‘scaremongering’, says Unite

1st March 2010

Threatening local government jobs is ‘scaremongering’ and would be detrimental to economic recovery, Unite, the country’s largest union, said today (Monday, 1 March).

Unite was responding to a BBC survey suggesting that at least 25,000 council jobs in England will be under threat in the next three to five years. The forecast is based on answers from 49 councils with a combined workforce of 256,000, suggesting cuts of 10 per cent.

Gail Cartmail, Unite assistant general secretary for the public sector, said: ”Following the bruising weekend opinion polls for David Cameron, the Tory-dominated county councils are now showing their true colours.

”These authorities are planning or already implementing cuts to jobs and services in a year when they have received a four per cent growth in funding from central government.

”It is a con and scaremongering tactics to make people believe that somehow it is all right to accept that much cherished local services, such as their local library or nursery, are now somehow ripe to be targeted for the axe.

”What the Conservatives - and the right-wing economists who support them - fail to realise is that local government in particular, and the public sector generally, are economic generators in their own right.

”In a number of cities as many as two thirds of the economically active are employed in the public sector and the impact of such cuts would be devastating to local economies.

”The reason that local government provides such services as roads, libraries, the arts and leisure services, which appear to be top of the list for these cuts, is that there is a long-standing demand for them – they are valued by their local communities.

”The honoured framework of local government, built up decade by decade by the Victorians, is now going to be the latest victim of the hedge-fund mentality of modern Conservatism, should David Cameron gain power.”

• The BBC survey was sent to 150 chief executives of county and unitary councils and metropolitan and London boroughs. District councils were excluded.

ENDS