Baird’s budget: job losses, sell-offs and fewer services to Blue Mountains

MEDIA RELEASE
19 June 2013

The Blue Mountains Unions Council is warning that behind the shiny spin of Mike Baird’s budget, lies job losses, sell-offs and fewer services for the Blue Mountains.

According to the budget figures, NSW is shedding public sector jobs even faster than expected, with more than 5,000 positions slashed from services in the last financial year alone.

This takes the total job loss figure to an incredible 15,000. The closure of Orange Hospital’s palliative care ward, leading to the removal of 10 beds and nine nurses in the ward as well as the removal of five surgical beds and five nursing positions at Bathurst hospital

BMUC president Kerry Cooke said that local member Roza Sage needed to explain what she is doing about the impact of Baird’s budget in the Blue Mountains

“It is ludicrous for Baird and Sage to suggest that you can cut 15,000 jobs from the public service and for this to have no impact on frontline services. Just ask any single local working in the Blue Mountains - in emergency services, or the justice systems, or community services – these cuts are hurting,” he said.

“Further job losses and cuts from the State’s public sector will mean ambulances take longer to arrive, fire stations will be closed and patient care in Blue Mountains hospitals will suffer.

“Once again this State Government has delivered a budget that puts crude short term cost-cutting ahead of the Blue Mountains long-term social and economic needs. Cutting jobs and services today to fatten up the State’s bottom line is a false economy. We are just creating a deep social deficit that will have to be addressed down the track.

“The budget papers also confirm that public sector workers will suffer a decrease in real wages in 2014-15 and 2015-16, when the Government absorbs further superannuation increases into their wages. This will have significant and destructive knock-on effects for the entire Blue Mountains economy.”