Life gets grim in the public sector

Following my cheery prediction of 29th May 2009, hard times in the public sector are indeed coming to pass. We've not yet re-entered recession, but I can't help but think it won't be long til we do.

Why do depressing stories make the best news? I've not been excited enough to blog about all the amazing things that I've been up to in the last year - the Blackheath camp, the great climate swoop, Green campaigning in Islington, and the Merthyr to Mayo ride etc.

Instead, what's finally motivated me to log in again is this horrible realisation:

Yesterday, without even noticing it creeping up on me, I found myself fighting for the opportunity to make a number of low paid staff redundant. I am horrified and it goes against all my principles - but it's true. In the current financial climate we need the savings in order to be able to continue to deliver another, more impactful, service. And someone else has another plan for these staff which would take them out of my remit and therefore mean that their budget was no longer available for me to poach for my other service.

I frequently justify the nastier bits of my job with the argument that since cuts need to be made it is better that I, with a social conscience, are shaping them, rather than some gung ho budget slasher... but following this I'm not so sure.

I need to take a bit more of my own advice and start thinking about whether there's a more equitable way to spread the impact of the inevitable cuts. For invitable they surely are.

Mmm cheery - prediction of another recession

It is not news to people working in the public sector that our fortunes are dependent on spending decisions made in Whitehall. But it is beginning to dawn on us just how vulnerable we are going to be in 2011.

In 2007, the government published the long awaited (and delayed) Comprehensive Spending Review. This set out and guaranteed public spending across a range of services including health, education and local government. But the guarantee runs out in 2011.

The years since 1997 have been fat for the public sector, but this generous period is likely to come to a dramatic end in April 2011. A number of factors will come together to produce a significant cut in public spending:

• The end of the CSR07 guarantee
• The (likely) presence of a Conservative government
• The need by any government to cut public spending in light of the enormous public debt accumulated in trying to tackle the economic downturn

Approximately one fifth of the population is employed in the public sector; in Northern Ireland the figure is 30%. Given a UK workforce of 29m, this means 5.8 million people are employed by the public sector.

I don’t think cuts in public spending in the region of 10% are unrealistic, and assuming these translated into a 10% reduction in the public sector workforce, that would mean 580,000 people losing their jobs. I am not an economist, but I think a cut in spending / rise in unemployment on this scale could trigger a second recession, just as we are recovering from this one.