10:03am Saturday 4th July 2009
By Gavin Aitchison
ANXIOUS York council staff are still fearful, shocked and waiting for answers, following the first round of talks over planned job changes, a trade union said today.
John Kinsella, regional organiser for the trade union Unison, called his meeting with City of York Council chief executive Bill McCarthy an anticlimax.
He said it failed to yield answers over how many jobs the council expects to shed or how many services may be privatised under a forthcoming overhaul of all departments.
As reported in The Press last Saturday, the council has launched a wide-ranging efficiency review, in an attempt to save more than £15 million over the next three years.
Officials admit that job cuts are “inevitable”. The Press has been told as many as 350 posts could go.
The council insists the restructure will not lead to a reduction in service quality, but Mr Kinsella disputed that.
He said: “We have a philosophical difference, in that we believe public services provide local, accountable bodies. In the private sector, you cannot always maintain the quality of services in the public sector.”
Mr McCarthy declined to comment on the talks, saying it had been a private meeting.
The efficiency review was discussed by the council’s Labour shadow executive on Wednesday and will go before the ruling Liberal Democrat executive this Tuesday, when Unison members are expected to lobby councillors.
The shadow executive said: “The Labour group is all too familiar with financial constraints and challenges facing the council, from when we ran the council.
“In the past two budgets we have argued that there are efficiencies to be made by way of structural change. The continuing slicing of directorates’ budgets is not the answer.” But it said: “We cannot accept wholesale redundancies and service reductions as a mechanism of cutting costs, hidden under the title of efficiencies.”
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