BY JENNY LONG
SYDNEY NSW unions covering public servants and teachers in TAFE and the Department of Education and Training (DET) have rejected proposed job cuts announced by NSW Labor education minister Andrew Refshauge on June 17.
At least 1000 jobs are slated to go under the DET's "Lifelong Learning: the Future of Public Education" plan.
The proposal comes only a few months after a state election in which the ALP exhibited little commitment to find extra funds to pay for its promises to reduce class sizes, open more preschools and increase teaching quality.
Premier Bob Carr's government is trying to sell the proposal as a "brave" idea for cutting the DET bureaucracy and putting more money into classrooms, but unions and the Parents and Citizens Federation agree that it is nothing more than a cynical cost-cutting exercise.
Carr has hinted that similar restructuring would be good for the Department of Health.
Unionists fear that more widespread public sector cuts will be delivered in the June 24 state budget, in a rerun of the draconian first budget after Labor was re-elected in 1999.
Three-hundred educational jobs done by teachers in the department's state and district offices, to support programs for Aboriginal education, student welfare, early learning, literacy and numeracy, may face the axe, with their occupants being returned to classrooms. An extra 64 more highly paid educational jobs will be created in their place supposedly to support teachers in schools.
At least a further 700 jobs done by public servants are also slated to go in the abolition of two Sydney metropolitan TAFE institutes, the merger and centralization of TAFE and DET corporate services payrolls, recruitment functions, finance sections, information technology and properties areas and significant cuts to policy, communications, marketing and coordination support positions as well as "streamlining" of vocational education and training regulatory organisations.
The union covering public servants in TAFE and DET, the Public Service Association (PSA), rejected the cuts, saying that public servants should not be axed to pay for the Labor government's unfunded election promise to increase professional development for teachers.
The PSA is expecting TAFE to be particularly hard-hit by the cuts. This is despite the fact that the proposal to merge corporate services with DET has nothing to do with making it easier for school students to access TAFE education.
The decision to abolish the Southern Sydney Institute of TAFE which administers and services campuses at Bankstown, Lidcombe, Padstow, St George (Kogarah), Gymea and Loftus and the Open Training and Education Network (OTEN) which provides TAFE courses by distance education is not about centralising corporate services, according to the PSA.
"It's a cynical exercise in cost cutting at the expense of the communities and students they serve", said PSA industrial officer Sally McManus.
The Parents and Citizens Federation has also come out against the cuts, saying that students will be disadvantaged by the decision to cut 1000 jobs, particularly the 300 educational consultants.
The NSW Teachers Federation has strongly opposed the plan, with union president Maree O'Halloran saying there would be less, rather than more, support for teachers and schools. Teachers were already angry with Refshauge after an insulting offer from the government for their next salaries award 6% over two years, which is less than the inflation rate.
From Green Left Weekly, June 25, 2003.
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