Angry workers protest cuts
WAYNE Hinton has given the Newman government an ultimatum - fight him or leave his job alone.
Yesterday Mr Hinton and lots of angry public servants, many of them permanent employees, rallied in protest at Central Park amid fears their jobs could be slashed in a government bid to reduce costs.
Last week Premier Campbell Newman announced 20% of public sector jobs would be cut and directives around redundancies would be changed.
More than 300 temporary contract jobs have been cut to date and there are concerns permanent positions are next on the list, Together Central Queensland organiser Ashleigh Saunders said.
Mr Hinton, a Together workplace delegate, said there were ways around saving costs but one of them was not going ahead and scrapping jobs without notification.
He said at one point he saw a note in his pigeonhole and "I thought, 'oh no this is it' ."
Not only was he fuming about the uncertainty around his job he was concerned about increasing his own workload to take up administrative roles typically carried out by a temporary employee who has now been laid off.
"There are plenty of other ways to save money, the only way the Newman government sees a resolution is by sacking people and reducing the number of services available in Rockhampton," he said.
"A lot of us doing frontline work now have to slot in and do these administrative roles, which these temporary employees were very skilled at, effectively doubling our workload.
"We have layers of 'bureaucratic management', perhaps that is a good place to start from."
About 100 public sector workers swarmed to the park armed with placards saying "Stop the job cuts Campbell" and "Nepotism only under Campbell's Government".
Ms Saunders said cutting frontline jobs was cutting vital services for Rockhampton people.
"Our workers won't go down without a fight," she said.
"We won't allow the cuts to services and cuts to jobs because we deliver quality services to the community because it is something they deserve."
Mr Newman said he wanted to protect as many public sector jobs as possible but Labor had employed 20,000 more public servants than the people of Queensland could afford.
"Those 20,000 public servants have families to look after and we are going to fight as hard as we can to save those jobs," he said.
