National attacks State job ‘mismanagement’

Press, 26 February 1987, Page 4

National attacks State job ‘mismanagement’

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington

The Government was accused by the Opposition in Parliament yesterday of “mismanagement of frightening proportions.” Parliament adjourned for a special debate on the Government’s package for redeployment and voluntary or compulsory redundancies for those State servants affected by Government restructuring of the Public Service. Chaos and confusion existed in the Cabinet and there was mismanagement of frightening proportions, said the Opposition’s industrial spokesman, Mr Bill Birch (Franklin).

Many of the 60,000 public servants affected had no idea of what lay ahead for them and their families, or where they would live in five weeks when the new State-owned corporations took over from Government departments.

No consultations had been held with the State unions, which had been misled and ignored.

The Minister of State Services, Mr Rodger, said, however, that the package of staff transition measures announced on Tuesday had - kept the Government’s pledges rather than broken them.

The changes had been a huge step involving many thousands of people and a myriad of detail which the Government Was moving through in the least possible disruptive way.

Mr Rodger accused the Opposition of creating “an unnecessary climate of fear” among State servants.

Yet the National Party had intended not just to restructure State enterprises; its policy was to sell them off as part of its privatisation measures. Mr Birch quoted the Prime Minister, Mr Lange, as promising on October 4 last year that no Forest Service wage workers would be made compulsorily redundant.

Now the Government had announced a package that kept people in jobs artificially until the General Election in September and then they would be compulsorily retired, he said.

Mr Rodger said compulsory redundancies were a remote possibility which the Government had had to consider because it could not continue to pay people for doing no work if they- did not take the redeployment or voluntary severance options. Mr Birch said the package was in effect a subsidy of the forestry industries and would threaten exports with the risk of countervailing duties being imposed by Australia.

Mr Rodger said that that was rubbish and National could not criticise the Government on the one hand for not looking after its employees and on the other hand criticise it for risking

trade sanctions because it was protecting employees.

“Mr Rodger, a former president of the Public Service Association, is now callously and clinically indifferent to public servants and thinks too many of them are lazy and don’t deserve a job or to be paid,” said Mr Merv Wellington (Nat., Papakura). The reshuffle was a systematic destruction of jobs, and there were not enough private-sector jobs available for the public servants affected, said Mr Wellington.

The Minister of Finance, Mr Douglas, said waste and inefficiency in the public sector and a high deficit could not be corrected without restructuring and giving public sector managers more responsibility.

Those on whom the burden of restructuring was falling disproportionately — especially forestry wage workers — were entitled to special assistance from their employer, the Government, and would get it, Mr Douglas said.

New Zealand had a choice. It could live in the past and work to save jobs rather than create them or it could create jobs by letting some old and inefficient jobs go. The restructuring of the Public Service T was harsher and causing more pain than was necessary because it was so long overdue, Mr Douglas said.