The Kintyre Forum

From http://www.midlothianadvertiser.co.uk/l ... id=3023561

Civil servants 'face redundancy'

Two officials face losing their jobs in what could become the first compulsory civil service redundancies ever in Scotland, a union said.
The two work at the Jobcentre in Campbeltown, Argyll and their union said other job losses could follow.

The Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) said the centre employed 11 staff, which bosses planned to reduce to six by next March.

This was mirrored elsewhere with JobCentre Plus management announcing a consultation process about 409 other compulsory redundancies in England and Wales, said the union.

Senior PCS official Stewart Dalley said: "It is hard to fathom out why work cannot be moved to Campbeltown to ensure further and future employment opportunities to this rural community.

"With the DWP in Scotland, there are close to 1,000 vacancies which management claim is due to the fact that they are the wrong people in the wrong places.

"Instead of making redundancies, management should be looking at moving work to staff.

"Instead, they currently favour making people redundant in one location and recruiting people from the street to fill vacancies they have created at other sites where they are centralising work."

The DWP said the Jobcentre system was being streamlined across the country to make it more efficient.

A period of "meaningful consultation" was under way to enable all options to be explored.


Copyright (c) Press Association Ltd. 2007, All Rights Reserved.
Last Updated: 12 July 2007 4:28 AM

From what I hear from other's, this is likely to the start of more cutbacks in the civil service. If there's work to justify numbers fine, but if people (and I'm not suggesting this happens in the Job Center, I worked there for 3 months and it is a thankless job, that is undercompensated) are sitting about doing nothing, then staff numbers should be cut. If I was a tax payer over there I would be concerned about the number of civil servants who DO sit around with nothing to do. In most cases, it's not their fault that they are underused, but who is going to talk themselves out of a job?