PSA MEDIA RELEASE

November 17, 2010

For Immediate Use

Public sector’s talent and knowledge sent packing

The impact of mounting redundancies is a threat to the quality and range of New Zealand’s public services says the New Zealand Public Service Association (NZPSA).

The State Services Commission’s (SSC) annual Human Resources Capability (HRC) survey shows that the number of people being made redundant from the public service has more than doubled in the past 12 months to June this year.

“The average length of tenure of the 780 public servants made redundant in the past year was over 13 years. That’s a huge amount of institutional knowledge and experience walking out the door,” says NZPSA National Secretary Brenda Pilott.

“Compounding this is the fact that recruitment is at its lowest level since 1999 so that loss of knowledge and experience isn’t being replenished.”

The HRC survey also shows that private sector wage movement has increased three times as much as public sector wage movement in the past year.

“Falling staff levels, unrealistic workloads, job uncertainty, lower wages – why would anyone with a choice enter the public service when the private sector can make a better offer? The choices individuals will no doubt make will amount to a huge loss of talent and skill to the public service,” says Brenda Pilott.

“We know from our members that morale amongst public service staff is very low. They’re overloaded, unnerved by countless departmental reviews and under-resourced by indiscriminate cuts and thousands of unfilled vacancies. And these are the staff who stepped up above and beyond the call of duty to support the people of Canterbury in the aftermath of the earthquake.

“The HRC survey highlights that workplace stress is beginning to have an impact with sick and domestic leave at 7.7 days.The high numbers of new employees being offered temporary contracts will be contributing to workplace stress.

“A staggering 43 percent of new employees are now on fixed term contracts. These are the worst types of employment arrangements as they give no job security and exacerbate the lack of continuity within departments. For some female dominated groups like clerical and administrative workers temporary contracts are more common than not,” says Brenda Pilott.

Women also fare badly in a shameful gender pay gap.

“While the amount of women in senior management has moved up 2 percentage points to 39.8 percent in the past year, female managers are being paid 13.6 percent less than their male counterparts. The overall gender pay gap is even higher than this at 14.4 percent.

“This is inexcusable for a sector that should be leading the way on stamping out such discrimination and whose workforce is predominantly female. Clearly this government does not value the work of women public servants.

“The ethnicity pay gap is even more shocking with Pacific people being paid 19 percent less than non-Pacific people and Asian and Maori people being paid 11 percent less than non-Asian and non-Maori.

“We want to see the Government’s action plan for how it’s going to turn this around. These workers need training and career development if their potential is to be utilised and they are to be lifted out of the lower paid occupational groups they’ve traditionally dominated,” says Brenda Pilott.

ENDS

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