(UK Austerity) Coalition wields axe over Christmas as 100,000 (public sector) jobs to go by spring

[Turborama]

Source: The Guardian

Flood of warning letters expected to be sent out before 1 January deadline as public sector cuts are formally announced

Patrick Butler and Polly Curtis
Thursday December 16 2010

At least 100,000 public servants will receive grim news over the Christmas holidays or soon after as councils, police forces and other public services race to meet a deadline of 1 January to formally announce job cuts. An analysis of local authority documents reveals that the number of council redundancies directly resulting from the coalition's austerity measures is expected to break the 100,000 mark by early in the new year, fuelled by the swingeing cuts announced this week to councils' budgets and the pressure to start cutting before the new financial year in April.

This comes on top of the 33,000 drop in public sector jobs over the three months to October that was detailed yesterday in official unemployment data and is likely to lead to a torrent of "at risk" warning letters hitting doormats across the country in the next few weeks. The letters are a legal warning that your job could be at risk. After months of political warnings, the imminent bloodletting in town halls across the country is the first tangible sign of the government's austerity budget beginning to bite outside Whitehall.

Council chiefs must reduce posts by 31 March in order to start making savings in their new reduced budgets, but by law they have to give staff 90 days' notice, meaning up to 140 councils that have not yet announced planned redundancies may break the news over the Christmas holiday period.

"Thousands of local government workers face having their Christmas ruined by redundancy notices," said Brendan Barber, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, yesterday. "Councils in particular are bringing forward job losses in order to cope with the deep budget cuts that take effect next April."

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/dec/16/public-servants-to-lose-jobs

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How long before Greece like demonstrations by workers start in the UK?

[nyy1998]

1. A week tops, if they think they saw something with these student protest, wait until

the public workers show up.

[SnakeEyes]

2. This is such BS

Just raise taxes on the rich to fund the budgets properly.