Union hits out at Moray Council redundancies

A LEADING union had criticised the announcement that redundancies may hit staff at Moray Council.

The Moray Unison branch secretary Suzanne Wright stated "Both employees and the general public should be under no illusion these are not savings, they are cuts to services and to our members’ jobs."

"The proposals put forward are not even clear.

"Initially the trade unions were informed that there was an expectation of around 87 job losses and no more.

"Having come out of the budget meeting we are then faced with a council press release which states 136 job losses.

"If the council cannot get the basics right what hope have we of them ever balancing the budget?"

"The council press release talks of investment, but where is the investment in people? Too many services already rely on staff working over and above their contracted hours for no extra pay – services reliant on goodwill.

"More and more this is happening yet all of this is unrecognised.

"Cuts will simply place more pressure on the remaining staff leading to staff going off sick with work-related stress.

"The irony is that one of the cuts being considered is to the council’s employee support service which the council acknowledge themselves is mainly being used by staff suffering stress and anxiety.

"The leader of the SNP minority administration states that the proposals will lead to redundancies in the workforce which seems to fly in the face of his own party’s policy at a national level.

"However, more importantly for our members, he seems to indicate that the decision on the proposals has already been taken which begs the question of how meaningful a consultation process is this?

"Moray Unison knows the council is in a difficult financial position. However we also know that austerity is a political choice – we need trade unions, councils and the general public to demand more investment in local government and less in assisting the wealthy and big business via tax breaks .

"The magic money tree is there for the DUP and Royal Weddings – why not public services?

"If Moray Council wants to have a true dialogue with staff about service delivery and redesign then we urge them to take the time to listen and not pay lip service to consultation.

"We would urge councillors to get out and about and visit the services they are planning to cut, face the service users and the employees directly and explain why they think the service is no longer needed and why an employees job is no longer valued."