Cutting public service jobs short-sighted plan

Consider the impact these positions have on our lives, Bob Bymoen writes.

Cutting the jobs of public service workers is often pushed as a quick and easy cure-all for bringing down the deficit.

But once the jobs are gone, the services eroded or removed, there is little focus on who gets hurt, who doesn’t get the hand up they need, and whose safety is put at risk. When tragedy strikes, we ask ourselves: How did this happen? We rarely trace it back to undercutting the support services that keep families and communities safe and healthy.

The Saskatchewan Party government rolled out a job reduction program from

2010 to 2014 that it says resulted in the loss of 1,900 government jobs.

In a recent column, Murray Mandryk argued that this initiative did not meet its goal. He offers job numbers for the last eight years, which are significantly different from those put forward by government, and different again from statistics available from other sources.

While sifting through the numbers is a worthy, though often not illuminating exercise, it is worth taking a look at the impact on frontline services to get a picture of how job cuts affect real lives — especially now, since the finance minister plans to cut five per cent of the government and Crown corporation workforce over two years. Here are a few examples: Cutting trained and experienced firefighters and tower observers in previous years made it more difficult for crews on the ground to do their jobs, further endangering communities during the wildfire crisis in Saskatchewan’s north in 2015.

Eliminating the jobs of deputy sheriffs of court security, which government attempted to do last year, was halted because the loss of trained personnel was found to put safety at risk.

Almost 90 per cent of Social Services workers say their workplaces are not adequately staffed on a consistent basis, resulting in increased workloads. Almost six out of 10 workers say their workload issues are caused by unfilled staff positions, and eight out of 10 workers say that job cuts between 2010 and 2014 — which resulted in the loss of 76 full-time equivalent jobs from the Ministry of Social Services — has meant a loss of frontline staff that negatively impacted clients in their work area, according to an independent survey of SGEU members who work in Social Services.

We can learn much from listening to those on the front lines.

To complicate matters further, the government’s current plan to cut public service jobs through attrition is fundamentally unworkable.

The threat of hundreds of public service job cuts — to be carried out randomly, as individuals retire or leave their position — is an irrational and potentially dangerous approach. It shows little understanding of how to manage a complex, human resource-driven organization that is responsible for serving and safeguarding the lives of Saskatchewan people.

Consider, for example, the potential impact on rural and northern communities. The loss of a snowplow operator, a safety inspector, or child protection worker could have a devastating effect on a community. What happens when no one is there to respond in a crisis? Or to provide the help that people depend on every day?

All Saskatchewan people rely on public sector workers in countless ways — to monitor drinking water, keep roads and highways safe, train future workers, provide supports for farmers, help children in crisis and provide public security. Losing those jobs means losing reliable services, or in some cases losing those services entirely.

Cutting public service jobs has been a central feature of the Sask. Party’s approach to governing. And, according to many of the people who work on the front lines, has resulted in gaps in services and chronic understaffing in vital areas, like child protection, correctional services, and wildfire management.

As the question of public service job cuts is debated, it is important to keep in mind the very real impact on people’s lives, on the safety of families and the well-being of communities, big and small, across our province.