Public Service Angst

"We have stressed (sic) on a number of occasions (the cuts) will affect the lives of people, it will impact on not only them but the people around them as well as their individual circumstances.  We are not talking about widgets.  The people are real and they need to be treated with respect and dignity."
"People are losing their jobs for no fault of their own.  Someone else is making a decision that will impact their lives and I think this illustrates the government is acting in haste and asking too much of departments."  
Ron Cochrane, co-chair, National Joint Council

Yes, it most certainly is stressful to lose one's job.  The prospect of losing a regular income isn't pleasant for anyone.  And perhaps the government, in pre-warning people who may or may not be affected, and in seeking to winnow out those that are most qualified by having people in an affected (job-cutting) department vie with their peers to remain employed, does not represent the best thought-out strategy. 

But it is consonant with the government's needs and priorities and the notion that it is a merit-driven exercise.  And it is planned to give the taxpayer better bang for his/her buck.  Whether it will succeed, as these initiatives so often may not, is another thing entirely; those who remain will complain of being overtaxed by the volume of work that was once shared, even with service cut-backs.

By delaying the decision-making as to who will remain and who will leave, people are indeed being unnecessarily stressed.  Far better to inform people that their jobs have been declared redundant and they with the jobs, and give them the horizon date for leaving, than to leave them on tenterhooks, hopefully guessing and agonizing about the potential results.  So, certainly it is difficult for public servants to look ahead to what looms large.

Government cut-backs occur now and again.  We've been informed through the news media that the current government had gone on a hiring spree in years previous, extending the public service by quite a large margin.  And now, now that the financial situation still looks iffy, the government wants to down-size.  What power has granted, it may also revoke.  Never a popular move. 

The union groans and declarations of government malice are a tad overwrought.

Public servants are indeed privileged, with very entitled union contract boosts far in excess of what private industry can or would offer.  And it is also true that there is a good deal of redundancy in workplaces and in services offered to the public, and there too, a bit of belt-tightening is required, though with such a huge bureaucracy it remains to be seen how successful that might be.  On the other hand, a good proportion of public servants have a well-earned reputation for slacking off.

And with that reputation comes also the misuse of sick days, not just a lack of enthusiasm about being responsible for what they've been hired to produce.  The dogma that public servants are lazy and non-productive is in part true enough.  That they are also considered, at this juncture, to be demoralized is not surprising.  That 48% of all health claims filed by public servants represent mental health claims for depression and anxiety, is also not surprising.

Quite aside from personal problems unrelated to job performance.  Quite aside from alcohol and chemical-abuse problems.  Being pampered, feeling entitled and then getting let down in one's expectations is always a difficult position to balance.  Those who are in the public service, those who were in the public service, those who know public servants as relatives, friends and neighbours, know some very uncomfortable and compromising truths.

 There are those who pull their weight and more, and those who don't, and they don't quite balance one another out.