Yesterday’s news that the Council was looking to get rid of 2,000 employees must have caused a lot of fear and worry in many homes in and around Manchester. It’s also interesting because as yet no such decision has been made by the Council at all (something which was noticeably absent from yesterday’s press coverage). In addition, the report itself which was being quoted was not available for Councillors to read, as it “hadn’t been written yet”. So what are the facts as we know them today?
Firstly, the Council had already budgeted for the same level of cuts, but over 3 years. This planning took place before the General Election and was expected to be needed whoever won (this point is important because since the election, Labour has claimed that they wouldn’t have made a single one of the announced cuts to anything, but would have cut “something else” – every time!). As a result, it was expected that about 1,200 jobs would go, but this should be contained within retirements, normal staff turnover and voluntary early retirements.
What wasn’t expected, and what caused a nasty shock was that the bulk of the cuts were expected to take place in year one, rather than spread out over the 3 years. Labour turned down our offer to approach the Minister on this issue and also the lingering issue of whether the mess up of the 2001 Census is still causing a loss to our City. Labour turned the offer down flat. Labour also turned down our suggestion that some jobs could be saved if the Council’s top earners took a pay freeze this year. That too was turned down as a non-starter (one Chief Officer earns 90,000 more than the Prime Minister, or to put it another way three normal jobs’ worth of salary more). In addition, given Manchester’s reserves and the huge capital programs which are underway such as refurbishing the Town Hall gives us a lot of room to defer some works into the later part of the three-year cycle, which would achieve the same overall savings required in Year One and across the cycle. Once more turned down flat.
So, it seems that Manchester Labour would prefer to terrify people into thinking that they’re all going to be sacked than actually tackle the appalling financial situation which is their own Government’s legacy. Frankly, it’s nasty, cynical politics at its worst.
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I was talking to a former lib dem voter in Oldham and Saddleworth yesterday who was just off to vote Labour citing exactly that news as the reason.
Labour love implementing cuts and blaming us. The bigger the cuts the happier they seem. They are doing the same in the Labour borough where I work, shedding crocodile tears whilst rubbing their hands in glee. Its cynical and sick, exactly what Kinnock was talking about in his anti militant speech all those years ago, playing politics with people’s lives and people’s jobs.