More than 500 staff working at Wolverhampton City Council have been granted voluntary redundancy.
Wolverhampton City Council has announced that more than 500 people working for the authority have been approved for voluntary redundancy. The council plans to cut 2,000 jobs—a third of its workforce—over the next two years as part of austerity measures. The council has to find £123m worth of savings by 2018.
The latest figures showed 1,385 people had expressed an interest in taking voluntary redundancy, but 564 people withdrew from the process. A further 216 staff were turned down for a pay off.
Approval has been granted for 527 voluntary redundancy applications already, and a further 78 are pending. The next stage of the process involves the council looking at compulsory redundancies throughout its departments.
Leader of the council, Councillor Roger Lawrence, said: “Some staff have left through compulsory redundancy because we have been re-structuring departments.”
The Labour party blamed job losses on the coalition government, claiming local authorities had been unfairly targeted for funding cuts. However, Wolverhampton’s Cabinet Member for Resources Labour Councillor Andrew Johnson said the council was not yet at the point of making compulsory redundancies.
“We are not at the stage of a compulsory redundancy programme. We cannot rule it out, but it has not happened yet.”
Wolverhampton has already seen tough cuts. Library opening hours have been scaled back and the majority of youth clubs in the city have been closed. Parking charges have also been introduced on Sundays and evenings in the aim of saving money.
I understand that any organisation left uncheked for a while can start becoming uneconomical. It is good to go through a shake up of services however I fail to see the logic of this government. If we start cutting core services we seem to be recruiting back immediately and that has been the fundamental trend so far. Most of my colleagues and frineds who were made redundant have now been employed again in local governement within a year.
Local authorities in areas outside London are the main employers and what is the government doing to enable these families impacted access good quality jobs. I have witnessed families split as some are coming into London to find jobs. What we need to be focusing on is improving training for residents and getting them those high paid jobs we are recruiting foreigners for on working Visas. We need to be adressing the Zero hour contracts. We needto be supporting young business. Getting rid of local authority key workers will eventually cost the governement ten times more. Are we blind to the fact that we have an aging population and well organised local authorities are the best to deal with this. Cost saving is making boroughs move the their needy families and children into other boroughs. This is costing more. Where is the maths.
Middle management need to be targeted as there seem to be a growing number of Managers in the public sector, they will out number the ground floor staff who deliver the services the way things are going. There is NO need for so many Managers! Millions could be saved each year by cutting Management by at least half!
Its clear that cutting jobs is a desperate measure and not taken lightly by Public sector organisations. An increasing number of authorities are finding they can maintain employee trust, improve community services and reduce redundancies and their associated costs by focussing on their existing staff. Why not look at http://www.aes.co.uk/English/Match_Jobs and talk to some of the councils using this novel approach.