Abetz should act on Tasmanian jobs

The CPSU will tomorrow present Minster Abetz with a petition signed by over 1000 Tasmanian Federal public servants urging him to save 56 Human Services Department ICT jobs at risk of being moved to Victoria.

CPSU Regional Secretary Paul Blake said: “We are calling on Mr Abetz to do the right thing for Tasmania and get this proposal scrapped,” said Mr Blake.

“It is a huge blow for the staff and their families. And it’s also bad for Tasmania in general because moving these highly skilled and valuable jobs to the mainland will take $4.5million out of the local economy.

“There has been a huge amount of support for these workers from fellow workers and the community at large.

“People are really struggling to understand why this ICT work needs to be centralised to the mainland . This sort of ICT work can be done anywhere and the Department have failed to make a business case for moving these jobs to the mainland.

“Staff want actionfrom Mr Abetz. This decision was made in October 2013 so it is totally unacceptable for Mr Abetz to try and blame the job losses on the previous government. He’s in charge now, he needs to fix it,” said Mr Blake.

“And the bottom line is that we have had it confirmed that there are no savings under this proposal, in fact it looks like costing the taxpayer money to move these jobs out of Tasmania. This is centralisation gone mad. “he said.
CPSU Regional Secretary Paul Blake