Date: Weds, 20 October 2010
Tens of thousands of Scottish jobs could go – UNISON response
to Comprehensive Spending Review
George Osborne has condemned the country to decades of hardship
and the people to unnecessary wholesale unemployment, with his
“ideologically driven, no hope, no ideas, cuts CSR” warned UNISON.
Following the Chancellor’s Comprehensive Spending Review, Dave
Prentis, General Secretary of UNISON, said: “For CSR read Cuts
Strangle Recovery. The Tories’ ideologically driven, no hope,
no ideas, cuts agenda is poisoning the country’s chances of recovery,
infecting the public sector and costing jobs in the private sector.
The much-trailed cuts come as no great surprise, but the scale
is a devastating blow to communities who depend on essential public
services.
“This Saturday will see thousands of people take to the streets
of Edinburgh to demonstrate against the cuts and send a clear
message that there is a better way.”
The union says that some 60,000 public sector and 65,000 private
sector jobs could go in Scotland because of these cuts. They could
cost the Treasury around £500m in lost tax revenue and £640m in
increased benefit payments - adding to the annual deficit and
almost entirely cancelling out the saving to the public sector
pay-bill.
In Scotland, the Barnett consequentials are every bit as serious
as expected. In practice the impact will be greater because councils
and health boards have additional costs over and above these allocations.
Councils and health boards have to live in the real world where
inflation is more than double the nominal Treasury assumption.
ENDS
Notes to editors
· For more information on UNISON’s alternatives to these savage
cuts log on to www.unison-scotland.org.uk/publicworks
· For more information on the There Is A Better Way demo on Saturday,
October 23, log on to www.thereisabetterway.org
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