NIPSA union members are holding a lunchtime protest and rally in Derry today against public sector job cuts.
Members of the public service union are to gather outside Jobs and Benefits Offices, Social Security Offices and Job Centres, between 12.30 pm and 1.00 pm to highlight the “unacceptable destruction of public sector services and jobs”.
NIPSA says that over 1,000 jobs have been wiped from the public sector in September, as voluntary redundancies are implemented in a number of public sector organisations.
Deputy general secretary Alison Millar said his represents the destruction of jobs on an industrial scale.
She said if a factory closed with the loss of such a high number of jobs there would be uproar from politicians.
“There are over 800 staff leaving the NI Civil Service at the end of September and taken together with the hundreds of jobs recently lost in the NI Housing Executive and the Further Education sector, we are facing what amounts to draconian cuts in services and jobs,” she said.
“This will be compounded by the plan to cut around 400 jobs in the Education Authority by early 2016 and the cut of another 800 plus jobs in the NI Civil Service by the end of November this year.”
Mrs Millar added: “These job losses will damage public services and our economy.
“They will put untold pressure on staff remaining behind who will be expected to take on greater workloads and we are likely to witness a significant increase in stress related illness and other health and safety problems.
“The destruction of jobs in the public services will intensify over the next couple of years and it will result in a lost generation of young people who will be condemned to lower paid, precarious work, the dole queue and emigration.
“It is critical that these cuts are reversed if public services are to be protected.”
In March, an estimated 6,000 people joined protest rallies across the North of Ireland to voice their opposition over cuts to public services.
