PSA meets with Transport Secretary around job cut announcement

The PSA met yesterday with Transport Secretary Josh Murray in regard to last week’s announcement to cut up to 950 Transport Senior Service Mangaers (TSSM) and Award positions to reach a “savings target”. Transport for NSW (TfNSW) went into further details about the “savings target” and what that is composed of. TfNSW confirmed that the overall savings target is $600 million, composed of:

• Approximately $279 million from internal labour savings. It is this amount that TfNSW predicts will result in up to 950 positions being cut from TSSM and Award staff. TfNSW confirmed it is this dollar amount they need to reach, and not the specific target of 950 positions.
• Approximately $54 million in savings can be made from workforce management. This includes managing excess leave, overtime and the deletion of vacancies.
• Approximately $82 million in savings from reducing their external workforce, such as labour hire and contractors.
• Approximately $100 million can be saved from reducing the number of senior executives. TfNSW confirmed they have cut approximately 200 senior executives, but there still remains approximately 1000 TSSE’s across Transport, which represents one in four senior executives across the entire Government Sector.

The above targets were reported verbally, and the PSA will await the specifics in writing.

TSSE cuts do not go far enough

Whilst TfNSW and the NSW Government crow that they have cut 200 Senior Executives already, the fact is there are still substantially more senior executives employed in Transport than any other Department. With over 1000 TSSE’s they have nearly three times the amount of senior executives within Health, despite having a quarter of Health’s workforce. The PSA continues to call on the NSW Government to stop their protection racket for senior executives, have a look at their numbers again, and if they need to make $279 million in internal labour savings, continue reducing the size of their Senior Executives to avoid job cuts for Award staff.

TfNSW need to minimise adverse effect on TSSM and Award employees

In addition to finding the savings through further reductions in TSSE’s, the PSA is calling on TfNSW to put an Expression of Interest out to all TSSM’s, regardless of their branch, in order to understand how much can be saved from those wishing to take up this “early exit”.  This may go some way to minimising forced cuts to both Award and TSSM staff.

Huge amount of vacancies across TfNSW, but majority “unfunded”

TfNSW also confirmed yesterday that there were approximately 2700 vacancies across TfNSW, however 2,200 were “unfunded”, which means cutting these would not deliver “savings”.  Of the 500 vacancies remaining, half again have been vacant for more than 12 months.

Further meetings next week

Mr Murray confirmed there would be a livestream for staff (held today – Friday 1 August) around his announcement.  There is a further meeting scheduled for next week between TfNSW and the unions in which we seek to gain more details about the “planned process” for consulting on this major workplace change.  The PSA will report back to members following this meeting.

Contacts

Shane Jobberns

Organiser

Thomas Gao

Organiser

Dean Allen

Industrial Officer

TfNSW @ PSA mailbox

Member Support Centre

Your PSA Delegates

Planning, Integration and Passenger

Angela Carroll

Hayley Dellaca

Leisa Sedger

Varada Shinde

Coordinator General

Adam Carroll

People Communications and Workplace

Joanne Kent

Arshdeep Kohli

Dane Richards

Gloria Nallas

Finance, Technology and Commercial

Gary Sladden

PSA Central Councilor

Lachlan Mercer