Nick Everett, Canberra

Airservices Australia announced on March 1 that it will cut its work force by 10%, making 300 workers redundant. The government-owned corporation manages Australia's airspace and oversees air-traffic control at 28 of the country's airports.

The job losses are expected to be mostly in the ACT and in the areas of human resources, finance and management, but will also affect Airservices’ Melbourne and Brisbane operations. Airservices announced that the job cuts will take the form of voluntary and involuntary redundancies over the next 15 months.

Louise Persse, an executive committee member of the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU), told the March 2 Canberra Times that the job losses were the result of an internal review into the structure of the organisation, announced in November. This, she said, had identified “duplicated positions” and areas that could be realigned.

“The review was about management structure. There were no suggestions about job cuts being part of that process”, said Persse. She said the union’s members “are telling us there is uncertainty about their own positions; whether they will have a job still, what job loads there will be on those that are left, and the impact on the services they will provide”.

CPSU governing councillor Andrew Hall, a member of the progressive Members First caucus in the union, told Green Left Weekly: “These job losses follow massive job losses announced in Telstra last year.

“Airservices is a critical area of public sector employment that needs to be defended against any job losses. The CPSU should be leading a campaign to maintain all jobs in these sectors, not just focusing on the terms of these workers’ redundancy.”

From Green Left Weekly, March 15, 2006.
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