National Secretaries Fleur Fitzsimons and Duane Leo outline the PSA’s fight against cuts to public and community services.

It was part horror – “we are going to sack 9,000 workers” – and part science-fiction-fantasy – “all their work will be done by AI”.

The storyteller was finance minister Nicola Willis in her pre-Budget announcement on 19 May. Behind the Government’s storytelling were two brutal truths: the livelihoods of thousands of New Zealand workers are at risk, and the services they deliver for New Zealanders will be slashed.

THE BIG AI LIE

Despite what the Government says, AI won’t be able to replace the mahi of thousands of dedicated workers with no impact on services. As countless of experts have told the Government, AI should be a tool workers can use, not an excuse to replace them.

Sacking 9,000 workers and hoping AI fills the gap is a gamble with the services New Zealanders depend on. No country in the world has evidence that AI can replace public service workers at the scale this Government is betting on.

SERVICES ALREADY UNDER PRESSURE

The last round of Government cuts is already having an ongoing impact on the lives of workers and the services they deliver. Job losses have shredded workers’ self-confidence, sapped their hope for a better future and heaped financial pressure on their whānau. The cuts have forced many workers to seek a better life overseas.

Those still with jobs face the impossible task of having to do more with less. A survey of PSA members conducted in March paints a clear picture of the devastating effects of the Government’s cuts to date.

The survey found that three out of four public service workers say the Government is not providing sufficient funding to enable public and community services to do a good job. A similar number of respondents said that the two years of restructuring has not helped them deliver better services to New Zealanders. Just five per cent of those surveyed thought restructuring had made things better.

Over half of workers surveyed said their agency’s ability to deliver has worsened in the last year. Corners are being cut. Institutional knowledge is walking out the door. Only the bare minimum is able to be done.

Workers describe teams running on fumes, morale plummeting, and sickness increasing from burnout. One worker said their agency had abandoned quality in favour of quantity and was operating “more like a fast-food restaurant than a government department”.

Another despaired at the loss of support staff, saying “having managers and leaders coordinate meeting rooms, travel bookings and other admin tasks is not effective or efficient”.

As well as running down public services and the state sector, the cuts are having knock-on effects across community and public services, health, and local government – impacting schools, hospitals, Māori and rural communities.

HOW WE WILL FIGHT BACK

We must continue to take the fight to the Government. We will defend every job and to retain all existing member terms and conditions. We will keep pushing back on the Coalition Government’s constant attacks on te Tiriti o Waitangi and its attempts to strip te reo and tikanga Māori from public services. We will keep opposing the Government’s attempts to roll back the fundamental rights of working New Zealanders, such as reducing sick leave and holiday pay, and a proper health and safety system.

To make the political cost of the Government’s policies as high as possible, we will keep taking a multi-layered approach to fight for the jobs and rights of our members. We will keep organising in workplaces, campaigning in communities, lobbying ministers, politicians and officials in the halls of power, and taking legal action in the courts.

We will use the news media and social media to highlight the importance of the work members do for New Zealanders, the impacts of job cuts and the loss of workers’ rights.

In all workplaces facing job losses, members and delegates will keep defending jobs, writing comprehensive submissions opposing change proposals and offering ongoing support for workers.

We will also keep enforcing the provisions of collective agreements that ensure that restructures are carried out in a way that upholds respect and dignity for workers, and so that workers are not seen as merely “human capital”.

WE HAVE HAD SOME WINS

While we have not saved every job, we have had successes. Our media and social media campaigns have raised the profile of the issues facing members.

In the courts, we have successfully challenged change proposals started by Fire and Emergency NZ, Te Puni Kōkiri, the Ministry of Education and Te Whatu Ora Health New Zealand. The legal action against Te Whatu Ora saw change proposals in three directorates stopped, and 200 jobs retained in digital services and Pacific health teams. Hundreds of jobs were also kept because of the detailed submissions informed by PSA member on-the-job experience.

Legal action also forced the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment and the Accident Compensation Corporation to drop plans to restrict flexible working arrangements.

CHANGING THE GOVERNMENT

The general election on November 7 offers an opportunity to change the way workers are treated – by changing the Government.

This year we will be unapologetically campaigning to Change the Government. After three years of attacks on our jobs and the services we provide, the times demand nothing less. The Coalition Government parties are campaigning on further denigrating the work of public service workers and cutting public service and state sector jobs.

The Government made an early choice to fund tax cuts for landlords, tax breaks for business and handouts for the tobacco industry. It has paid for these reckless spending decisions over its past three Budgets by cutting the jobs of thousands of members in the public service and state sector and by denying more than 150,000 undervalued mostly-women workers the pay rise they deserve, by gutting our pay equity laws.

Over the past three years the Coalition has introduced a raft of anti-worker legislation that is making fire at will a reality for workers, reducing health and safety, decreasing entitlements to annual and sick leave for many workers, and reversing the progress as a nation we have made over the last 40 years in recognising and giving mana to te Tiriti o Waitangi.

The most effective thing you can do to resist the Government’s job losses is to be part of the PSA election campaign.