Creating new jobs from $3b public servant pay freeze pain
A $3 billion public sector wage freeze will instead be spent to create up to 20,000 new jobs but the NSW government faces a war over the move which will hold back a 2.5 per cent pay rise for nurses, police and teachers.
NSW
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A $3 billion public sector wage freeze will instead be spent to create up to 20,000 new jobs but the NSW government faces a war over the move which will hold back a 2.5 per cent pay rise for nurses, police and teachers.
The government is willing to take the matter to the Industrial Relations Commission if parliament’s upper house blocks the wage freeze.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian declared that the freeze was designed to save jobs, not money, saying: “If we don’t take this decision today, the decisions we need to take down the track will be even more difficult.”
The government will argue that “every spare dollar” from the wage freeze will be used to generate employment, with Treasurer Dominic Perrottet saying: “Ultimately the biggest bang for our buck is to spend it creating jobs, not on pay rises.”
The Daily Telegraph can reveal government modelling shows that between 15,000 and 20,000 jobs will be created if the government invests the $3 billion wage bill into labour-intensive infrastructure projects with strong stimulus effects.
The government is currently investigating accelerating spending to drive employment and the economy in areas such as social housing, school and police station upgrades, and improvements to other outdated infrastructure.
Mr Perrottet and Unions NSW secretary Mark Morey — who has vowed to fight to get public servants a pay rise — are separately lobbying the upper house crossbench on the wage freeze bid.
Labor, the Greens, One Nation and the Animal Justice Party have indicated they will block the freeze, paving the way for a public fight for the government.
The 12-month freeze equates to, on average, $1800 for nurses and more than $2000 for teachers and police.
It can also be revealed the government closely examined a proposal to carve out frontline workers from the move.
The Daily Telegraph has been told this proposal was put to unions but it became impossible to draw a line and so the government reached the decision to freeze all pays.
Unions NSW secretary Mr Morey told The Daily Telegraph there are multiple wage cases and awards hearings for nurses, police and the public service association in June, which will make the wages fight highly public.
“These are people who have been going to work through COVID and what are we saying to them — that the government doesn’t value them,” he said.
The government’s decision was reached after a marathon four-hour cabinet meeting on Monday.
A Daily Telegraph online poll of 4000 readers last night found 70 per cent did not support a pay freeze.
State Labor has slammed the freeze as a “slap in the face and a kick in the guts” to frontline nurses, police officers, and teachers.
Labor Leader Jodi McKay said the wage freeze is a an “appalling decision at a shocking time”.
Ms McKay said the government should scrap the billion dollar Powerhouse Museum move rather than cancel a planned 2.5 per cent pay rise for frontline public servants.