Do you work for Queensland’s Department of Education,
Training and Employment? Are you on a temporary contract? You should probably
brace yourself for a bad day.
According to insiders, Director-General of DETE Julie
Grantham is due to announce today that no temporary contracts would be renewed
and that no part-time or casual employees will be retained.
This might not
sound like that big a deal to some, but it should be noted that by some
estimates temporary contracts make up to 75% of the department’s workforce.
This means that, at some time today, hundreds of government employees will be
told they are no longer employed and will be forced back into the job market
during what is, both statistically and anecdotally, one of the most competitive
and difficult employment markets Australia has ever seen.
There is no escaping the irony that the Department of
Education, Training and Employment is preparing to force redundancy on hundreds
of educated, highly trained and – until today – gainfully employed
professionals. I want you to understand, too, that these are not simply typists
and lollypop ladies that are being made unemployed. I have worked in the
department (back when it was called the Department of Education and the Arts)
and can assure you that many of the people who will lose their jobs today are
overqualified for the jobs they’re doing already. These people have degrees in
law, economics and accounting. They can design bridges, speak French and think
in binary code. They are already overworked and underappreciated, and this time
next week, they’ll be serving Big Macs and mopping floors like the rest of us.
All of this comes as part of the NewMan Government’s Mandate
For Change, which is revealing itself to be a catch-all policy of deregulation
and decommissioning in what this author can only assume is a ploy to keep
people confused and distracted until the last koala is dead and being used as a
coal substitute. Worse, this is only the beginning, as this policy of
cancelling all temporary contracts is to be applied across the board,
government-wide and in every department so things will only get more desperate
and difficult.
Admittedly, I could be sensationalising this a little. But
then, it’s also possible I haven’t gone far enough. Only time will tell. In the
meantime, I’m memorising Mad Max/The Road Warrior so I have the edge when the
country finally becomes a simmering furnace of road-violence and highway crime spurred
on by desperation, starvation and the search for fossil fuels.
“Better call the meat truck. Charlie’s copped a saucepan in
the throat.”
Bollocks,
Karl “Nightrider” Anderson
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