Council outsourcing: 'Workers must embrace need for change'

Published on Wednesday 3 June 2009 09:06

THE sweeping review which proposes that some council services be outsourced will not be welcomed by many who work for the city chambers. But the argument that doing so is in the best interests of the Capital and its taxpayers is an easy one to make.

The facts are simple. Over the next four years the council has a 92 million black hole in its finances. It therefore faces two choices – make sweeping cuts to core services or change the way it works, seeking greater efficiencies and better value for money.

While outsourcing remains a dirty word in public employee circles it has become common practice in the private sector, where shareholders exercise far more scrutiny on how efficiently a company is run than council auditors or taxpayers can hope to.

Many bosses of private companies have been forced to outsource work in an effort to stay alive, and workers hit by such cost-cutting moves, have looked on enviously at a public sector which has dipped into a seemingly bottomless pit of taxpayers' money to ensure that existing terms and working conditions continue to be honoured. This cannot continue.

Regardless, no matter how logical the arguments for change, the council can expect to meet fierce resistance from the trade unions, which too often continue to hold local and central government by the throat.

This explains why the council has not already taken a road signposted by other authorities, and why even now it is promising full discussion with its workers. This is the right approach, and it is to be hoped that all sides will work constructively to meet the needs of each other. But at the end of the day all must embrace the need for change – as workers up and down the country in countless industries already have been forced to.

Bike dream way off

WHILE it is without doubt a laudable target to have one in six city road users travelling by bike by 2020 the aim is little more than pie in the sky.

Riding through the streets, or on cycle routes, on the type of sunny days we have enjoyed this week is without doubt pleasurable. But a commute to work in the open on two wheels in the depths of a freezing winter day?

While the growth in popularity of cycling and the associated health benefits cannot be denied, Edinburgh is more likely to continue to be known as the Athens of the North rather than the Beijing of the West for some considerable time.