70,000 jobs at risk from budget cuts warns TUC

MORE than 70,000 Scottish public sector jobs are under threat from UK government budget cuts over the next five years, according to the TUC.

The trade unions federation says additional job cuts in local government, education, the NHS and the civil service announced in the autumn statement “will have a devastating impact on regional labour markets”.

Scotland is amongst the hardest hit regions in the TUC’s analysis, with 70,225 jobs predicted to go by 2017, amounting to 2.8 per cent of the total Scottish workforce.

However, the TUC has advised that its analysis does not take account of specific policies that devolved administrations, such as the Scottish Government, may follow which may have different impacts on employment.

Speaking ahead of the publication of the first unemployment figures of 2012, TUC general- secretary Brendan Barber said: “For the 2.6 million people currently without work, their prospects of finding a job look ever harder, and with thousands of jobs set to go across our public services while private sector job creation stagnates, the picture is set to get much, much worse.

“Mass redundancies across the public sector are bad news for our struggling economy, and will have a devastating impact on local high streets, as newly-unemployed workers simply stop spending.”