Top three public employers cut 2500 city jobs in a year

ALMOST 2500 Edinburgh jobs have been axed by the city's three biggest public sector employers in the last year, it emerged today.

The city council, NHS Lothian and the Scottish Government have drastically shrunk the number of staff they employ as the economic downturn starts to impact on all organisations that rely on public money.

The three organisations employed 44,700 staff at the end of 2009, but that figure had slid to 42,250 by the end of 2010, according to new data compiled by the city council for its annual Edinburgh Employers Survey.

There are warnings that thousands more public sector jobs are likely to go in the next year as the three organisations look to carry out further restructuring as part of savage cuts across all areas of service.

While most of the job losses have been through "natural wastage", there are fears that the extent of job losses will lead to compulsory redundancies.

John Stevenson, president of the city council branch of the trade union Unison, said: "A job lost is a service lost and these sorts of services are people's services. There are mounting cuts and things are very gloomy indeed."

The budget decisions passed by the council in February are expected to lead to the loss of another 1200 jobs, and compulsory redundancies have not been ruled out despite First Minister Alex Salmond's pledge that none would happen in the public sector. Meanwhile, NHS Lothian's headcount is expected to shrink by another 700 in the next year.

Councillor Phil Wheeler, the city's finance leader, said: "The plan is to achieve the reduction through a combination of natural wastage, vacancy deletion, voluntary early release, redeployment, management delayering and pay restraint. Compulsory redundancy will only be considered as a last resort."

Alan Boyter, director of human resources and organisational development at NHS Lothian, said: "We are increasing productivity through staff training, better use of IT and service redesign.

"These measures, along with natural staff turnover, have resulted in a planned reduction of our workforce, of 722 whole-time equivalent posts between April 1, 2010 and February 28, 2011. A similar reduction in our workforce is planned for the year ahead."

The Scottish Government's headcount was reported to have fallen from 5000 to 3850, but officials indicate that its own data suggests the figure has only fallen from 3900 to 3850.

A spokesman said: "The Scottish Government has taken steps to reduce the size of the organisation, in order to live within reduced budgets."

Today's figures also show how the staff count of some of the city's major private sector employers has changed over the last year including RBS, which has seen its workforce drop by 1000 in the city, and Aegon, which has shed 600 posts.