Northern Ireland News
February 9, 2012 by staff · Comments Off on Northern Ireland News
Northern Ireland News, Northern Ireland will be the UK region hardest hit by public-sector job losses, according to a report from the Trade Union Congress.
It predicts that 25,992 public-sector jobs will go in Northern Ireland, representing 3.2% of current public sector employment. That compares to a predicted 3.0% loss of public-sector workers in Wales, the next worst-affected region, and 1.9% in the South East and East of England, the least-affected regions.
While the percentage of job losses is highest in Northern Ireland, the total number is the lowest, because of its comparatively small size as a UK region. The TUC expects 710,000 public-sector jobs to be lost across the UK by 2017.
TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: “Apart from the huge effect that the job cuts will have upon public services, mass redundancies across the public sector are bad news for our struggling economy, and will have a devastating impact upon local high streets, as newly unemployed workers simply stop spending.”
The job-loss predictions were disputed by finance minister Sammy Wilson, who described them as ‘scaremongering’.
Writing in the Belfast Telegraph, Wilson said: “Such wildly inaccurate claims will do nothing to help us emerge from what is an incredibly difficult economic climate.”