Fight For Better Pay

Newcastle Herald

Thursday July 31, 2008

By JULIEANNE STRACHAN and AAP

MORE than 100 angry public sector workers rallied outside Treasurer Michael Costa's Newcastle office yesterday, as part of a statewide campaign over wages.

Teachers, police, road maintenance workers, traffic signallers and child protection workers collectively vented their anger over the Government's 2.5 per cent cap on pay increases.

Newcastle-based Unions NSW industrial officer Peter McPherson said Hunter workers were already struggling with increased living costs and were not prepared to accept the Government's wage offer.

"They are angry about it," he said.

"People are already struggling to put food on the table and pay their mortgages."

Police signalled their anger to the Government yesterday by refusing to issue fines for minor offences.

Teachers, firefighters and other public sector workers also imposed work bans, overtime bans and stopwork meetings.

Rallies were also held in Sydney and Wollongong.

Newcastle Trades Hall Secretary Gary Kennedy said public sector jobs were not lucrative and the wage cap was insulting.

"The average worker in the public sector is not well paid," he said.

"There's a huge stress on services in the public sector.

"We need to continue the campaign to educate the public and to take the kind of actions, like the police and ambulance workers have done, which targets the Government and not the community."

Premier Morris Iemma has refused to back away from the wage cap.

He said 18 pay claims by different groups of public sector employees had been negotiated at between 2.5 per cent and 5 per cent.

Claims were only settled above the cap when departments could show productivity increases.

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© 2008 Newcastle Herald

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