By Gil McGowan, AFL Staff

[EDMONTON] Alberta labour leaders are not buying promises that a newly-announced government reorganization scheme will result in "minimal job losses."

Audrey Cormack, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour, says the government is deliberately trying to downplay the significance of a privatization plan announced by Premier Ralph Klein in a speech on October 14.

The plan calls for the consolidation and possible privatization of a wide range of administrative services within the government – everything from human resource administration to computer systems support.

The reorganization initiative is being overseen by Vegreville MLA Steve West, who earned a reputation for cold-heartedness during previous privatization campaigns. West was the minister responsible for privatizing liquor stores, registries and highway maintenance.

So far, West and other government spokespeople have given few details about the reorganization plan – but they have admitted that as many as 285 jobs could be eliminated and another 1,400 might be "affected."

West has tried to downplay the impact of the plan by saying that most of the job cuts will come from "natural attrition" – but Cormack isn’t buying it. She says the privatization scheme has the potential to act like an "atom bomb" dropped on the provincial public service.

"Based on the information we’ve been able to gather from conversations with government officials, it seems clear to us that this proposal involves much more than a small cosmetic change," says Cormack. "What they’re talking about is privatizing a large portion of the day-to-day operations of all government departments. This has radical implications both in terms of jobs and the quality of public services."

According to government media statements, many of the so-called "transactional elements" of the government’s day-to-day operations will be centralized in a new agency called the Alberta Corporate Services Centre. Once this has been done, many (and possibly most) of these services will be outsourced to the private sector, said government spokesperson Peter Tadman in a telephone conversation with the AFL. Tadman defined "transactional" services as all those services that don’t involve policy-making or strategic planning.

"By Tadman’s definition, more than 75 or 80 percent of the jobs in the provincial public service are transactional in nature," says Cormack. "That means that thousands of jobs could be effected. We’re talking about many more jobs than the 1,800 mentioned by Steve West. This could be the biggest privatization initiative that the Alberta government has ever embarked upon."

Premier Klein has said that the introduction of the Corporate Services Centre could reduce administration costs by up to 20 per cent, but Cormack wonders if that is the government’s real motivation.

"Is this really about saving money or are they simply attempting to use outsourcing as a way to get rid of pesky public sector unions?" she asked.

Cormack also scoffed at reassurances from Klein and West that most of the affected employees would find new employment with private sector contractors.

"This is the Alberta government’s favourite dirty trick," says Cormack. "First they privatize a service and then they hire all the original employees back to work for the private contractor. The workers might be sitting in the same desk and doing the same job – but they are paid less and they loose their pensions and benefits. This is a shameful way to save money and it’s a shameful way to treat employees – especially at a time when the government is recording huge surpluses."

Cormack says that Albertans should be concerned about any plan that involves funneling huge amounts of tax-payer dollars to for-profit corporations who are, by their very nature, unaccountable to the public.

"Ralph Klein and members of his government have spent a lot of time saying that they’re no longer in the business of business. With this plan, it sounds like they’re trying to get out of the business of government as well. They seem willing to hand the keys of government over to their unelected cronies in the private sector. It’s a frightening prospect – and I think it’s time for Albertans to say ‘enough is enough’."