Government workers who thought their six year nightmare of downsizing and restructuring was coming to an end have learned they were mistaken. On October 14 Premier Ralph Klein announced yet another round of reorganization for the government service.

This reorganization, a product of Energy Minister Steve West’s Reorganization Secretariat, would centralize various functions previously carried out by individual ministries. After centralization to a body called the Alberta Corporate Services Centre, some or all of these functions would be outsourced to private sector contractors. Mr. West has so far been unwilling to come forward to justify or explain the logic of this proposal.

The Alberta Union of Provincial Employees has reacted angrily to the proposal, citing the sacrifices made by these same workers in the government’s right against the deficit. AUPE President Dan MacLennan called it "a bad decision for Government in every sense."

AUPE has questioned the logic behind the restructuring. In previous years, the government invested heavily in information technology in order to decentralize functions to individual departments. This decentralization was carried out in the name of increased flexibility and efficiency. In a bulletin circulated to its members, the Union has challenged the logic behind this latest reversal of direction by the government:

"In other words, after spending millions of dollars to decentralize functions like finance, human resources, and benefits and payroll to the departments, the government is now going to turn around and reverse this process by creating the ACSC!"

It was a different story last June, when Premier Klein and Treasurer Stockwell Day stood on the steps of the Legislature and thanked government and public sector workers for their sacrifices. While thousands of those workers looked on, lunching on free pop and hotdogs, the two politicians cut up a giant credit card symbolizing Alberta’s net debt. The debt was eliminated largely at the expense of government workers, who saw thousands of their coworkers laid off, while real wages plummeted in the face of salary rollbacks and inflation.

The announcement of this latest round of cuts coincides with a wage offer of 1% (plus performance bonuses) for government workers in their current round of bargaining. Taken together, the two events amount to a slap in the face for AUPE members in the General Services.

The Union is preparing to mount a campaign to educate and mobilize its members. As one staffer put it:

"Our members thought that after the last six years, we would finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. It turned out to be Steve West with a can of gas and a match!"