Provincial I-T workers expecting contracting out news

More than 70 provincial government I-T workers will find out this morning whether their jobs are getting contracted out.

Nova Scotia Government Employees Union President Joan Jessome says 73 union members from Truro, Sydney and Halifax have been summoned to a 10 a.m. meeting to discuss ‘tech change.’

Jessome believes that means workers will be relocated or laid off and their jobs outsourced.

She says another 35 to 40 non-union employees could also be impacted.

Premier Darrell Dexter will be making an economic development announcement later this morning, where it’s believed he’ll announce the outsourcing plan.

There’s speculation he’ll announce that IBM Canada is setting up shop in N.S.

Jessome told News 95.7’s Maritime Morning, early Thursday, that union members in Sydney have told them, the property they currently work in has been rented by IBM. It’s unclear if the company would have one or multiple offices in the province.

Jessome said the impacts of today’s announcement will be far-reaching.

“There aren’t too many Nova Scotians that won’t be impacted by this because it has such a wide-reaching span because it deals with payroll, social service cheques, it deals with government tenders, it deals with health authorities, housing authorities, municipalities, the HRM Water Commission and then all of the provincial government, including the retirees,” Jessome said.

Employees were notified of the possibility of contracting out in September and Jessome said rumours and speculation have caused the workers a lot of stress.

“They’ve been under this cloud now for several months and this has really taken a toll…and they’ve been very vocal about what they believe the impact will be to the province, the taxpayers and the services, so we will know a lot more when the premier holds his press conference this morning on this issue.”

The premier’s news conference is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. at the Nova Scotia Community College Waterfront Campus.

Jessome said while it’s possible the company that is awarded the contract to supply those services could offer jobs to the members she represents, whatever they’re offered won’t come close to their current job security or pensions.

She said the potential loss of expertise in government is concerning.

“We have some…high experience in the SAP system in government and we stand to lose that if they go to a private company and we don’t ever get that back. I mean there’s lots of evidence out there when a public service is privatized, all we have to do is go to Stock Transportation here in HRM to see what it can do, when you take a private company in for profit and they take the public service, there’s always an impact on the workers.”

Jessome said the members affected range from employees who have been on the job a few years to people a couple of years away from retirement.

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