Stats NZ latest public service to face job cuts
Thursday, 16 November 2023
Stats NZ is giving staff members facing redundancy before Christmas just over a week to provide feedback on the proposal.
StatsNZ is one of the latest public service departments looking at cuts after Labour’s August baseline squeeze of 1-2%, as the threat of National’s additional 6.5% average decrease also looms.
Meanwhile, Crown entity WorkSafe, the workplace health and safety regulator, is cutting its staff by a fifth, with 113 roles to go and the new structure to be implemented in February next year.
National secretary for the Public Service Association (PSA) Kerry Davies said the cuts at Stats NZ would impact “vital services and create anxiety for scores of workers and their whānau within weeks of Christmas”.
“Impacted staff have just seven working days to provide feedback on the plans,” Davies said.
While the PSA was bracing for 39 job losses, the Tova podcast was leaked a consultation document sent to affected staff, with a potential 60 jobs that could face substantive changes, most of them proposed to be disestablished.
Stats NZ chief executive Mark Sowden said they had “recognised we need to do things differently”.
“On Monday morning, I spoke with all our people at Tatauranga Aotearoa Stats NZ about what the future may hold,” Sowden said.
The proposal went out to affected staff on Wednesday and to all staff on Thursday.
“We are now working through a confidential consultation process with impacted teams and staff before any decisions are made.
“After considering feedback from staff we plan to come back with our decisions on 4 December,” Sowden said.
The Post reported more agencies are stopping the majority of recruitment for vacant roles, such as the Department of Conservation (DOC) and the Ministry for the Environment, which is working through a review that will result in a 25% reduction in senior leadership.
Anxiety around potential public service cuts even filtered further afield, with an overseas Bird of the Century supporter reaching out to Forest & Bird.
Its chief executive Nicola Toki said a person from the US wrote to them with $100, saying hearing about the potential budget cuts to environmental agencies in New Zealand made him want to do his “small part to help protect your beautiful native species”.
Off the back of international media interviews after the Pūteketeke won the competition, Toki told The Post, “the whole world is watching, we potentially risk killing the pūteketeke that laid the golden egg”.
“I’m deeply concerned we're not putting our money where our mouths are.
“We have had a rolling series of governments who cant grasp the benefits that investing in our natural heritage provides. We know it provides tourism benefits… we also know that our brand hinges on this story we're told the world.”