Liberalisation leading to massive job losses, says Austrian study

Liberalization of public services has led to a massive loss of Austrian jobs, said a study by the Workers Chamber (AK) on Monday.

In the past ten years the public services, facing increased competition, had laid off tens of thousands of workers while at the same time the new private companies had only employed a few hundred.

There had above all been a loss of jobs at the Post Office, publicly-owned electricity companies, and Austrian Railways. On the contrary, staff had increased in two areas not yet liberalized, local transport and waterworks.

The massive job cuts in liberalized public services had been accompanied by other measures such as lower bonus payments and company social benefits, lower starting pay for new workers, more shift and part-time work, and more job pressure.

While getting rid of workers, the public companies had not been able to save much money. Savings had been proportionally far less than the number of jobs cut, and in the case of Austrian Railways, spending on staff had even gone up by six per cent despite 20 per cent fewer jobs.

As an example, the study said that since 1996, the number of Post Office staff had gone down by more than 6,000, or 18 per cent. But the new private companies offering services formerly given by the Post Ofice had only hired a few hundred people.

The biggest public electricity company, Verbund, had meanwhile cut about 40 per cent of its jobs since the mid-1990’s.

AK spoksman Werner Raza vehemently opposed the government’s planned total privatization of Telekom Austria and partial Post Office privatization. He also rejected any move to privatize the waterworks and local public transport.