Tasmania's Auditor-General will look into claims that hundreds of departing public servants are being short-changed.

The  State Government has shed 820 full-time equivalent positions in 2014-15, leading the Opposition to suggest that hundreds of workers could be owed thousands of dollars from the one-off payments and redundancy packages.


Labor MP Rebecca White says that the 500 public servants who took Workforce Renewal Incentive Program (WRIP) payments want to know if they may in fact have been entitled to a more generous deal.

"The whole idea behind a WRIP is that it's about renewing the workforce," she said.

"So when 498 people have been removed from the public sector, the expectation is you would see these jobs advertised, but unfortunately we've seen no evidence for these jobs being advertised to be filled."

Ms White says redundancy packages were often tens of thousands of dollars more generous than WRIPs.

"We know people with a redundancy received up to $200,000 in some cases, but other people may have been required to leave the workplace with a WRIP and received just $20,000," she said.

"As a worker who's left the public sector, you would ask questions about whether you were treated fairly."

The Department of Premier and Cabinet’ defition of  WRIP schemes say they should "re-profiling and reclassification" of public sector positions, defining redundancy as a "termination payment".

The Community and Public Sector Union's Tom Lynch told the ABC that there was a serious problem with the guidelines under which the WRIPs and redundancies were conducted.

"The redundancy guidelines were inconsistent and pay-outs varied between workers with similar levels of experience," he said.

"People on lower paid positions and older workers seem to us to be offered less than other groups of workers, and that was one of the flaws with the guidelines."

Leader of Government Business Michael Ferguson insists that the program of WRIPs and redundancies has been operated fairly.

He pointed to an internal review which found it had been conducted on the identical guidelines used by the previous government.

"The advice from the State Service Management Office was that no rules have been broken," Mr Ferguson said.

"We welcome the Auditor-General's inquiry into this, it's quite normal, the Auditor-General does dozens of inquiries every year into a range of government agencies and processes, and it's quite usual for the Auditor-General to have a look at this, and that's his job," he said.

Mike Blake has been appointed to conduct the review.