New South Wales Premier Barry O’Farrell has offered a redundancy ultimatum for 390 public sector employees who he says are receiving a full wage despite not being employed in the area.

 

Mr O’Farrell has been forced to abandon the state’s “no forced redundancies” policy after it was found that hundreds of public sector employees were on a full wage despite not actually employed for any purpose.

 

The premier has announced that those on the ‘unattatched list’, employees who have left permanent jobs in the public sector but still remain in unfixed positions, will have three months to find alternative employment or can accept a $10,000 redundancy package to leave immediately.

 

Mr O’Farrell has claimed that the removal of the previous government’s ‘no forced redundancies’ will save the state $16 million a year.

 

It is likely the move to dismantle the redundancies policy will cause friction between the State Government the public sector unions, who are still discontented over the formation of new Government industrial relations laws.

 

However, Mr O’Farrell claimed that the new provisions will not effect frontline public sector workers such as teachers, police officers, health workers and rail workers.

 

“We are going to bring the NSW public service into line with other businesses and that means providing a redundancy system which is fair bus sensible” Mr O’Farrell said.

 

The new arrangements are due to start on August 1, and will make amendments to the previous Government’s laws that were introduced in 1996.