40,000 protest austerity cuts in Sydney

Thu Sep 8, 2011

Over 40,000 New South Wales (NSW) public sector workers have staged rallies in Australia's largest city of Sydney against what they say is an attack on their jobs and wages, Press TV reports.

Carrying flags and holding placards, more than 40,000 Australian teachers, nurses, police and firefighters and bus and ferry drivers took to the streets on Thursday to challenge NSW government's plans to cut 5000 public sector jobs and impose a 2.5-percent wage cap for public sector workers.

The government says dozens of fire stations and hundreds of schools have closed because of the strike as teachers were the biggest group in the crowd.

Unions NSW Secretary, Mark Lennon said the rally highlights the deep concerns about the Government's unwarranted and unjustified cutbacks.

"Yesterday's budget demonstrated just how little respect the NSW Government has for public sector workers and the services they deliver," Lennon said.

However, Barry O'Farrell, premier of the state, ignored the calls, describing the demonstration as "pointless".

"It's just chaos for the sake of chaos," he told reporters.

Unions said similar smaller-scale rallies also took place across the state.

Australians in 2011 are under more pressure than ever before, working longer hours than they are paid for and increasingly having to take their work home, a new national survey of 42,000 workers has found.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.com/detail/198045.html.