The head of Bermuda’s white-collar union has acknowledged that the Civil Service may be overstaffed — and believes that it must downsize in order to become sustainable.Bermuda Public Services Union president Kevin Grant also acknowledged that the union may be prepared to accept any recommendations to trim Government jobs — as long as the BPSU is able to carry out a full review of those recommendations.Last week the chairman of the commission set up to examine ways in which Government can become more efficient said that the Spending and Government Efficiency (SAGE) Commission would “have to give unpopular guidance about Government spending” and also pointed out that 70 cents of every dollar Government earns is spent on worker salaries and benefits. BPSU General Secretary Ed Ball responded by questioning whether Government needed to axe jobs, saying alternatives were available.But yesterday Mr Grant agreed that the size of the Civil Service had mushroomed in recent years and recognised a perception that it “has not suffered the hardship that has taken place in the private sector”.“We have to make sure that we have a sustainable Civil Service because we certainly can’t go on as we are,” Mr Grant said.“I am not going to shy away from the reality, and the reality is that the Civil Service has grown to a point where it is no longer sustainable right now.“There is also a perception out there that the Civil Service has not suffered the hardship that has taken place in the private sector.Mr Grant admitted that, because of a shrinking economy, administrative jobs that were once regarded as essential within Government, might now be unnecessary.“For example, there’s a lot less going on in the construction industry right now, which means that there are a lot less Planning applications being submitted,” he said.“So maybe, whereas a few years ago during the boom times you may have needed five people in Planning to process those applications, maybe now you only need four.”Mr Grant said a full review of staffing levels within Government would be required to assess whether the Civil Service had become bloated and inefficient — something that SAGE is examining as part of its remit.“I am not going to go out on a limb and say that the union will agree with whatever SAGE recommends, but at the same time I’m not going to dismiss the recommendations of the commission either,” Mr Grant said“We want to know what they say and then we would look at it from a union perspective and make our own decision. I can’t say that we would agree or disagree with what SAGE might recommend because each case has to be looked at on its own merits. We would have to see if a recommendation for job cuts was justified.”Mr Grant insisted he was not giving Government the green light to start axing jobs.“Maybe we need to downsize, but it needs to be done pragmatically,” he said, adding that jobs could be shed through “natural attrition”.“The BPSU has always insisted that working people will be the driving force of the economy and if you make people unemployed, where are those people going to go? If you start making drastic cuts you then have to start looking at things like financial assistance. And if you have more people out of work, that’s less money being spent in the local economy.”On the BPSU’s website Mr Grant also defended his members, saying that Government employees should not be “the scapegoat for the entire country’s ills”.“I have never shied away from admitting that within the Civil Service there is a need to improve performance and efficiency,” he said in a statement.“However, regardless of all the negative commentary there are many Civil Servants who carry out their day to day duties at the highest level.”