Bermuda trades union leaders have warned that the SAGE Commission’s plans to streamline Government could affect more than 1,700 jobs — and warned of a fightback if massive cuts are imposed.

The grim prediction came after the commission report recommended privatising seven Government departments and outsourcing ten other services presently part of the public service.

BIU president Chris Furbert said: “That affects some 1,720 employees that work for the Bermuda Government — that should concern people who work in organised labour and people work in unorganised labour.”

Mr Furbert added that selling off the loss-making bus service would require job losses of up to 25 percent and double fares just for a private sector operator to break even.

He said: “That impacts not only the workforce, but the Bermuda public at large. While we understand the need for dialogue, we have to be very careful not to to turn the dial too far to the left or the right.”

Mr Furbert added: “Now we want to move the dial too far to the other extreme — are we now going to look at getting a reasonable bottom line and putting people out of work? Where are these people going to go?”

And he said: “Any time you look at privatising and outsourcing, it’s union-busting — I don’t care how you slice it, that’s what it is.”

BPSU president Kevin Grant added: “My particular thing is that you can’t automatically take all of this business acumen and plop it into the Civil Service. Although we can appreciate some of the business acumen putting these proposals forward, but we can’t plop it into the Civil Service.”

The two were speaking as the Bermuda Trade Union Congress (BTUC) unveiled its response to the 140-page SAGE report, which was released last week.

And BPSU general secretary Ed Ball said the public needed to be educated on the effects of privatisation and outsourcing elsewhere.

Mr Ball said: “What interests me about Bermuda is that we don’t fully understand concepts — privatisation failed in the UK, it’s failed all over the world.”

He added: “Some of these recommendations, no one can figure out where they came from. The public has a right to expect the Civil Service to provide a service to them.”

And Mr Ball said: “If you want to see your brothers and sisters and aunts removed from the Civil Service, you better have deep pockets to support their mortgages and their children overseas in school.”

A joint statement by the BTUC said: “The SAGE report calls for collective sacrifices. However, if we are not careful we will produce a nimble Government and a downtrodden population.

“The recommendations require job losses, wage freezes, pension contribution increases and cost of living increases.”

And the response warned: “The net effect of all this could have a boost of savings whilst giving a lethal injection to social services that benefit the most disadvantaged among us.”

It added: “Although leadership accountability is critical for sustainable social good, governments are not businesses and cannot be governed strictly by economic cost-benefit analyses that drive corporations.

“A sustainable and successful Bermuda must be founded on humane and prosperous ideas including caring for ‘the least of these’ in our society and delivering services of quality health, competitive education and life-affirming critical social services that demand not merely fiscal tightness.

“The BTUC cannot take for granted that the Government is committed to these principles that will drastically roll back union gains, especially in the light of our history and fiscal trajectory, then we will be left no other alternative but to explore all options to fight retroactive measures of harm to all workers.”

The response added: “Our initial review of the report submitted by the SAGE Commission is that it is a minute step in the right direction.

“However, collectively, the Bermuda Trade Union Congress (BTUC) cannot and will not stand helplessly by whilst systematic work-related injustices and barefaced anti-labour policies are subtly injected back into our society under the guise of making collective sacrifices.

“This report purports to provide economic and social remedies for the fiscal challenges in which Bermuda has found itself.

“If this SAGE report bears good fruit then Bermuda will become a better place for all Bermudians.

“Yet it appears that preferential option is given to debt reduction without holistically addressing the poverty/wealth gap of entrenched structural inequality for workers.”

The union response was presented by BTUC chairman Allan Wilkinson, Mr Furbert, Mr Grant, Mr Ball and Bermuda Police Association vice-chairman Carl Neblett.