Fair play, the Civil Service way

Here's a good cash saving ruse I came upon recently, given to us by those caring guys in Whitehall.

There seems to be a major batch of restructuring going on across the board. I knew it was happening in Primary Care Trusts, but I have since discovered it is going on across local government as well.

What is happening basically, is smaller service bodies are being merged in new combinations to form larger ones with slightly different frames of reference to the bodies they replace.
Nothing wrong with that, you say. Cost savings to the taxpayer, surely?
And you'd be right. I don't really have a problem with that.

What makes me a little disappointed is the shabby way these synergies are being carried out. Because the new employers are slightly different and have different frames of reference to the old ones, all posts are being advertised anew.

This means that if three Human Resources managers in three PCTs are replaced by two Human Resources managers in two PCTs, it isn't true that two are safe and one gets a redundancy cheque. No, all three have to reapply for their own jobs (against competition from their own colleagues). This means that 'unsuccessful applicants' are owed no redundancy pay, and those who are not fully systemised can in practise be demoted and others promoted over them with no explanation needed.

I've never worked in the public sector, but as life goes on, I pity those who do. I've worked for some unprincipled charlatans in my life, but the ones Public sector employess work for, is on a whole different level.