Minister of Sports Responds to PSU’s Concerns Over Job Cuts

Anthony Mahler, the Minister of Youth & Sports, has responded to the Public Service Union’s strong opposition to potential job cuts at the Department of Youth Services and the National Sports Council. Mahler criticized the union for taking an uninformed stance, suggesting they should have reached out to him for more details on the restructuring plans. Speaking with News Five, Mahler highlighted that the P.S.U.’s concerns might have been better handled with some straightforward communication. He believes this would have helped everyone get a clearer picture of the proposed changes.

 

Anthony Mahler, Minister of Sports

“To me, and I will tell you this first, my father was a union leader, and my adopted grandfather was prominent union leader, so I come out of union households. I had a picture with me, with my placard protesting in front of BEC with my child when I was a dad. So, I respect unions, but how can you go public without picking up the phone and call minister, “hey what did you say really”? What is it that you want to accomplish. That is the true meaning. You get out there and say a whole pile of thing when you only hear one side of the story. To me if you have almost three hundred people working with both entities and most of the programs are failing miserably then something has to be done. I don’t believe in taking bread out of people’s mouth. There are those concession stand out there to build up people and I don’t believe in firing hard working people. But if you are doing nothing, a ghost worker, you go home and have no apologies for that. Should it continue? There are no final numbers, the youth department is a government department. The National Sports Council is a statutory board, so it is ran by a board and the youth department and just fire people. That is how it works. Unu know me as being stupid, from what you see, you know my work right, tourism zero to highest record right.”