72 staff

The Herald reports:

More than 10 jobs will be axed at the Human Rights Commission under a proposed shake-up which could see its head office moved from Auckland to Wellington.

The commission launched an organisational review after the Government signalled it would receive no extra baseline funding until 2020.

Chief Human Rights Commissioner David Rutherford said the review aimed to determine how the commission could make human rights more relevant and valuable to all New Zealanders.

But the Public Service Association said the shake-up would impact on the commission’s ability to ensure human rights were upheld.

Staff were told Thursday that 10 full-time jobs would be cut, as well as a number of part-time and fixed-term positions.

PSA national secretary Richard Wagstaff said the scale of the proposal, which would reduce staff numbers by about 15 per cent, had taken staff by surprise.

“In an organisation of its size with only about 72 full-time staff, that’s a pretty big hit and will have significant flow-on effects in terms of workload and efficiency.”

I’m amazed that the Commission currently has 72 staff. Some of the work the Commission does is very valuable, some of it less so. But for some reason I assumed that it had around 20 staff or so.