From today's Guardian. The article speaks for itself. We have the mother of all trade union fights now on our hands:

Spending review: civil service cuts worse than fearedMore redundancies expected after Osborne doubles Whitehall cost savings to £6bn

Polly Curtis, Whitehall correspondent guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 20 October 2010 21.13

Thousands more civil servants are to lose their jobs than expected after the chancellor today announced that he had doubled his target for cutting the cost of Whitehall from £3bn to £6bn. The Department for Work and Pensions told staff they would be making up to 15,000 job cuts and the HMRC said they would be losing 13,000 posts.

The worst fears of civil servants were exceeded when the plans to reduce administrative costs rose from 30% to an average of 34% across Whitehall departments. This puts ministers under pressure to clear out their departments as soon as possible to start making savings by the end of the spending review.

Generous civil service redundancy payouts mean it could be up to two years before any savings are made.

Whitehall sources claimed there was no "masterplan" about where to cut jobs, and that departments were being left to make the reductions themselves. But one union claimed to have seen documents calculating 80,000 job losses over the next two years. Many will come through "natural wastage" – people not being replaced when they leave – but more will face either compulsory or voluntary redundancies.

Tax collectors were today told that 13,000 of the 69,000 posts at Revenue and Customs will disappear by 2014-15, with further details expected next month about how they will be achieved, including through redundancy packages.

Lesley Strathie, the chief executive of HMRC who has been forced to defend the organisation in recent months after widespread mistakes in the PAYE system emerged, informed staff in a letter, seen by the Guardian. She said: "I know how tough this autumn has been for all of us; not least because of the enormous scrutiny we've been under recently in relation to PAYE. We now have a lot more clarity about what the future holds for us and I want to put on record how much I, and all my ExCom colleagues, appreciate your dedication and hard work."

Cabinet Office sources insisted that much of the extra savings would come from other efficiencies. A freeze in spending on consultancy, advertising and marketing and a moratorium on big new IT contracts is in place until further notice.

Resources will be pooled across Whitehall, with centralised marketing, finance and property management pooled between departments and their quangos. Francis Maude, the cabinet office minister, has said there will be a centralisation of procurement processes.

But further job losses are expected to make up the bulk of the savings. The Commons will also cut its budget by 17% and MPs were told by George Osborne that they would lose their generous final-salary pensions.

Further details began to emerge of where the axe would fall across Whitehall, though many of the 500,000 civil servants will have to wait months to find out if their job is in the firing line. Leigh Lewis, the permanent secretary of the DWP, wrote to all staff members following the chancellor's announcement, informing them that up to 15,000 redundancies will be sought over the next two years. This is 15% of the 100,000 workforce at a time when the welfare system faces profound reforms.

The Ministry of Defence announced 42,000 civilian job cuts this week and there were reports of 15,000 more cuts at the Ministry of Justice.

The Foreign Office unexpectedly suffered one of the biggest immediate cuts and will have to save 20% this year, giving them few options other than to lay off staff. Sources in the department said they could be looking at as many as 25% job cuts. The chancellor said reductions in staffing would include London-based diplomats.

The union Prospect claimed to have seen government evidence that 40,000 civil service jobs a year would be lost for the next two financial years, 2011-12 and 2012-13. Dai Hudd, Prospect deputy general secretary, said: "The financial cost of redundancies on this scale is shocking, but the human cost will be terrible.

"Scapegoating public servants who have done nothing to bring about the financial deficit shows that the government is tackling the symptoms of the deficit but not its cause."

Today, the former minister and head of the Institute for Government Lord Adonis said cutting Whitehall at the same time as making significant reforms risked "plummeting morale" and a "slash and burn" approach to government. He cited the case of Sweden, which has been held up by members of the coalition as a model for cuts, where they protected civil servants in order to properly manage the reforms of wider spending reductions. "The downsizing unveiled this week represents one of the biggest challenges faced by British government since the second world war. Without fundamental changes on these lines, it will simply be about cuts not improvement," he wrote in the FT.



Jonathan Baume, general secretary of the FDA, which represents senior civil servants, said: "The government has announced potentially significant reductions in the number of civil servants employed across all government departments.

"However, it will not be clear how many jobs will go, or at what levels the cuts will bite – nor the potential for compulsory redundancies – until the departmental business plans are published over the next month."

"Morale will suffer at all levels of the civil service whilst individuals wait to learn about the impact on their future employment and the services they provide. Senior managers have a particularly difficult task in seeking to maintain the morale and motivation of the teams they manage, and in ensuring that services continue to be delivered to support ministers and the wider public, at a time when their own posts are also under threat."

Brendan Barber, the general secretary of the TUC, said: "Public servants did nothing to cause the recession, but will pay a heavy price today. Their pay has already been frozen, now they face half a million job losses and increased pension contributions that will add up to a reduction in take home pay. It is fantasy to say that these are 'backroom' job cuts that will not affect service delivery and quality."