“Under premiers O’Farrell, Baird and Berejiklian, we have seen more and more services moving from the public sphere into the hands of private operators,” PSA general secretary Stewart Little said. “The Government’s privatisation obsession has gone as far as handing over care of people with disability to private providers.

“There is now no state-provided safety net for people with severe disabilities that no private operator is willing to care for.

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“We are also seeing prisons being outsourced. Not only is profiting from crime immoral, but as we saw in Parklea in Sydney, it is not a particularly efficient way to incarcerate felons.

“And we are seeing with job cuts to the South Coast Correctional Centre that even in public hands prisons aren’t safe from the Government’s cost-cutting.

“And cutting costs in prisons puts our members as well as the wider community at risk.”

The unions are also taking on a restructure of the state’s National Parks and Wildlife Service, which they say have been forced to haemorrhage experienced staff and replace them with junior workers on lower wages.

“In many cases, experienced staff have been offered a choice: take a pay cut or take a redundancy,” Mr Little said. “The result is firefighting experience lost at a time when the bushfire season gets longer every year.”

The CPSU NSW, which takes care of staff on federal awards, is also campaigning to reverse cuts to the state’s TAFE system.

“One of the world’s best vocational systems has been run down to give more room in the market for low-cost private operators,” Mr Little said. “As we have seen in many recent media reports, the best lessons these colleges have taught is be careful who you give money to.

“What was once a great avenue for young people not suited for university to enter the jobs market is now a shell of what it once was. And this is at a time when our job market is screaming for well-trained apprentices.”

The Illawarra was also the site the PSA launched its Safe Hands campaign to improve the state’s Child Protection system.

“In recent weeks the media has given extensive coverage to the botched roll-out of a case management system that is putting some of the state’s most vulnerable children further at risk,” Mr Little said.

The PSA and CPSU NSW members can be found, among other sites, in schools, jails, Service NSW centres, government offices, police stations, national parks, state forests, TAFE colleges, universities, roadside inspection stations and at zoos. Call 1300 PSA NSW (1300 772 679).