Queensland Public Service Pay Freezes Or Sackings Hundreds of public servants will face a choice between pay freezes or sackings under the state government's contestability policy, the Together Union says. Secretary Alex Scott said a quarter of Work Cover staff, about 200 people, would need to decide whether to accept a redundancy or a classification downgrade by Friday. By accepting the classification downgrade, workers would be agreeing to freeze their pay for at least 10 years, Mr Scott said. The union has sought orders from the Industrial Relations Commission to push back the deadline. The hearing on the matter is scheduled for Friday. "This is clearly a taste of what is to come under the government's privatisation and contestability agenda," Mr Scott said. The government is trying to bully public sector workers into slashing wages and conditions. Queenslanders are generally doing it tough, [seasonal] unemployment is increasing and we are now having a situation where the government is saying we are not cutting jobs, when the reality is hundreds of Queensland workers this Friday will lose their jobs and this will be replicated across the board, in our hospitals, our schools, our TAFE colleges and our child safety system. Mr Scott said the contestability regime, where departments compete against the private sector to provide the same services resulting in efficiencies or outsourcing, meant there was a "gun to every public sector worker's head" - to take a wage freeze or lose their job. A spokesman for Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie, under which department Work Cover falls, said the organisation was independent from the government. "And decisions regarding its management are made by the Work Cover board and executive, just as they were under the previous Labor government," he said. This process began in July 2011, again under the former Labor government. Given the Industrial Relations Commission hearing on Friday, Work Cover could not comment. Contestability was one of the buzz words of the most recent state budget, with government MPs quick to assure that it did not necessarily mean outsourcing or job losses as it was a "process, not an outcome."