Public servants await fall of budget axe Public servants will have to wait until the end of the week to discover if their departments feature on the federal government's job cuts hit list. An estimated 1262 commonwealth public sector jobs will go under the government's saving measures, but the Community and Public Sector Union claims that number would "pale into significance" under a Coalition government. Queensland CPSU secretary Bill Markley said union staff were liaising with departmental heads in Canberra to pin point where the cuts would be made. Mr Markley said he expected cuts to be made in defence, human services, the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO. "Departmental heads are already conditioning their staff, they have already sent out emails saying 'the budget is tight, we're not exempt' so they are preparing them for cuts as we speak," Mr Markley said. Mr Markley said it was not known if the cuts would be made through natural attrition, new losses or incorporated into cutbacks already announced, but he warned the regions would suffer from any additional job losses regardless. "That is the tricky part about this, even in a city or town the size of Townsville or Rocky or Cairns, 100 jobs in those areas is the equivalent of probably around 10,000 in a major capital city, just because of the infrastructure that they are involved in and where they go to look for other jobs impacts on the broader community," he said. If you look at the Bureau of Meteorology, they in some cases only have five or six people in a town, so if you lose 20 per cent of them that is only one or two people, but it is a major impact on both the workplace and the community. Mr Markley said the union hoped to have some answers by Friday, but warned the Labor cuts gave an insight into what would happen if the Coalition was in charge of the budget. "If this is what we are looking at when there are 1200 jobs being earmarked, the thought of 20,000 jobs or more, must cause a shudder throughout the whole Australian community," he said. There would not be an area I could think of which would not feel some effect.