Workers are delivering excellent services at a huge cost said a report

Hundreds of public sector posts are set to go over the next five years as the States attempts to slash spending by �20m a year.

Members of the Transport and General Workers Union (T&G) are due to meet senior civil servants and ask them to reconsider the job cuts.

If workers are unsuccessful in getting their jobs back, union leaders say strike action is a real possibility.

So many members of the T&G met at Jersey town hall on Tuesday night that leader Nick Corbel had to address the crowd with a megaphone from a first floor window.

Mass meeting

The meeting unanimously approved a vote of no confidence in the Finance and Economics, and Policy and Resources Committees of Jersey's States.

They are set to hold a formal mass meeting at Fort Regent as soon as possible and are backing plans from Senator Stuart Syvret for an inquiry into the impact of tax increases and States spending cuts.

Cuts already announced include:

• Sixteen jobs from the Agriculture Department

• Fourteen jobs from the Parks Department

Karen Huchet from the States-funded charity Family Nursing and Home Care, criticised the way the States had gone about the cuts.

She said: "The communication has been poor as usual.

"A lot of what we have heard has been through the media."

The island has been demanding expenditure cuts for years Senator Frank Walker

Senator Frank Walker, president of the island's Policy and Resources Committee, said cuts were "inevitable".

He said: "We are seeking to avoid redundancy at all costs and we are certainly not looking to target the manual workers.

"The island has been demanding expenditure cuts for years and it is not realistic to expect that those cuts can be delivered without some services being cut and without some jobs going.

"What Finance and Economics, and Policy and Resources Committees is doing is responding to the intense public pressure that is being exerted on us, quite rightly I think, over the last few years."

A report in February compared the quality and cost of services like housing and health with places like Guernsey, the Cayman Islands and the Isle of Man.