A Swedish consulting team will recommend big staff cuts and an overhaul of the structure and management of the government's Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC).

But the union leader of an estimated 400 clerical, administrative employees among the company's nearly 3,000 employees warned yesterday that the retrenchments will be resisted unless it was clearly across-the-board but with big incisions among middle managers.

"Before we concede to anything with labour cuts, we need to get rid of some of the middle managers," said Danny Roberts, vice-president of the National Workers Union (NWU). "Nothing else must come before. We will not accept anything else."

A "bulge in middle management" as well as incompetent management were the major contributors to the JUTC's financial problems, Roberts argued.

Neither Sterling Soares, the president of the JUTC nor Dr Trevor Munroe, the president of the University and Allied Workers Union (UAWU), which represents about 2,400 of the company's workers, were available for comment yesterday.

However, Errol Lee, the JUTC's public relations manager, declined to confirm or deny the proposed lay-offs, claiming the consultants were still at work.

"The Swiss consultants are still conducting their findings," Lee told the Observer.

But highly credible sources insisted that draft reports by the consultants have underlined the need for "substantial cuts in staff" and a "fundamental reorganisation of the JUTC if it is to become a viable entity".

The JUTC was established in 1999 to take over what was a ramshackle bus service in the capital and while it has been credited with delivering decent public transportation, it has bled red ink.

For instance, a study by the consulting firm, KPMG, completed in June, reported that between its launch and February of this year the company had lost $2.63 billion. At the time it had a negative net worth of $1.3 billion and was running at a loss of $3.66 million a day.

Among the problems highlighted in that report was undercapitalisation at the start, over-projection of its likely passenger loads, the siphoning of income by illegal buses and taxis and a lack of clarity on the government's approach to subsidies to the company.

The KPMG document also pointed to technological shortcomings, management weakness, pilferage by employees and the need for staff training.

The study by the Swedes is more directly focused on the structure and operation of a transportation company, Observer sources say.

"They have taken a hard look at the company and are making tough recommendations," said one source.

In August the UAWU signed an agreement for a four per cent wage increase for the employees it represents -- including bus drivers, conductors and mechanics -- for the period between January this year and March next year.

Under that agreement management/worker committees were to be established at the JUTC depots to set and implement targets, to cut waste and reduce costs.

"We are part of a determined effort to bring the company to viability," Munroe said at the time. "Workers have a stake in its viability."

It was not clear yesterday how far these partnerships have progressed and if they had achieved savings.

But the NWU's Roberts was adamant that a major cause of the company's problems was the quality of its management.

"The management at the JUTC is totally weak and ineffective (and) it has high elements of incompetence," he insisted. "When you put in competent and trained managers that is when you can excise other aspects of the company."

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