Maitland MP Jenny Aitchison will fight alongside the Public Service Association to protect 40 Maitland government jobs from moving to Gosford.
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The NSW Government announced plans to move more than 300 positions to Gosford in April last year. Forty of those jobs were to be forced transfers from Maitland and 25 were to be transferred by natural attrition.
The government backflipped on the natural attrition decision in June, but the forced transfers look set to go ahead in 2018.
Ms Aitchison and the PSA launched a petition on Friday to urge the government to keep the jobs in Maitland.
PSA spokesperson Keryn Barnett said the decision would cause stress on employees and their families and would have a flow on effect to local businesses in Maitland such as hairdressers, cafes and childcare centres.
Ms Barnett said the aim of the petition was to “make Sydney listen” but to also inform the community about the changes.
Ms Aitchison said the government should be supporting jobs in the Hunter, which was suffering from high unemployment and a loss of jobs from the mining downturn.
She said at an average wage of $67,000, the job losses represented a loss of more than $4.3million in wages to Maitland's economy, which would lead to an economic loss of about $18.7million.
Ms Aitchison believed there was a good chance the government would change its decision, but the community needed to get behind the cause for that to happen.