While the private sector fights inflation and declines in the dollar, the well-rewarded Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), its 155,000 members now on strike, is actually claiming it is hard done by.
The most recent Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) report notes, however, that “Compensation per full-time equivalent increased from an average of $117,497 per FTE in 2019-20 to $125,300 in 2021-22.”
According to Statistics Canada, though, the average full-time private-sector salary in Canada as of September 2022 was $1,175.37 per week or $61,119.24 per year for a 40-hour week.
Given some of the current demands from government union negotiators, the PBO estimates “the additional cost to the government would be $16.2 billion over 2023-2024 to 2027-28.”
While Canadians complain about their struggle to pay rent and utilities, plus put food on the table, a total of 312,825 federal employees received at least one pay raise during the pandemic.
More striking, the federal government handed almost $600 million in bonuses since the beginning of the pandemic despite incentive targets never being reached.
“Taxpayers can’t afford to pay billions more to fund a bloated bureaucracy,” said Franco Terrazzano, national director of the Canadian Taxpayer Federation (CTF). “Members of Parliament must speak out and reject the unreasonable demands coming from government union negotiators.
“Families are trying to figure out whether they can afford milk or ground beef at the grocery store and government union negotiators are asking for an extra $9.3 billion. “The government’s bargaining position needs to be absolute no to these demands.”
Demands from the union don’t come cheaply.
The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat provided the CTF with PSAC’s demands for increased wage and non-wage benefits across each bargaining group:
- “EB (Education and Library Science)] group – Eight per cent per year over three years. Compounded, this would represent a 25% increase over three years;
- “PA [Program and Administrative Services] group – Nine per cent per year over three years. Compounded, this would represent a 29% increase over three years.
- “SV [Operational Services] group – 14 per cent per year over three years. Compounded, this would represent a 47% increase over three years.
- “TC [Technical Services] group – Nine per cent per year over three years. Compounded, this would represent a 28% increase over three years.”
The TBS also provided the CTF with the cost of PSAC’s demands.
“Conservative costing of PSAC’s pay proposals and other monetary proposals (e.g. increase in overtime rates, expanded leave provisions) is $3.1 billion per year, every year, ongoing. Over three years, that would amount to a cumulative cost of $9.3 billion.”
The TBS also noted that “PSAC’s pay proposals and other monetary proposals (e.g. increase in overtime rates, expanded leave provisions)” would “represent an ongoing annual cost increase of approximately $27,500 per employee across the 119,000 employees in the EB, PA, SV, and TC groups.”
In addition to wage increases, the TBS told the CTF that “PSAC has a significant number of costly non-wage-related demands,” including:
- “Increased paid leave for family related responsibilities from 37.5 hours to 75 hours every year.
- “Accrual of four weeks of automatic vacation leave after four years of service, rather than after seven years of service.
- “Increased and extended eligibility for a variety of allowances and premiums, including shift premium and meal allowances.
- “All overtime paid at double-time, where now it is most often paid at time-and-a-half.”
The Public Interest Commission’s report also confirmed that PSAC is demanding a 47% compensation increase over three years for one of its bargaining groups.
The report noted that these demands “would result in an increase to compensation far beyond what is reasonable.”
