Termidity, audacity, effrontery – all suitable words for the ongoing Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) labour action.
I just can’t wrap my head around this strike which, like the strike that hobbled the supply to BC Liquor stores in the height of summer last year, are nothing more than gangster-level hostage takings of Canadians.
It reduces even further my already low estimation of the ethical orientation of many unions.
The traditional union model sorely needs a rethink and reorientation in my view. The adversarial approach to labour relations is simply not fit for purpose anymore, particularly in the case of white collar government workers.
Let’s be perfectly clear about one thing: Every single Canadian suffered to varying degrees from the pandemic lockdowns (barring the ultra rich of course, who, like Galen Weston just continued to obscenely grow his wealth).
And what especially galls me is the fact that many of these over 300,000 civil servants were set up to work from home, not unlike their white collar private sector compatriots.
These government workers kept their jobs, their salaries, their benefits, their retirement plans, yet their productivity was clearly questionable.
One need only to look at immigration applications for instance that went from a 6-8 month timeframe to as much as 2 years, or passport applications, and the list goes on. Just what were they doing at home?
If the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) is accurate, 90 per cent of these government workers received not only a pay rise during the pandemic, but many also received bonuses . . . to the tune of $559 million since 2020.
The second galling issue is that as an employee of the federal government these people already enjoy substantial benefits and salaries, better on average than the private sector.
Again, borrowing from the CTF’s legwork on the numbers, compensation for each full-time federal employee is $125,300 when factoring in salary, pension, paid time off, shift premiums and other benefits based on numbers provided by the Parliamentary Budget Officer.
That means there are now more than 100,000 federal employees taking home a six-figure yearly salary.
Clearly this is one of those situations where the grass is indeed greener on the other – PSAC – side of the street.
The Fraser Institute also did the math and their research indicates government employees receive 8.5 per cent higher wages than their counterparts working in the private sector. And they concluded that civil servants also have better job security, take more days off, have better pensions, and retire earlier.
And if that’s not clear, then there’s always Statistics Canada which indicates that the average hourly wage in Canada in 2022 was $31.96. Given a 40-hour work week and 52-week working year, that equals an average annual salary of $66,476.
This does not include benefits, but it’s probably safe to say that even with the addition of even the most generous packages would not bring up the wage to that $125,000 government wage.
So really the question at this point is why on earth do these people deserve what PSAC is demanding? Are these people so incredibly talented, so precious, so rarefied that they deserve so much more than their private sector counterparts?
Many of the demands are more than just pay rises, they want more vacation, an education fund for laid off employees, they want additional pay for working past the ungodly hour of 4 p.m., and the list goes on.
Polling by the Angus Reid Institute has shown clearly that while Canadians generally support many of the non-salary demands, they are quite opposed to wage increases.
I find this whole situation egregious. PSAC’s position is simply obnoxious and insulting to Canadians. When are we going to say enough is enough, no more hostage taking?
