Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Public service $100K club nearly doubles

While ordinary Canadians were feeling the effects of the recession, the number of federal public servants earning more than $100,000 a year nearly doubled, newly released documents show.

There were 22,674 employees receiving more than five figures in the year prior to the economic crisis that began in September 2008. That number had reached 42,050 by 2010.

The rise in the number of high earners within the federal government comes as the Conservatives attempt to implement an ambitious cost-cutting agenda they say will reduce by $4 billion the amount of money the federal government spends yearly. Some government employees have already been told they will lose their jobs, while more cuts are expected in the years to come.

The documents showing these figures were obtained by the Citizen under the Access to Information Act.

The year 2010 was an anomaly for government employee earnings, wrote Anabel Lindblad, a spokeswoman for the Treasury Board, in an email.

The number of employees earning more than $100,000 was far higher in 2010 because the government made a number of retroactive payments to unionized workers for collective bargaining.

The government signed 26 collective agreements in 2008 and they all had to be renegotiated one to two years later, she said, making it necessary to make payments that can be as high as $10,000 to almost 250,000 workers.

"The increase in the number of public service employees who earn more than $100,000 can fluctuate wildly from one year to the next," wrote Lindblad.

However, the documents show none of the previous years back to 2004, when similar collective agreements were negotiated, saw such a large jump in the number of high-earners.

The Conservatives are now tasked with reducing the size of the bureaucracy after overseeing the jump in the number of high-earners within the public service. There were 19,509 federal employees earning more than $100,000 when the Conservatives took over government from the Liberals in 2006 - less than half the number they have now.

The public service job cuts will likely come at the expense of front-line services provided by employees who earn lower wages, said Larry Rousseau, vice-president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada in the Ottawa region, which mostly represents workers who less than $100,000.

"I think it's very, very worrying that we are hindering the government of Canada's capacity to deliver services to Canadians, while at the same time we don't seem to be doing it throughout (the public service)," he said.

A large percentage of those employees are reaching the $100,000 plateau due to the amount of money they earn in addition to their base salary. There were 20,693 employees earning more than $100,000 in salary for the fiscal year 2009-10 but that number reached 42,050 when items such as performance pay, overtime and other "pay entitlements" were included, the documents show.

Bonus pay accounts for 30 per cent of all money spent on paying federal government employees, according to an April 2011 report by the federal government's Advisory Committee on Senior Level Retention and Compensation.
What's unclear is the role reducing the number of salaries of government employees will play in the government's plans for reining in costs. Keeping salaries high is essential to keeping talented people from fleeing to the private sector, said one union head.

"If it's not being fair they're not going to have the ability to recruit and retain valued professional workers," said Gary Corbett, president and CEO of Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada.

The union represents a number of scientists and professionals who work in the public service, he said, including many of those who earn more than five figures.

Senior bureaucrats have been asked to draw up two scenarios for the funding of their departments. One involves cutting five per cent; the other 10 per cent.

The number of senior executives within the government is on the rise, but their numbers don't entirely explain the spike in high-earners. The number of employees designated as executives rose by 921 between 2007 and 2011, from 4,121 to 5,102, still just a small percentage of those who are earning more than $100,000 a year.

Origin
Source: Ottawa Citizen  

No comments:

Post a Comment