A combination of arcane contract provisions, long time lines and inadequate description of the changes is creating a prolonged period of uncertainty that is going to hurt Ottawa’s economy and produce an unnecessary level of angst in the workplace.
As the graphic below illustrates, the procedures for reducing the size of the public service are complex. Those of us in the private sector are used to something a little more straightforward. The surplus employee is handed a cardboard box for his belongings, given a final cheque and escorted to the door.
In the public service, people are notified that their job might be affected, triggering a series of options. The really time-consuming one is where a group of employees must compete for a reduced number of jobs remaining in their section. Merit is supposed to determine who stays on, but the Public Service Alliance of Canada argues that what constitutes merit is ill-defined.
What we do know is that the workforce reductions we have been hearing about in the last few weeks will take about a year to complete. During that time, some public servants will be paid to do light duties while they use work time to look for other jobs. Others will be competing for the jobs they have now. That’s not exactly a recipe for productivity.
The process is perplexing for public servants, but no less so for the public. There has been story after story detailing job losses for Parks Canada workers, Library and Archives Canada employees, economists at Statistics Canada and many others. These are certainly not all the “back office” employees the federal government assured us would make up the bulk of the job losses.
Government could explain to us, surely, what the job cuts are and how they will affect services, but information has been scanty, at best. What’s particularly perplexing is the way the federal government is letting its unions own this story. The media are getting the details of the cuts and what they mean from the unions, which themselves have limited knowledge of the big picture. Naturally, the unions are focusing their attention on the cuts that will most affect the public.
As Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page has noted, MPs need the details on what jobs are being eliminated and what effect those eliminations will have on service to the public. MPs shouldn’t be expected to vote for the budget without knowing what its implications are, Page said.
The effects of the cuts will be felt across the country, but particularly in Ottawa. The lengthy period of indecision is bad for the local economy. People will rightly be unwilling to commit to major expenditures like buying a house or a car while they are uncertain if they will have a job next year.
Given the federal labour contracts, it looks as if there is little that can be done to speed things up, but the government is falling short in its duty to put these changes in context. The lack of information is contributing to an uncertainty that is out of proportion to the magnitude of the changes.
Original Article
Source: ottawa citizen
Author: The Ottawa Citizen
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