NDP rebuffs Wildrose’s voluntary wage freeze idea

The Opposition Wildrose wants the NDP government to reopen its contracts with public- sector unions in an attempt to cut costs, but Finance Minister Joe Ceci says the idea is a non- starter.

While considering budget estimates for the Finance Department on Tuesday, Wildrose MLA Derek Fildebrandt pushed Ceci to consider going to the unions to ask them to agree to a wage freeze.

He said such a move would be in line with the province’s oil priceinduced economic slump, which has seen average weekly earnings fall and private sector layoffs mount.

“I am not asking you to break contracts,” said Fildebrandt.

“I’m asking are you willing to ask the unions to voluntarily renegotiate their contracts to share the burdens of these times together?”

The Strathmore- Brooks MLA said that if the government won’t try to reopen existing contracts, it should have a wage freeze as a goal when it goes back to the bargaining table.

The provincial budget released last week projects a record deficit of $ 6.1 billion.

The financial blueprint says public sector compensation, pegged at $ 24.9 billion this year, will grow by 2.5 per cent annually over the next two years.

Most major contracts have some time to run.

The Alberta Teachers’ Association contract expires in 2016, while those of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, Health Sciences Association of Alberta and the United Nurses of Alberta run out in 2017.

The government’s contract with the Alberta Medical Association runs to 2018.

Ceci, whose budget projects a string of deficits before the books are balanced in 2019- 20, said he would consider any ideas to reduce costs, but there is no point in trying to reopen contracts.

“There are collective agreements in place and my belief is that sticking to those collective agreements is better than what you’re proposing. At least the collective agreements are laid out,” he said.

“It’s understood what the costs are.”

The finance minister said the government will bargain new contracts in good faith, but he expects that in future negotiations, “both management and labour will be looking at ways to address the economic challenges we’re in now.”

Alberta Teachers’ Association president Mark Ramsankar scoffed at the Wildrose position, noting his members had no pay raise for three years under an agreement reached when high oil prices were buoying government revenues and average weekly earnings were soaring.

“I didn’t hear the Wildrose critic suggesting we reopen contracts to renegotiate our zeros so we could share in the prosperity of this province,” Ramsankar said.

The Wildrose wasn’t the only party to take aim at union issues in the committee hearing, however.

Tory MLA Manmeet Bhullar said the government is not getting a handle on labour costs in areas such as Alberta Health Services and the post- secondary sector.

“There is 26 different publicly funded post- secondary institutions ... it just takes one of those 26 to sign an agreement where they are being very lucrative, very generous and then boom, that sets the standard for everybody else,” Bhullar said.

Opposition parties have been hammering Ceci over his bigspending budget, accusing the government of having no plan to rein in spending and of basing its deficit- reduction scheme on optimistic oil price projections.

Fildebrandt questioned Ceci on whether the government would raise taxes beyond the steps it has already taken that were laid out in the NDP’s election platform.

Ceci said he was confident the budget’s plan to return to balance without further tax hikes would hold together.

“But if suddenly the economy tanked even further, the price of oil stayed low at $ 10 for the foreseeable future, we would probably as a government need to review all of our revenue estimations,” said the minister.

When Fildebrandt pressed him on the issue, Ceci said alternatively the government could eliminate personal income taxes if oil reached a high enough price, putting the figure first at $ 100 a barrel, then $ 1,000, and then $ 2,000 as the room filled with laughter.

“Hypotheticals like that don’t maybe get us too far,” Ceci said with a chuckle.