POLICE HIKE IS TOO MUCH
Calgarians rely on police officers to keep them safe and to respond to emergencies. Still, given today’s challenging economic times, a 2.5 per cent wage increase can’t be justified.
These aren’t employees working for minimum wage, after all. A 2.5 per cent boost on top of a generous salary, along with enviable benefits, amounts to quite a bit, and it will be extracted from taxpayers who are having a difficult time making ends meet.
“The city was really bargaining in good faith. It was a really good deal. There was no downside for us,” union president Les Kaminski says.
If only Calgarians could express the same sentiment. The unemployment rate in the city is more than 10 per cent.
We’re told time and again that city council understands it must be reasonable when it comes to employee compensation. In December, Coun. Ward Sutherland appeared to acknowledge that past collective agreements were out of step with today’s reality.
Members of the city’s largest union, the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 38, got a four per cent wage increase in 2017, capping off a 12.5 per cent plundering of the public purse over four years.
“Is (the agreement) overly generous? Of course it is,” Sutherland, vice-chair of the city’s priorities and finance committee, said at the time. “In the near future, the unions should expect a completely different approach to negotiations. We’re in a completely different economic environment than we did the last four-year contract in.”
If Sutherland and his colleagues think a 2.5 per cent wage increase for unionized police members is acceptable but a four per cent hike isn’t, he should leave the bubble of city hall and check in with real people, taxpayers who depend on their bosses to make a profit.
Most Calgarians don’t enjoy the luxury of their employer ratcheting up property taxes to the point where many businesses are forced to close their doors and seniors are compelled to sell their homes and downsize.
Sutherland admitted the police union’s 2.5 per cent pay raise is high given “the current economic climate,” but said it falls within the acceptable level of increase when compared to other union agreements with the city.
That’s what the union leaders want to hear, of course. Now that the police have negotiated a 2.5 per cent wage increase, every other city public sector union will expect the same thing — if not more. And sadly, we’ll have to listen to politicians such as Sutherland tell us such wage increases are acceptable, even though we know they’re not.