City could reconsider outsourcing
Union workers may benefit from public contracts collusion
Montrealers tuning in to the Charbonneau Commission have heard about collusion in the awarding of municipal public works contracts, fictitious extras that have driven up the cost of roadwork and kickbacks that city contractors have paid to city hall’s ruling political party and the Mafia off the contracts they were awarded.
In short, everything related to the system of corruption that surrounds road, sidewalk, water-main and sewer work in Montreal is being exposed in witness testimony before the commission.
Everything, except what can be done about it.
There was a time when the city turned to its municipal workers, and not private contractors, to do most of the building and repair work on sidewalks, roads, water mains and sewers, as well as park maintenance and garbage collection.
Now, as the public learns of the extent of corruption in public construction contracts, the city is taking another look at that method.
The city quietly set up an internal committee in December to study what part of the work it currently outsources to private firms can be “re-municipalized,” The Gazette has learned. In other words, the panel is looking at what work could be brought back in-house.
The tentative step came after the borough of VilleraySt. Michel-Park Extension decided in November to scrap plans to award a contract to a private firm to repair sidewalks in the borough this summer after the lowest bid came in 25 per cent higher than the borough estimated the work should cost, borough Mayor Anie Samson said.
The borough had already decided to put off sidewalk work the previous year when the lowest bid on that year’s contract came back 44 per cent higher than the borough’s estimate, she said.
So the borough council in November resolved instead to examine whether it would be feasible and more cost-effective to get municipal bluecollar workers to do the job this summer.
The answer, which came this week, was yes.
“We’ll get our money’s worth,” Samson said. However, she said the borough will wait to evaluate the quality and speed of the work before revealing how much it costs to do the work in-house versus contracting out.
Michel Parent, the president of the city’s bluecollar union, said it’s welcome news.
“City workers are the only ones who are accountable,” he said. “If the blue-collar worker doesn’t do the work the way he’s supposed to, he gets sanctioned. If the contractor doesn’t do his work properly, he gets a gift. He gets another contract to redo the work.”
Pointing to the state of Montreal roads these days, Parent said city workers would have no interest to do a shoddy job and create more work because they already have a permanent job.
Up until the 1980s, the blue collars did virtually all work on water mains, sidewalks and roads, including milling and repaving roads. Whatever they couldn’t handle because of volume was outsourced to private firms, he said.
From the 1990s onward, the blue collars went from performing about 70 per cent of the work on roads, sidewalks and water mains to doing 30 per cent of the work while private contractors did 70 per cent.
And under former mayor Gérald Tremblay, who was elected with the island-wide municipal mergers in 2002, the blue collars’ share of the work dropped to about zero. Montreal’s blue collars today only patch potholes and do some minor sidewalk repair, and even that minor work is shared with the private sector, Parent said.
It’s not like the city has saved money by outsourcing, he added.
A study by the union in 2003 showed that outsourcing by the 28 pre-merger island municipalities, including Montreal, totalled $185 million in 2001, the year before the mergers. After the mergers, outsourcing rose sharply during Tremblay’s first years in office, while all 28 municipalities were still part of the Montreal megacity. In 2004, for example, it hit $218.9 million.
The outsourcing included construction and other types of goods and services, such as engineering consultants.
And this year, the city’s budget for outsourcing is $366.7 million. The latest figure, drawn from the 2013 municipal budget, doesn’t even include outsourcing by the 15 island suburbs that demerged from Montreal in 2006.
Meanwhile, there are about as many blue collars today working in the nine boroughs formed from pre-merger Montreal and the 10 former suburbs that are now boroughs of Montreal as there were in pre-merger Montreal alone.
With a minimum staffing clause in their collective agreement, there were 4,060 permanent blue-collar workers in the nine districts of pre-merger Montreal. Today, there are 4,250 for the 19 boroughs.
In the 1970s, they numbered 12,000, Parent said. The push toward outsourcing began during the twilight years of Jean Drapeau’s administration in the mid-1980s, he said. It was that push that prompted the union to demand a minimum staffing level in the collective agreement, which it obtained through bargaining in 1988, he said.
Samson, who quit the opposition Vision Montreal party to sit as an independent in December, was a member of the Bourque administration in the 1990s. If it’s so convenient and less expensive to do roadwork in-house, why wasn’t it done before?
“Relations with the union weren’t easy at one time,” she said, referring to wildcat one-day strikes in the 1990s and early 2000s. “There was the minimum staffing clause in the contract, there were norms and the union was very powerful. We said if we give a little more to the private sector, it will put pressure on our employees to be more competitive. It’s like a scale that tips one way or the other.”
Parent, meanwhile, said the union hasn’t had a general strike in 20 years. Moreover, the province’s Essential Services Council dictates minimum services that must be maintained, even during a one-day strike.
Many categories of the city’s blue collars earn less than their private-sector counterparts, he said. For example, an experienced electrician working for the city earns $31.72 an hour this year under the blue collars’ new collective agreement. An experienced electrician working in the construction industry earns $34.79 this year under the salary rates set by the Commission de la construction du Québec, which regulates the industry.
Parent contends the benefits are comparable. The advantage for the city worker is the permanent status and the retirement plan that comes after 30 years of service.
Meanwhile, Samson notes an openness from the bluecollar union that suggests it’s possible to turn the page.
However, if the city is serious about returning certain work in-house, Samson and Parent pointed out the city’s organizational structure, which prohibits the workers in one borough from being assigned to work in another, will need to be revised.