Government workers to vote on province’s offer

Ratification voting dates have been set for a new contract between the Saskatchewan Government and General Employees’ Union (SGEU) and the province.

The deal on the table for members offers wage increases of zero, zero, one and two per cent over four years.

The last contract expired at the end of September 2016, meaning the first two years without increases are partially retroactive.

Year 3 — kicking in this year if ratified — comes with a one-percent offer and involves a mid-year adjustment; meaning the first half of the year will see a 0.5-per-cent increase, with another 0.5-percent increase coming into effect for the latter half of the contract year.

Ratification meetings involving all SGEU members around the province will start next week and continue until April 17.

Saskatchewan’s provincial budget comes out on April 10, meaning a new contract will not be in place beforehand. It is expected the provincial budget will, however, have money set aside to pay for any agreement if union members approve it.

Looming over the contract negotiations is the government’s so-far futile desire to see a 3.5-per-cent cost reduction in the civil service. Part of the Saskatchewan Party’s three-year, back-to-balance plan — which Premier Scott Moe supports — depends on its ability to achieve the reduction.

(For the 2017-18 fiscal year, Saskatchewan’s government targeted $250 million in public sector compensation savings; but a few months later that target was reduced to $125 million.)

The tentative deal, of course, sees increases, rather than decreases but Moe has said he wants to save compensation costs through attrition rather than layoffs.

His stated target is a five-percent drop of compensation costs in government and across the Crown corporations.

Moe said, in his bid to become Sask. Party leader and premier, that any proposed policy straying away from a plan to reduce the cost of the civil service would need to have financial costing behind it because it would change the threeyear, back-to-balance schedule.

“If you make changes, there are subsequent implications,” he said in September during his leadership campaign. “I’m not saying we won’t be making proposals that may have financial impacts, but we are looking very much at how we could offset those proposals to ensure we stay on a three-year plan to balance,” he said