Provincial unions fear ’90s style budget cuts
The head of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees warned Friday government workers are in no mood to swallow a new round of cuts as they head into negotiations for a new contract to replace the current pact that expires this spring.
Finance Minister Doug Horner said just before Christmas that all aspects of government spending were on the table for review because the plunging price for bitumen was dragging down provincial revenues.
Peter Watson, deputy minister of executive council, sent a memo to all ministers and deputies last week asking departments to outline potential cuts of five per cent and 10 per cent to operational spending, although Horner said Thursday such percentage cuts aren’t necessarily in the offing.
On Friday, AUPE president Guy Smith said there’s been no indication from the government to the union’s 21,000 provincial employees that sweeping spending reductions are in the offing as its contract ends this March.
“Our concern is that the government doesn’t do a sort-of knee-jerk reaction like we saw in the 1990s with the huge across-the-board cuts we’re still recovering from,” he said.
“So, we’re not panicking. It’s obviously a concern but ... we knew it would be tough and we knew the price of oil was lower than they thought it would be — but that’s not a surprise either.”
Contract negotiations with the province’s teachers and doctors have already broken down because of the government’s declining fiscal
Our concern is that the government doesn’t do a sort-of knee-jerk reaction like we saw in the 1990s AUPE PRESIDENT GUY SMITH
position, while the current deal with the United Nurses of Alberta also expires at the end of March.
Finance Department spokesman Chris Bourdeau said Friday the government is not yet mandating public-sector wages and has left negotiations with teachers and doctors up to the education and health departments.
“Certainly that’s an area our minister has talked about already, that we’re going to have to look at salaries and look at what that means for these negotiations moving forward here,” he said. “And we’re tempering expectations that certain unions or groups may have around what they might see.”
Bourdeau also said that, because the government has gone back to departments to look for potential savings, the timing of the 2013-14 budget may be pushed further back than the usual February release.
The Progressive Conservatives’ campaign in last year’s election emphasized stable funding for health and education, the two largest components of the province’s $40-billion budget.
Horner has suggested even the commitments of stable funding for those sectors could fall away because of a revenue shortfall, although Premier Alison Redford has said health and education will likely be immune.
Wildrose MLA Rob Anderson is skeptical the Tories will significantly target health and education, given Redford’s campaign promises. And while the Opposition has been calling for fiscal restraint, he said an acrossthe-board cut of five to 10 per cent is the wrong way to go.
The government should instead be taking “low-hanging fruit” such as eliminating grants to businesses, freezing senior civil servant wages and extending out the capital budget timelines as a starting point for a longer-term balanced budget plan.
“The hole is so deep right now that it doesn’t make sense to amputate entire limbs of government because we didn’t get into this overnight. We got into this because of a decade of severe mismanagement,” said Anderson.