‘A radical reordering ... of the public sector’
Legislated salary levels and reducing full-time jobs are critical in addressing Alberta’s so-called “spending problem” around the public service, the Mackinnon panel says.
The panel, led by former Saskatchewan finance minister Janice Mackinnon, dedicated eight pages of its final report to public sector compensation, bargaining and size.
The Alberta government spent $26.9 billion on public sector compensation in 2018-19, or about 55 per cent of the provincial operating budget. That figure includes teachers, nurses, other public servants and doctors.
“Public servants work hard to provide services and deliver programs ... (but) have benefited from generous compensation and other benefits including during the recent recession,” the panel wrote. “They need to participate in the government’s restraint plan.”
Alberta Federation of Labour president Gil Mcgowan said the report is founded on “hatred for the public sector.”
“The panel has gone out of its way to make its observations and recommendations sound reasonable, but make no mistake, what they are proposing is nothing short of a radical reordering of not only the public sector in Alberta but the entire provincial economy,” he said. “Right-wing ideologues have fantasized about implementing blueprints like this in other jurisdictions, but they’ve never actually been able to go this far.”
But Franco Terrazzano, Alberta director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, lauded the recommendations related to the public sector.
“We do need to see all areas of the government on the chopping block, whether we are talking about salaries and wages or the number of jobs,” he said. “Albertans outside of government have been forced to make tough decisions.”
The panel recommended the government consider more strategic and creative approaches to public sector bargaining, such as tying salary increases to those in other provinces.
Despite Supreme Court decisions “limiting the power” of provinces to impose collective agreements, the panel argued the government could use legislative mandates to exercise wage restraint.
In the event of a strike, it wrote, those laws would also form the basis for back-to-work legislation.
The proposals could spell more
labour strife for Premier Jason Kenney’s government. Alberta’s largest union has already locked horns with the government in a court battle over public sector compensation, after the legislature passed Bill 9 to delay wage negotiations guaranteed in the contracts of around 70,000 public sector workers.
The Alberta Union of Provincial Employees (AUPE) was successful in challenging the law, with Edmonton’s Court of Queen’s Bench slapping an injunction on Bill 9. The Court of Appeal is currently mulling over a government appeal.
Finance Minister Travis Toews wouldn’t comment on whether adopting the approach recommended by the panel could inflame tensions, saying his government has yet to develop its labour mandate.
“That’s going to be informed not only by the Mackinnon panel but our budget deliberations as well,” he said.
AUPE president Guy Smith slammed the report.
“(It) demands rollbacks and cuts for working people while the government gives away billions to profitable corporations,” he said in a statement.
NDP acting leader Sarah Hoffman took a similar stance, saying the panel’s recommendations are an attack against teachers and nurses.
“They didn’t talk about all of the zeros that teachers and nurses and other folks have taken over the last number of years,” she told reporters in Edmonton. “What they’re doing is ... coming up with ways to have cover so that they can legislate collective agreements, they can force back-to-work legislation, they can push people into unsafe work environments.”
Alongside wages, the panel discussed the size of Alberta’s public service. Between 2008 and 2018, the number of workers employed by ministries grew by about 13 per cent, the panel wrote, with wages relatively high compared to Ontario, B.C. and Quebec.
Attrition isn’t enough, the panel argued — the public service needs to shrink. “Implementing a comprehensive program review ... is a strategic approach that will result in administrative efficiencies and the elimination of some lower priority services and programs, which, in turn, will result in a reduction of FTES (full-time equivalent positions),” the panel wrote.
That review should go hand-inhand with considering “alternative delivery options for programs and service,” it wrote.
The panel also recommended lifting the salary freeze for non-unionized public servants, arguing it would ensure equitable treatment of all workers and help with recruiting and retaining staff