Quebec civil servants paid less, have more time off

Quebec’s public sector employees make 10 per cent less than their confreres in the private sector, but their situation is on par with the private sector when overall remuneration is factored in.

L’Institut de la statistique du Québec unveiled its annual portrait of the remuneration of Quebec civil servants Thursday.

It was revealed, once again, that it’s thanks to their shorter work week and what is qualified as “paid time off ” (more numerous holidays) that the employees of the public sector do better. When only salaries are looked at, however, public sector employees are behind all other categories of workers with which they are compared: municipal civil servants, university employees, unionized private sector workers and nonunionized private sector workers, among others.

The institute underlined that the average workweek in the public sector is 35.9 hours, as compared to 37.8 in the private sector. At the end of the year, this difference works out to 2.75 work weeks less for public employees.

This year’s comparison takes on a special significance because it coincides with the negotiation period for collective agreements in the public and parapublic sectors touching 500,000 provincial employees.

In its counter offer, the united front of public sector unions is demanding a pay hike of 2.9 per cent for the first year. However, the statistics institute shows the expected pay raises in the private sector will be 2.2 per cent.

CSN labour union vice-president Francine Lévesque, who is in charge of negotiations for the public sector, saw in the institute’s figures support for their argument that public sector employees need to catch up in terms of salaries.

The statistics institute confirmed as well that working conditions have deteriorated for Quebec civil servants. In 2009 the gap between their salaries and those of the private sector were six per cent. By 2015 the gap had widened to 10 per cent.

As for global remuneration, which includes salaries, benefits and hours worked, Quebec civil servants have gone from an advantage of 3.6 per cent over their private sector equivalents in 2009, to an advantage of one per cent in 2015.

“It shows that the situation for public sector workers continues to deteriorate,” Lévesque said. “And the government can’t keep pretending, as (Treasury Board president) Martin Coiteux said last week, that it is not true that there is a form of impoverishment of public sector employees.”