Boards, universities under pay freeze pressure
Premier asks officials to follow lead
Saskatchewan school boards and post-secondary institutions are contemplating letters from the premier asking them to follow his lead and freeze senior officials’ wages.
“We trust that you understand the importance and urgency of this request and will exercise the appropriate leadership,” Premier Brad Wall wrote on Feb. 10 to the chairman of the Saskatoon Public Schools board.
The chairs of Saskatoonarea school boards and the University of Saskatchewan president say they have to prepare next year’s budgets before they know if they’ll honour his request.
“I won’t speculate on what the board might or might not do six or seven or eight months from now,” Saskatoon public board chairman Ray Morrison said.
Earlier this month, Wall announced a salary freeze for cabinet ministers, MLAs, approximately 2,800 non-unionized health region employees and senior government and Crown corporation managers in a bid to save $15 million next fiscal year.
He said the move was to set an example in light of slumping oil revenues’ effect on Saskatchewan’s coffers.
It does not affect any contracts signed with unionized workers.
Been there, done that, said the U of S interim president. The institution has frozen its out-of-scope employees’ base salaries for the last three years, Gordon Barnhart noted on Thursday.
“That’s not because of any request of provincial government,” Barnhart said.
The university’s freeze does not apply to performance bonuses or market adjustments the U of S sometimes tacks on for 41 senior leaders. Their pay has to stay competitive to hang on to talented people, Barnhart said.
He wouldn’t say yet whether the 296 non-unionized workers’ base salaries will stay frozen in 2015-16.
“If we don’t propose any, then there wouldn’t be any,” he said.
The University of Regina’s president has said that institution intends to honour the premier’s request to consider a freeze.
At Greater Saskatoon Catholic Schools, board members increased their take-home pay during the last two years to $24,000 a year from $22,000. (Diane Boyko, the board chairwoman, earns $29,100.)
Boyko said trustees have yet to discuss Wall’s letter and don’t yet know whether they’ll freeze their own pay next year.
“We have put our names forward to serve our community. The remuneration is a small part of that,” Boyko said.
Whether the board will hold the line on the salaries of the division’s 47 out-of-scope employees, Boyko said she won’t know until the division’s 2015-16 budget is prepared, which is usually by the end of June.
She wouldn’t say whether she is personally leaning either way.
On Tuesday, the Saskatoon public school board voted to keep trustees’ salaries the same in the 2015-16 year, Morrison said. Public board trustees have not increased their take-home pay since 2012, he said.
He was reluctant to promise the same for division workers. The last time the 50 out- of- scope workers went without a pay increase was 1995.
“When it comes to our out-of-scope employees, we have to look at the context of teachers’ increases, and all of our in-scope staff increases, and what the implications are,” Morrison said.
Both boards say salaries will remain unchanged in this fiscal year.