Saskatoon StarPhoenix

Lucrative wages at Crown corporatio­ns amplifying Wall’s troubles

- MURRAY MANDRYK

After Tuesday’s ministeria­l shuffle, Premier Brad Wall said one reason for reducing cabinet to 17 members from 18 was a saving of $450,000 a year — something his deficit-plagued Saskatchew­an Party government had to consider. Wall did have other options. He could have simply requested SaskPower to downsize by four or so average employees. No, this is not an exaggerati­on. According to the 2015-16 Payee Disclosure Report from the Crown Investment­s Corporatio­n (CIC) released earlier this week, 1,797 of SaskPower’s 3,777 employees in the last fiscal year earned more than $100,000. Total payroll was $344.8 million.

While much of the talk surroundin­g the release of the 201516 Crown annual salaries list revolved around the executive wages paid out by the publiclyow­ned utility (which are actually lower than private-sector equivalent­s) little attention is paid to the regular employees’ salaries, which, in the case of SaskPower and some other Crowns, vastly outdistanc­e average pay in Saskatchew­an.

Of course, the rationale given each year for SaskPower’s wages are that they are in line with private sector electrical utility wages for engineers, linemen and power plant workers. Also, wages at SaskPower are further inflated by ample overtime. There is some validity in this.

But there’s also a reality that SaskPower employees have absolutely thrived under the watch of Wall and his Saskatchew­an Party government, which is now scrambling with massive summary financial deficits and rising public debt.

To better understand this, let us go back to when the former NDP government first started publicly disclosing Crown employee salaries in 2004. That year, SaskPower had 2,397 full-time workers who pulled down a total of $176.2 million. Only 164 SaskPower employees earned more than $100,000 that year. The following year (2005), the number of sixfigure wage earners at SaskPower vaulted to 258.

When Wall and his Sask. Party took over in 2007, it sent a chill throughout the ranks of the Crown sector, which thought job and wage cuts were inevitable. As it turned out, they needn’t have worried.

By the end of Wall’s first term in 2011, SaskPower’s 2,701 full-time employees pulled down $291.8 million. There were 1,344 SaskPower employees making more than $100,000 in 2011.

Now, fast-forward to the most recent 2015-16 Crown salary numbers showing nearly 1,800 SaskPower employees making $100,000-a-year-plus — more than a 10-fold increase in slightly more than a decade. One might argue that rising salaries at SaskPower slowed slightly in Wall’s second term, but the fact is SaskPower salaries have continued to rapidly rise — something that can’t be said in the oil sector of late, or elsewhere in the private sector or government.

What seems clear is that cost problems at SaskPower aren’t simply about an aging infrastruc­ture that’s admittedly in need of a massive capital injection. Also in play are skyrocketi­ng salaries — again, much paid out in overtime — that have been gobbling up the equally rapid power bill increases Saskatchew­an consumers have been seeing for more than a decade now.

By comparison, SaskPower was the most lucrative Crown to work for in 2015-16:

SaskEnergy and subsidiary TransGas had 440 of their 1,138 employees earning more than $100,000. The total payroll was $96.2 million.

SaskTel, including subsidiari­es SaskTel Internatio­nal, DirectWest and SecurTek, had 697 of its 3,956 employees earning more than $100,000. Its payroll was $293.3 million.

Saskatchew­an Government Insurance, including the Auto Fund and Coachman Insurance, had 264 of its 1,879 employees earning more than 100,000. Its payroll was $129.6 million. In all, 3,293 Crown employees — including those employed at CIC, SaskWater, STC, SOCO and SaskGaming — earned more than $100,000 last year. The total payroll for all the Crowns in 2015-16 was $920.2 million.

Strangely, the salary costs at SaskPower — or at any of the other Crown corporatio­ns — are one thing that hasn’t been much talked about in the context of the post-2016 budget transforma­tional change that Wall and Finance Minister Kevin Doherty say might be necessary to bring future summary finance budgets back into line.

One wonders how long it will be before that changes. Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post.

 ??  ??

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Canada