Tory calls new cop contract good start in wage restraint
Both sides agree to study shift schedules — again
The city’s new collective agreement with the country’s largest municipal police service will cost Toronto taxpayers an extra $65 million over its four-year life.
But the civilian oversight board that negotiated the deal with the Toronto Police Association says the union also agreed to rare concessions that will result in short- and long-term liability savings of $203.5 million.
“This is a good start in containing the growth of police costs,” Mayor John Tory, who sits on the sevenmember Toronto Police Services Board, said at the force’s College St. headquarters Thursday.
While “there’s much more to be done,” the deal recognizes the need for effective policing and the scarcity of resources to pay for public services, Tory said.
The police budget surpassed $1 billion this year, 90 per cent of it going to salaries and benefits.
The 2015-18 contract was approved by 92.5 per cent of the association’s members. It provides wage increases of 2.75 per cent this year, 1.95 per cent next year, 1.9 per cent in 2017 and 1.75 in 2018.
The base salary for a first-class constable will grow to $98,450 by 2018, though an officer receiving maximum retention pay — an entitlement police retained — would receive $107,312.
Last year, 4,125 of the service’s roughly 7,800 uniform and civilian employees earned more than $100,000 after the province’s Sunshine List included paid-duty earnings for the first time.
The wage gains in this agreement are more modest relative to what has gone before, usually 3 per cent annually, Tory noted. Since 2008, Toronto police salaries have increased more than 20 per cent though crime rates have been falling since the 1990s.
“The police have agreed to a contract that has numbers in it that are much lower than we’ve ever seen before,” the mayor said.
The contract eliminates the 18 days of sick-pay gratuity for all new hires but employees on staff now can continue to cash out when they quit or retire.
“Eliminating banked sick-days for new recruits only is a cop-out,” said Christian Leuprecht, an academic who has studied police spending.
“The salary increase still exceeds that of provincial and federal publicsector workers, and key issues such as a permanent cap on the budget . . . and genuine modernization of policing work and governance are nowhere to be seen.”
The agreement establishes joint committees to look at the compressed workweek schedule and the requirement for two-officer patrol cars. A 2011 Ernst & Young efficiency report found a simple shift schedule change could result in $25 million in savings.
After a fractious labour dispute in 2005, the two sides also agreed to create a joint committee to “study” the shift schedule. This time, the board said the issue will go to an arbitrator if no headway is made.