The rising cost of living and the scarcity of labor provide both additional motivation and balance of power to public sector employees to seek more substantial salary increases. How far can this take them?
“There is no doubt that salaries have climbed the scale of priorities since the pandemic,” says the general director of the Order of Certified Human Resources Advisors (CRHA), Manon Poirier, “of Quebec workers in the public sector like others. Historically, it often ranked fourth or fifth, but today it comes in first place in our surveys. And since the scarcity of labor is still there, people feel that they have a greater balance of power. »
In their Salary forecasts for 2024, the CRHA predicted, last week, average salary increases of 3.7% next year in Quebec, after increases of 4% in 2022 and 3.5% last year. Some sectors appear destined to receive larger increases in 2024, such as wholesale and retail trade (4.1%) or professional, scientific and technical services (4.1%). Conversely, all public sector employees (municipal, provincial and federal) should not hope for better than 2.6%, particularly because their salaries will be determined by collective agreements concluded before the acceleration of the inflation and therefore still in force, explains Manon Poirier.
In the midst of renegotiations of their working conditions, the approximately 600,000 employees of the Quebec public sector will not have this constraint. And there is no doubt that the salary question and the evolution of purchasing power will have particular importance in discussions with the government, observes Patrice Jalette, professor at the School of Industrial Relations at the University of Montreal. “It’s been decades since we’ve had negotiations that took place in a context of high inflation. »
A gap of 5 billion per year
At the moment, the gap between the two sides is considerable. On the side of the common front, which brings together 420,000 workers, we are asking for increases equivalent to inflation for this year and the next two, i.e. 2% in 2023, 3% in 2024 and 4% in 2025.
The government, for its part, is offering 3% this year, then 1.5% per year for the next four years. This would be accompanied by a lump sum amount equivalent to 1.5% of salaries. Other salary and financial advantages equivalent to an increase in overall remuneration of 2.5% would also be allocated to jobs deemed to be the most “nervous”, with the result that they would be entitled to recurring salary increases higher than others.
For unions, the government’s real pay rise offers are 9% over five years, well below its own inflation forecasts. For the government, we should instead talk about an overall increase of 13% over five years which would cover the future impact of inflation. In total, it would cost him 7 billion per year, he said, notably due to an increase in expenses of 600 million for each percentage point of salary increase, while the union demands would, in the long term, amount to an increase annual expenditure of 12 billion.
According to the unions, the latest surge in inflation has erased all the increases in purchasing power that state employees have been able to achieve over the last 30 years, and the salary increases demanded would make it possible to regain lost ground and would promote a small, entirely legitimate enrichment. For the government, its employees are still about 10% richer today than they were in 2009-2010.
When inflation was a concern, it was common to incorporate some form of indexation mechanism into collective agreements so that workers were not the only ones bearing the risk of inflation higher than expectations, recalls Patrice Jalette. “These clauses had almost completely disappeared over time, but they will probably make a comeback almost everywhere. »
This is particularly the wish of the Common Front. A strong majority of Quebecers would support the idea, according to a survey commissioned by the union coalition. The government did not include it in its offers, but it did not formally reject it either.
The public sector and others
The last time that the Institute of Statistics of Quebec (ISQ) compared Quebec public sector employees to other Quebec employees was in November 2022. For similar types of jobs, and for companies with 200 employees and Furthermore, we noted a delay of almost 12% in salaries, but of a little less than 4% when we took into account their overall remuneration, that is to say the number of hours worked, leave, pension plans and other social benefits.
The Quebec public sector also lagged behind the private sector, with the exception of overall compensation in the non-unionized private sector, compared to which we had a 6% advantage. The comparison, in this regard, is particularly disadvantageous compared to the other public sectors, federal, municipal, university or state corporations (-20.4%).
Compared to 20 years ago, this situation generally represented a decline in salary terms, but an improvement in terms of overall compensation.
The overall compensation measure does not take into account the greater job security normally offered in the public sector. But this advantage has probably lost its importance in a context of labor scarcity where employers are competing for available workers, notes Patrice Jalette. “What is the real value of job security for nurses right now? Employee retention arguably has far more value to government than job security to employees at this time. »
The government does not agree with this idea. He recalls that job security has a significant cost for him and points out that the unions have never offered to abolish it in exchange for higher wages.
Doomed to be disappointed?
The unions and the government insist that the current negotiations in the public sector are not only a question of salaries. It is, they assure, at least as much, if not more, about offering better working conditions to attract and retain the necessary workforce and offer better public services. Faithful to customs in this area, they began their discussions on these points and chose to postpone salary issues until the end of the negotiations.
We will have to, on both sides, exercise a certain prudence in managing the expectations of public sector workers, observes Manon Poirier. The recent stories of workers rejecting the agreements in principle reached by their own union representatives because they wanted more show “that by saying that workers today have the big end of the stick, they can have expectations which their employers will not be able to answer.
“It will be up to everyone to know how to put into perspective all the working conditions that are offered and to sometimes know how to go beyond the 2 or 3 percentage points of salary increase more than we might otherwise have. be wanted. »
With Clémence Pavic