We are entering the season of municipal budgets and this column is, in a way, a preemptive strike.
Posted at 6:00 a.m.
In fact, every time I address the issue of municipal budgets, which I will do in my next column, I always receive a certain number of reactions highlighting the wage gap between municipal employees and other of the Quebec state. According to citizens and elected officials, this gap should encourage us to tighten the belt to cities. Let’s take a closer look.
First, let us specify that this gap is real. According to the Quebec Institute of Statistics (ISQ), the remuneration of municipal employees is 39.5% higher than that of Quebec government officials. However, you have to be wary of the headline and read the entire article (which you should always do!).
The first nuance to make is that we should never compare ourselves to dunces. According to the same study, the Quebec public service lags not only behind the cities, but also behind the federal, unionized private and public companies (Hydro-Québec, SAQ, SEPAQ, etc.), in fact behind everyone except the non-unionized private sector.
This is the real problem: the Quebec government has a lot of catching up to do. We will come back to it.
Here are two factors that explain the level of remuneration in the cities, factors on which the cities have acted.
The upward spiral
The salary of municipal employees is theoretically negotiated. Theoretically, because if the negotiations are broken off with the firefighters and the police, the latter have the right to arbitration. In his judgment, the arbitrator must take into account the working conditions in effect in similar municipalities — this is called the principle of external equity. Therefore, as soon as a city in Quebec gives a particular advantage to its firefighters and its police officers, it ends up being found in the collective agreements of all the cities.
But it’s not finished. As soon as this happens, the other unions in the city demand “internal” fairness, a fairness that is logically difficult to oppose.
Consequence: what the arbitrator gave to the firefighters and the police ends up joining the conventions of all municipal employees, and this is what is called the upward spiral1.
This negotiation framework, like almost all aspects of municipal life, is defined by Quebec law. Indeed, within the meaning of the Canadian Constitution, cities are creatures of the provinces, so they do not have their own field of jurisdiction like other governments. They must act within the strict legal framework imposed on them.
Despite repeated demands from cities for legislative changes to the bargaining framework, Quebec did not act until 2016. It is early to assess the impact of the new legislation, but there should be one, the spiral should be braked.
Pension plans
Pension plans explain a large part of the pay gap2. Once again, cities have long asked Quebec to allow them to rebalance employer/employee contributions so that the risk is no longer shared, for example, at 60/40, but at 50/50. It took the disastrous effects of the 2008 financial crisis and a great mobilization of mayors for Quebec to finally act, in 2014. Again, it is too early to know to what extent this measure will also have an impact on compensation comparisons. global to come.
The cities have therefore acted to have the means to better control their payroll, the future will tell us if they will have made good use of the new laws.
The real question
Now let’s ask ourselves the one question that really matters. Is it really a problem that city employees have such remuneration?
Cities now have one of the lowest turnover rates in Quebec. They will certainly come out of the labor shortage better than many other employers.
They are generally recognized as good employers. They did not have, in a crisis situation, to suddenly raise the salaries of their employees.
Let us now look at what happened in the Quebec public service.
The government neglected teachers for years and finally had to give them salary increases of between 15 and 18%. Same scenario with the nurses, where he let the gap widen so much with the private sector that he then had to give them considerable bonuses while increasing their base salary by 12%.
The low salary of daycare educators weakened the network, they were entitled to a catch-up of 20%. Same thing for the orderlies, whose government was pleased to have increased the salary of 23%.
The crises we are going through have clearly demonstrated the essential role of state employees and the importance of providing them with good working conditions. In my next text, I will talk about the budgetary challenges of cities: the level of remuneration of municipal employees will not be part of it.
1. The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), which represents 70% of municipal employees, has another reading of the situation.