Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) Yves Giroux calculates that federal spending on salaries and benefits for public servants in 2022-23 amounted to some $55 billion, or “about $130,000” per employee equivalent. full-time employee.
Before saying that the PBO is kidding with its big numbers, know that as an agent of the Parliament of Canada, it is “neutral, non-partisan and independent of the government, it assists senators and deputies in their work”.
Never mind, within the federal public service workforce, the 155,000 members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) have decided to call a general strike this week under the pretext that they feel underpaid.
They want 13.5%
The strikers are demanding a 13.5% wage increase for the three years from 2021 to 2023, while Justin Trudeau’s government is offering them a 9.25% increase.
What is the cost of their claims? This would represent, according to the Secretariat of the Treasury Board of Canada, a bill of $ 9.3 billion for the three years from 2021 to 2023, we replied to the journalist Antoine Trépanier, of the Right.
Per head of federal public servant, I calculated that this equates to an average income supplement of some $22,000. Based on the “cost of public servant salaries” projected by PBO Yves Giroux, this would bring the average salary of a full-time federal public servant to $152,000.
The average salary obviously suggests that some federal civil servants earn much less than the said average, and others much more!
Waving flags and placards with the conviction of being financially mistreated in this inflationary period, the 155,000 federal strikers are “hard up” against their evil employer, the federal government.
- Listen to the economic column of Michel Girard, economic columnist for the Journal de Montréal and the Journal de Québec at the microphone of Philippe-Vincent Foisy on QUB-radio :
Comparison obliges
The problem ? When we lead such a fight against the federal government, we are implicitly “fighting” against all Canadian taxpayers who pay their salaries and benefits with the taxes collected by the federal government.
And when we compare the overall compensation (salaries, pension plan, benefits) of federal civil servants to that received by other employees for similar functions, it is clear that they are better paid than the majority of other Canadian employees. .
What am I basing this on? On the 2022 edition of the report Compensation of employees – state and evolution compared published by the Institut de la statistique du Québec on the comparison of salaries and total compensation of unionized employees of the Québec administration with those of other employees in the Québec labor market.
Proof
Thus, for similar job categories (professionals, technicians, office workers, service employees, workers), federal civil servants who work in Quebec earn a total remuneration that exceeds by 11.6% that of the Quebec public and parapublic service. .
In terms of salaries, federal public servants earn 17.5% more than Quebec public servants.
The “federals” could allege that they obviously don’t give a damn that the civil servants in Quebec are really underpaid compared to them.
- Don’t miss the economic column by Michel Girard, economic columnist for the Journal de Montréal and the Journal de Québec at the microphone of Philippe-Vincent Foisy via QUB-radio :
Downright embarrassing
Where it becomes more embarrassing for federal civil servants to demand a major salary increase is when their remuneration is compared to that of the mass of employees, that is to say those in the private sector.
Of all employees, it should be noted that employees (salaried) in the private sector represent 76% of all employees in Canada.
Compared to employees in the private sector who work in Quebec in companies with 200 or more employees, federal civil servants earn 15.6% more in terms of overall compensation. This includes a 9.8% wage gap in favor of federal government employees.
Parenthesis: the wage and overall compensation gaps with the private sector vary depending on whether the employees are unionized (barely 18.6% of men and 10.2% of women) or non-unionized.
In terms of wages, federal civil servants collect 3.2% more than unionized employees in the private sector and 10.2% more than non-unionized employees. In terms of overall compensation, the gap in favor of federal civil servants ranges from 2.3% compared to union members in the private sector to 17.6% compared to non-union members.
Worse still, the wage and salary differentials favor federal civil servants even more when referring to employees working in companies with less than 200 workers, who represent more than 70% of all employees in the private sector.