Salaries at the City of Montreal | A third of employees earn more than $100,000

A third of full-time employees of the City of Montreal pocketed at least $100,000 in one year, according to data obtained by The Press. A proportion that has been increasing rapidly in recent years.

The overtime worked by police officers pushes the majority of them above the $100,000 mark, which partly explains this situation.

THE top 10 of the highest paid employees of the City of Montreal also includes five unionized police officers who all received more than $270,000, presumably by working hundreds of hours at double time. In total, they earned more than the police chief.

“The City wishes to be an attractive employer and compares itself to the market median in establishing the salary of its employees,” indicated the publicist of the City’s communications department Hugo Bourgoin.

A study by three HEC Montreal researchers dating from 2020 shows that the remuneration of Montreal employees is at the top of the municipal pack, just after Longueuil, Gatineau and Laval.

Municipal employees benefit from overall remuneration 23% higher, on average, than in the private sector.

According to Revenu Québec, 10% of Quebecers who submitted an income tax return in 2021 earned more than $100,000.

The CEO at the top

In total, 7,876 municipal employees received more than $100,000 in 2022, the year of the latest available data. This represents 33% of the approximately 24,000 full-time equivalent employees that the City had at that time.

Mr. Bourgoin specified that if all municipal employees (including part-time employees) were taken into account, this ratio would drop to approximately 1 in 4.

The highest paid Montreal employee in 2022 remains the general manager, Serge Lamontagne, with $345,000. Much more than the mayor of Montreal, who received around $212,000.

Mr. Lamontagne is, however, followed quite closely by three anonymous police officers who came close to $300,000 in income. These are detective lieutenants and detective sergeants, the City said.

The remuneration obtained through our request for access to information excludes employer contributions to the pension plan and group insurance, but notably includes bonuses, allowances and overtime.

Lack of police manpower

A significant portion of the 7,876 municipal employees who earned more than $100,000 in 2022 are police officers from the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM).

He notably highlighted that the holding of COP15 and the increase in events involving firearms in 2022 had forced police officers to work more and pushed many of them above the $100,000 mark.

The president of the Brotherhood of Police Officers of Montreal, Yves Francoeur, confirmed that his members had been in great demand to work overtime, particularly during the shootings in the summer of 2022.

“Every evening, I had around fifty duos for the firearms who were busy in overtime,” he remembers. SPVM police officers work at 150% of their salary for work done just before or just after their shift, but at 200% of their salary in other cases.

These compulsory overtime hours cannot, however, explain why police officers find themselves better paid than the head of the SPVM, underlined Mr. Francoeur.

“When we fall into these amounts, let’s say more than $200,000, these are people whose personal circumstances allow them to agree to work a lot of overtime,” he explained. They “make a choice”.

“The hiring of police officers made in 2023 and those planned for 2024 should allow the SPVM to get closer to full strength by the end of the year,” he continued. In addition, the SPVM is working on “a plan to reduce hours worked overtime” which should make it possible to reduce the bill “while not compromising the safety of the population”.

These data do not take into account the conclusion of the new collective agreement for SPVM police officers, which occurred last spring and included increases of 19% over five years.

With William Leclerc, The Press