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The weight of payroll is enormous in the budget of companies like the STM. Don’t you find it too easy to negotiate generous collective agreements avoiding problems and then to beg the government for money?
Peter D.
The perception that employees of the Société de transport de Montréal (STM) and other transit companies are overpaid is indeed widespread. We received several comments to this effect following our editorial on the deficit of public transport companies.1.
What is it really? The question is not easy to decide and we do not claim to do so here. To achieve this, it would be necessary to compare the working conditions of employees of public transit companies with those of equivalent jobs, taking into account not only salaries, but also vacations, holidays, the pension plan and all social advantages.
The Statistical Institute of Quebec (ISQ) conducts such surveys, but has no specific analysis of employees of transport companies.
The latter are instead included in the broad category of municipal employees.
Year after year, they sit at the top of the highest paid employees compared to their colleagues in the private sector (both unionized and non-unionized), provincial and federal public administrations, public enterprises and the university sector. This is true for both salary and overall compensation.
The gap between municipal employees and those in the provincial public service, for example, amounts to 25.7% for salaries and 34.6% for total compensation. It is considerable. This does not say, of course, if it is the employees of Quebec who are underpaid or those of the cities who are too much.
Once again, these conclusions apply to all municipal employees and not specifically to employees of transport companies.
Here are some figures and elements of analysis.
Currently, at the STM, a bus driver, metro operator or station agent earns $27.29 per hour as an entry salary, a rate that climbs (and peaks) at $33.59 per hour. hour after three years of experience.
In Toronto, by comparison, the collective agreement has expired and is under negotiation. The previous agreement provided rates between $20.12 and $26.10 per hour for drivers and station attendants.
It should be further specified here that a complete analysis should take into account all the working conditions. Also remember that the cost of living in Toronto is higher than the cost of living in Montreal.
The ISQ studied the salary increases included in the collective agreements that were in effect on December 31, 2021. Result: the employees of the transport companies could then count on increases of 2%. This compares to increases of 2.3% in the private sector, 1.9% for Quebec public enterprises, 2% in the university world, 2.3% in the municipal world as a whole and 1.5 % at the federal level.
Significantly, STM employees benefit from a defined benefit pension plan. These plans are the norm in the public service, but are increasingly rare in the private sector (87% of employees who benefit from them in Canada are in the public service, according to Statistics Canada2).
The STM recalls for its part that its employees are often called upon to work evenings, nights and weekends. She also affirms that the labor shortage creates challenges in retaining and recruiting employees, which was much less the case in the past. In engineering and information technology alone, the company says it has more than 130 vacancies.
It should be noted that the wage bill represents approximately 70% of the budgets of transport companies.