Public Sector Unions

[Edward Campbell]

While this is, tangentially, related to a few other discussions, I think it – the issue of public service unions – deserves a topic of its own.

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, is a report on political activism from a public service union:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/union-accuses-senior-tories-of-selling-out-national-security/article1869973/

Union accuses senior Tories of selling out national security

COLIN FREEZE

Globe and Mail Update
Posted on Friday, January 14, 2011

A public-service union is using Google to pose a pointed question to top Conservatives: Why are they putting Canada’s national security “up for sale?”

Starting Friday, anyone who Googles “Nigel Wright,” “Peter MacKay” or other prominent federal Tories will see a sponsored ad sending them toSecurityforsale.ca.
There, a government spy shot in silhouette complains that national security is compromised by a plan to contract out dozens of spy-service jobs in Ottawa: “Where are our assurances that these people will have the same loyalties?”

It’s part of massive publicity campaign focused on jobs inside one of Canada’s most secretive and unheralded institutions – Communications Security Establishment Canada.

The electronic-eavesdropping agency sucks up Internet, telephone and satellite signals in order to spy on foreign terrorist threats and safeguard government computer systems against hostile hackers. For months, the union representing CSEC has been quietly fighting a government plan to outsource 90 low-level jobs to a private consortium that’s building a new billion-dollar headquarters for the agency.

CSEC managers argue that these 90 jobs (which include security guards, tech-support staff and facilities-management crews) can be safely outsourced without compromising state secrets. They say the contracting out comes without risk since it doesn't involve technicians, computer scientists or cryptographers – all of whom are sworn to lifetime secrecy upon joining CSEC.

The union that represents some 1,700 signals-spy service workers argues that putting a rotating cast of contractors in close proximity to top secret files is beyond foolhardy. To make the case, it is rolling out newspaper ads and radio spots.

It’s also purchasing Google AdWords to target the prominent political figures backstopping the decision. This includes blaming Mr. Wright, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, and Mr. MacKay, among others, for the looming spillage of state secrets.

“Nigel Wright are you sure you locked up this AM? Yes? So why are we open to attack?,” reads one ad. “Peter MacKay, outsourced work won’t fly. It’s creating a security risk,” reads another.

The strategy was partly devised by Ian Capstick, a former political staffer who now runs a media consultancy. He said Google AdWords have been purchased for Dimitri Soudas, Stephen Harper’s communications director; deputy chief of staff Derek Vanstone; and other staffers in the Prime Minister's Office. The strategy also targets certain bureaucrats involved in the outsourcing decision.

The union says it is going public because its behind-closed-door efforts to sway the government to keep the jobs have failed. “We’ve exhausted every other option,” Union of National Defence Employees president John MacLennan said.

UNDE, an arm of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, represents employees of the signals-intelligence agency. CSEC is, in turn, technically a branch of the Department of National Defence, which is now looking to cut budgets and jobs.

The new CSEC headquarters is raising eyebrows in Ottawa for its impressive design and hefty price tag. It will cost at least $880-million to build from the ground up, even as larger security agencies such as DND proper and the RCMP are purchasing second-hand headquarters for less money.

Experts caution that buildings that house code-crunching cryptological agencies are not like standard buildings: They consume vast amounts of electricity, they warehouse legions of computers, and they have to be shielded to ensure no radio waves stray outside the complex's confines.

CSEC has also signed an agreement with Australia-based Plenary Group to build and manage the facilities over the next 30 years, a plan that includes privatizing the 90 jobs now being done by government workers. The union says the broader private-public partnership deal between Ottawa and Plenary will cost taxpayers $5-billion in coming decades – on top of the initial construction costs.

First point: I am not anti-union. Those who follow my economic posts will know that I believe that labour must be properly valued and that trade unions and collective bargaining provide the best available way to do that. I also support the unions’ fights for workplace health and safety.

Second point: I am, however, skeptical about the utility and value of public sector unions. The public sector, and regulated monopolies, can derive the value of their labour and workplace health and safety issues from the private sector’s examples. Traditionally the public sector employees sacrificed some percentage of salary for nearly iron clad job security. Then, beginning in the 1950s, they began to bargain collectively but the employers (governments at the municipal, provincial and federal levels) never demanded (enough) job security concessions in exchange for better pay. The result, today, is that public sector employees are, too often, better paid that their private sector confreres – something that should almost never happen – even though they are also much better protected from job loss.

Thus, I find this action troubling: overpaid and overprotected public employees are engaging in partisan politics; it needs to stop; better we need to decertify PIPS and PSAC and UNDE and CUPE and all their affiliates and return the public sector to an older, sounder model of labour relations: good job security in exchange for wages that lag (but not too far) behind the private sector. You want more money? Take your chances in the market place. You want security? Settle for a little less money every month.

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

For the most part I agree with you but, once again from experience, most times we have had private contractors hired for things in secure areas it turns into a goat rodeo.

I have several instances right on the tip of my fingers but since some companies still have their hand in the jar, and my best buddy just got a 3 day suspension for posting something THEY said was work related on Facebook, I should probably err on the side of caution.

As a handful have proven to me over the years, loyalty and ethic's can't be bought, but the financial consequences of losing $30 an hour compared with $12 and never being able to work another Govt. job are substantial. Maybe just enough to keep someone "solid".





Ya pay peanuts, ya get monkeys......

 

[dapaterson]

There's a good military connection here, too:  Mr Capstick is the son of Col (retired) Capstick.

This points out the fundamental failings of Canadian courts to respect workers rights - to work as a member of the public service, one must pay to support this sort of foolishness.  The Rand formula (as expanded and explained in Lavigne v OPSEU - Canada's Supreme Court does nto seem to think that freedom of association is infringed when one is forced to associate with a group as a term of employment) means that every public servant is required to pay the union for non-representational expenses and activities - even if one does not become a union member.

Interesting that these paragons of fiscal responsibility who critique this option don't provide the cost of their own alternatives; similarly, has anyone ever been able to find online copies of PSAC's financials?  One would think members (and those forced to contribute) would be entitled to see how those union dues are spent...

 

[Edward Campbell]

For the most part I agree with you but, once again from experience, most times we have had private contractors hired for things in secure areas it turns into a goat rodeo.

I have several instances right on the tip of my fingers but since some companies still have their hand in the jar, and my best buddy just got a 3 day suspension for posting something THEY said was work related on Facebook, I should probably err on the side of caution.

As a handful have proven to me over the years, loyalty and ethic's can't be bought, but the financial consequences of losing $30 an hour compared with $12 and never being able to work another Govt. job are substantial. Maybe just enough to keep someone "solid".





Ya pay peanuts, ya get monkeys......

I don't disagree that in some public sector jobs - especially those where the public servant may use the full weight and force of the law on my behalf - there is little or no room for the private sector. Public service values might be required. But that does not, in any conceivable way, mean that public sector employees need or should be allowed unions or collective bargaining, with its (inherent) right to strike. If a job is public then hire adequate people, pay them adequately and offer them adequate benefits and job security. If the job can, properly, be done by the private sector then let them compete for it. Maybe lower paid public employees are cheaper and better - maybe not.

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

Trust me Edward, I'd give back the right to strike in a heartbeat however do not fool yourself, the Govt. has far less loyalty to its employee's than the private sector.

I do good work for Joe's Garage and Joe is very happy because Joe's kids get to go to University as he makes money off of my labour,  no matter what I do for my employer I am just a drain on his/her budget, and his/her kids get to go to school anywhichway.....

When they closed the my old "building" the only reason we kept our jobs was their bungling and the Union exploitation of that, otherwise I would now be delivering drywall even though I, and most others, had been a great employees.  They screwed us over, [and the screw job they did on our non- union managers would be illegal for a private company to do] to assist their *cough* "friends" in the private company they had hired to run the new "building" thinking we would have no options and be cheap, trained and available labour for them.

Until that time I was as anti-union as a soul can be.....................


EDIT: and just to add an example, it would be closing CFB Trenton and letting go everyone posted there regardless of any circumstances while touching no one else in the CF.

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

I guess I should have actually had a point with my rant above,.... :-[

Don't kid yourself with the job security shtick,...like was quoted to me, "Remember you're dealing with the folks who can change the rules at any time".

 

[mariomike]

Thus, I find this action troubling: overpaid and overprotected public employees are engaging in partisan politics; it needs to stop; better we need to decertify PIPS and PSAC and UNDE and CUPE and all their affiliates and return the public sector to an older, sounder model of labour relations: good job security in exchange for wages that lag (but not too far) behind the private sector. You want more money? Take your chances in the market place. You want security? Settle for a little less money every month.

You do not always have a choice, if you want to work.

I was a dues paying member of Toronto Civic Employee's Union TCEU-CUPE. Outside workers. ( Inside workers belong to a different local. ) It was a closed shop. We tried to get out and form our own Separate Bargaining Unit SBU with the city, like police and fire, but it was impossible. 

 

[mariomike]

From News talk 1010
"Why we need to talk trash:
The Ford administration is taking the next steps toward privatizing trash collection in the city and it's a worthy experiment. But let's not rush things. The idea that contracting out would skirt city council would have sent Ford and his inner circle into spasms a year ago but everything changes when you get into power.

Splitting the city in two and running parallel systems for five years or so would be the best scenario. Private garbage collection has a mixed record in other jurisdictions and the usual pattern is for the price to come down in the early years and then start creeping up. In the end you arrive at a system that costs roughly the same or even more but finds its profit in reduced benefits for workers. You have to be a pretty mean-spirited person to think that people who collect garbage for a living should have their wages and benefits knocked down simply to allow a private company to pocket the difference.

What many Torontonians don't know is our collection service is already cheaper than most other municipalities in southern Ontario. It costs $72 a ton to collect solid waste in Toronto compared to $86 in Durham, $87 in Halton and $107 in Peel. Almost all of the other three are privately run. It's also significant to note that even though Etobicoke has private garbage collection the city actually receives MORE customer complaints in Etobicoke than the rest of Toronto.

The solution is to set aside the dogmas that one system is always necessarily better than the other. Let's take it slow and get the best value for our tax dollars.":
http://www.newstalk1010.com/shows/johnmoore/blogentry.aspx?BlogEntryID=10228593

 

[Edward Campbell]

I often (usually) disagree with Jeffrey Simpson but, in this column, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, I think he sees the situation clearly:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/when-politicians-campaign-against-public-sector-unions/article12288568/#dashboard/follows/

When politicians campaign against public-sector unions

JEFFREY SIMPSON
The Globe and Mail

Published Saturday, Jun. 01 2013

Watching the Rob Ford saga unfold in Canada’s largest city must make Canadians elsewhere wonder: How did he ever get elected?

Elections are never one-dimensional, so there were obviously many reasons, but principal among them was a contract signed by the previous mayor, David Miller, with the powerful Canadian Union of Public Employees ending a garbage strike.

That deal was the last straw for many citizens who came to believe that the inmates, namely public-sector employees, were running the asylum. They wanted someone who would keep taxes down and unionized employees in their place. Hello, Rob Ford.

Today in Ottawa, the federal Conservatives are making threatening noises about public employees and the management of Crown corporations. No longer, say the Conservatives, will they keep hands-off negotiations between Crowns and unionized employees. “Hard-working taxpayers” (the Conservatives’ favourite cliché) deserve to have their money better protected.

Whether politicians campaign against public-sector unions or not, the battle with them is now a constant across Canada. The gap within the trade union movement itself is wide and growing; and the gap between the degree of unionization in the public and private sectors has never been wider. These gaps explain a number of tensions that play themselves out across Canada.

Nationally, about 31 per cent of workers are unionized. Union density is highest in Quebec (40 per cent) and Newfoundland (39 per cent) and lowest in Alberta (23.5 per cent) and Ontario (28 per cent). Overall union density has dropped from 34 per cent 15 years ago to 31 per cent today.

The biggest gap, however, is between the 70 per cent union density in the broad public sector and 18 per cent in the private sector. As Jock Finlayson of the Business Council of British Columbia notes in a recent paper, “the probability that an employee in B.C. belongs to a union is almost four times higher in the public sector than in the private sector.”

In the private sector today, only 9 per cent of workers have defined benefit pension plans. The rest have defined contribution plans, hybrid plans or no plans. No wonder some taxpayers without defined benefit plans note grumpily that more than 50 per cent of workers in the public sector still have them. And these workers are fighting hard to keep these plans that employers have abandoned as unaffordable throughout the private sector.

A few private-sector areas (transportation and utilities) still experience high rates of unionization. Construction at 31 per cent and manufacturing at 27 per cent hover near the national average. The rest of the private sector has very low rates, and small business has the lowest rate of all.

By contrast, labour’s big battalions are teachers, university staff and professors, health-care employees, civil servants and social-service employees. These public sectors have rates of unionization that far exceed private-sector unionization. That sets up potential political conflicts within the union movement when private-sector union members, whose industries have been buffeted by economic downturn, watch public-sector employees protect their pensions and remuneration.

It was always a myth that unionized employees supported in a majority the political party, the NDP, backed by the union movement. In the recent B.C. election, Liberal Premier Christy Clark’s party carried interior and northern ridings where forestry and mining industries experience a 37 per cent unionization rate. Many prominent public-sector union figures backed the NDP, to no avail in the final results.

One challenge for all governments is getting productivity gains in the public sector. Baumol’s cost disease – an economic theorem often proven empirically and named after the economist William Baumol – shows that wage gains always outstrip productivity improvements in the public sector. Baumol’s cost disease poses a huge challenge for provincial governments, whose services – health, education, social services – are very labour-intensive.

That is certainly what happened in recent years in health care; productivity did not improve despite bigger paycheques for doctors and nurses. In universities, pedagogy goes on much as it has for decades, although incomes rise within the institutions such that they have an built-in (and unsustainable) inflation rate of 4 to 4.5 per cent. Prof. Baumol would understand.

Don't worry too much about Baumol’s cost disease, the fact that he's right doesn't mean there is any political will to change, but envy is a powerful emotion and look carefully at Simpson's statistics:

    1. 70 per cent union density in the broad public sector and 18 per cent in the private sector; and

    2. Only 9 per cent of private sector workers have defined benefit pension plans. The rest have defined contribution plans, hybrid plans or no plans; more than 50 per cent of workers in the public sector still have them.

That, the envy factor, is what politicians want to exploit. If, in the process, they can mange to bring some reasonable level of productivity to public sector work that's a nice bonus ~ and remember that what we define as productive in the public sector might surprise us all.

It is always a fallacy to suggest that we should run government like a business and nowhere is the fallacy more clear than in deciding what is productive. Just consider national defence: there is pretty much nothing that is less productive or more wasteful than military spending, but we do it because we understand that, despite its poor totally unproductive nature we need to have a military, just like we need a fire department and home insurance.

 

[George Wallace]

I often (usually) disagree with Jeffrey Simpson but, in this column, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, I think he sees the situation clearly:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/when-politicians-campaign-against-public-sector-unions/article12288568/#dashboard/follows/

Don't worry too much about Baumol’s cost disease, the fact that he's right doesn't mean there is any political will to change, but envy is a powerful emotion and look carefully at Simpson's statistics:

    1. 70 per cent union density in the broad public sector and 18 per cent in the private sector; and

    2. Only 9 per cent of private sector workers have defined benefit pension plans. The rest have defined contribution plans, hybrid plans or no plans; more than 50 per cent of workers in the public sector still have them.

That, the envy factor, is what politicians want to exploit. If, in the process, they can mange to bring some reasonable level of productivity to public sector work that's a nice bonus ~ and remember that what we define as productive in the public sector might surprise us all.

It is always a fallacy to suggest that we should run government like a business and nowhere is the fallacy more clear than in deciding what is productive. Just consider national defence: there is pretty much nothing that is less productive or more wasteful than military spending, but we do it because we understand that, despite its poor totally unproductive nature we need to have a military, just like we need a fire department and home insurance.

At the same time, many Canadians have grown up with our EI and Welfare Systems and do not have the will to actually save for their own retirement.  The Government does offer Canadians tax breaks in the form of various "Savings" plans; RSPs, Tax Free Savings Accts, education savings accts for children, etc.  A vast majority of Canadians do not even take the most basic of plans into consideration towards planning for their futures.  A great number of Canadians would rather complain that some other Canadians are getting a benefit that they work towards, than work towards earning such a benefit themselves.  A large number of Canadians, seriously, need to be weaned off of the Welfare and Social Systems they demand and currently live off of.  While one part of the population is working, some as part of a Union, and contributing towards a pension plan, another part of the population is "draining the pot" by living off "Social Assistance".  If this were Biology, is would fly against all Natural Laws; where the strong would survive and the weak perish so that the species would survive.  Perhaps this is an indicator that our society is in grave danger of becoming "extinct". 

 

[mariomike]

Watching the Rob Ford saga unfold in Canada’s largest city must make Canadians elsewhere wonder: How did he ever get elected?

Elections are never one-dimensional, so there were obviously many reasons, but principal among them was a contract signed by the previous mayor, David Miller, with the powerful Canadian Union of Public Employees ending a garbage strike.

That deal was the last straw for many citizens who came to believe that the inmates, namely public-sector employees, were running the asylum. They wanted someone who would keep taxes down and unionized employees in their place. Hello, Rob Ford.

I retired before the strike* and "cut the gravy" became the unofficial slogan to many in the city. But, we did run into the occasional "I pay your salary" type over the years. From what I hear, it is much more frequent now.

Of course, we never argued with members of the public. But, as far as productivity was concerned, they really did not have much to complain about. Historically, we had one of the highest - if not the highest - Unit hour Utilization ( UhU is how our productivity was measured ) of any service in North America.

* Edit. As an Essential Service, paramedics in Toronto do not have, and do not seek, the right to strike.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

We just had our best employees surplused while other ones are left untouched. The message to the rest is that how well you do your job is immaterial to our decision making process. Needless to say our workflow is dropping. 

 

[mariomike]

We just had our best employees surplused while other ones are left untouched. The message to the rest is that how well you do your job is immaterial to our decision making process. Needless to say our workflow is dropping.

Reminds me of what one of our former mayors, Mel Lastman, was quoted as saying: “Try and fire them, you can’t. It’s jobs for life.”

 

[Colin Parkinson]

40% cut out here and 60% in the maritime's

A big focus of my G110 management course was the releasing of staff, taught by a CBSA director who did release staff caught doing naughty things. The big issue is following the process to the letter and knowing the process before you start. What we found here in one case was a complete lack of appetite by our HR staff to support and follow through on a release. Either HR needs to take over the process or get the hell out of the way. But the trend now under the Soviet Central Committee I mean Harper government is to reduce frontline manager authority.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here is an interesting infographic from The Economist

         

It is, perhaps, interesting to note that union membership peaked in the UK around 1980-85, after Margaret Thatcher came to power, but the precipitous decline (union membership was cut in half in 30 years) began during Mrs Thatcher's watch.

A more troubling graphic, and surrounding text, from the same article in The Economist ...

    Following a major recession, the NAIRU (non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment) often goes up. Periods of unemployment have lingering effects on workers, from a loss of vim to clinical depression. Time out
    of work can mean skills dwindle or become mismatched to the needs of the market; the skills needed by industries that flourish in the recovery may differ from those central to the industries which laid people off in the slump.
    All this means some unemployed workers will find it harder to get back into the workforce - indeed, some may stay unemployed until they reach pensionable age - and their presence on the unemployment rolls thus does little
    to hold down wages. So after a big crisis the NAIRU rises; inflation should kick in sooner rather than later.

    In the wake of the current recession, though, this rule of thumb has been broken in a number of countries (see chart 2). In 2013 the OECD, a rich-country think-tank, thought wage-driven inflation would kick in in Britain
    if unemployment got back below 6.9%. But joblessness was well below that throughout 2014 and average real wages still declined by 0.6%. In a 2013 paper Federal Reserve economists estimated a stable unemployment-wage rule
    for America: every percentage-point reduction in unemployment should lift inflation by 0.3% over the next year. But despite the fact that joblessness has fallen by more than two percentage points since then, median hourly wages
    were the same in the first quarter of 2015 as a year earlier. In Japan, unemployment averaged 3.6% in 2014, well below its pre-crisis average, but real pay fell by 2.5%.

         

    Odd, but if temporary perhaps not too troubling. And there is evidence that real-terms wages might now be shaking off their sloth. In late February IG Metall, Germany’s largest union, brokered a 3.4% raise for its members,
    well above the current inflation rate, 0.3%. The latest British data show average salaries up by 1.7% in a year; with inflation close to zero this is a decent real-terms rise. In America, average real pay is up by 2.2% over the past year.
    If this continues as unemployment falls it would mean a return to pre-crash normality, with sustained wage inflation eventually triggering central-bank interest-rate hikes.

    There is, though, another possibility; that the recent hints of a wages bump are largely an artefact of unexpectedly low inflation, and that the underlying wage stagnation continues. Average pay data in America and Britain may
    be hiding the continuing plight of the median worker behind the success of the most sought after. It may be that the damage this recession did to the labour market—the loss of skills and the mismatch between industries where
    workers have experience and those where there are vacancies—is being expressed not in the form of long-term unemployment but as lasting low pay. If that is true, and low pay locks in, sustained inflation might not return even
    with low rates of unemployment. That labour-market shift would chart a very different course for central banks, which would keep rates low. It would also mean the politics of low pay could be here to last.

    What might account for a change of this sort? One likely factor is that, in many places, more flexible labour contracts make it easier to fill posts without raising wages. In Germany “mini jobs”—positions with pay under €400 ($440)
    per month - are rocketing. In Britain, “zero hours” contracts, in which neither employer nor employee commits to a fixed number of hours, have been becoming more common. By making it easier to fire workers these contracts
    aim to take the worry out of hiring. By making workers’ positions more fragile they cut bargaining power.

In Chart 2 we can see that America is "best" in that both productivity (measured by output) and wages have risen, but wages should have risen farther. Britain is, just barely, keeping it's head above water, and France is on exactly the wrong track. The 10% gap between output and wages is one of the main reason unemployment has fallen in America and Britain. The correlation between labour costs and employment is real and, pretty much, consistent across all markets.

At the risk of repeating myself, it is important, actually quite vital in my opinion, that we can get both the price and value of labour right. Unions and the collective bargaining process are an important element in "pricing" labour. But the process of "pricing" labour also opens management's eyes to alternatives and so we get automation/robotics and "out-sourcing" to e.g. India and Philippines. One of the reasons wages should lag behind output is that steadily rising wages without concomitant increases in productivity (UK circa 1980, France now) force enterprises to either move the work offshore or do it with machines. So the bargaining process, a useful aspect of trade unions, serves both labour and management.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

The major issues facing productivity in the organized workplace is policies, procedures and totally risk adversity by managers. Treasury Board has a policy for everything. Force them to start ditching their policies and put responsibility back to frontline managers.

Also having family and friends in private sector jobs the real reason private industry looks more productive is because of "ghost hours". A great deal of their staff work unpaid and unaccounted hours to meet imposed timelines or expectations. In my brothers company, he will be asked to estimate the cost of doing a job, he will calculate $200,000. Next week the boss will come back and say; "Great we got the job, but we are getting paid $150,000 and you have to come under that. So staff have to work extra hours unbilled and all regular hours have to be billed, but can't be billed to that project as it is running overbudget.

 

[Brad Sallows]

"Ghost hours" and "internet browsing hours" are mutually a wash.  The former are required to make up for the latter.

 

[mariomike]

I was a member of a public sector union for over 36 years. As our union negotiated our collective agreements with Metro, there was little discussion of  party politics.

From what I recall, members supported our union's active participation in the local political process. Members wanted political action to be about them and their needs, not about candidates or political parties. 
They, the members, wanted the union to provide information, not voting instructions. They wanted the union to downplay the party partisan rhetoric. To support the candidates who supported us.

I was never an official with the union or the department, but that is the way I recalled the political situation in our Local. I've been retired for over six years, so things may have changed somewhat since then.

I've never followed party politics, just my 2 cents on local politics. Which I didn't find particularly interesting prior to 1998.

 

[Pusser]

As I understand it, prior to the formation of the federal public sector unions in the 1960s, employee benefits were legislated and annual pay increases were based on a defined formula.  With the formation of these unions, this was all replaced by the collective bargaining process and as one public servant friend of mine used to put it, "we haven't seen a decent pay increase since."  I've often wondered what the results would be if someone were to compare the pay increases that the Public Service has seen since 1960 with what they would have been had that formula been applied every year instead.  Keep in mind that any study would have to take into account all the money public servants did not receive as a result of being on strike.

 

[mariomike]

Keep in mind that any study would have to take into account all the money public servants did not receive as a result of being on strike.

In the municipal public sector, in the city I worked, Paramedics have been unionized since 1917. The International Association of Fire Fighters was established in 1918. Police Officers since 1944.
All three have collective bargaining rights with the Employer. They do not have, and do not seek, the right to strike. They can not be locked-out by the Employer.
Items that can not be negotiated, go to binding interest arbitration.