What was music to taxpayers’ ears Monday morning will almost certainly sound like fingernails across a chalkboard for Alberta’s public sector employees.
Finance Minister Doug Horner told a room of party faithful during a breakfast at the Sturgeon Valley Golf and Country Club that the government needs to get its own house in order before it even considers any kind of tax hike. Just how will the government do that? Jacquie Hansen, Alberta School Boards Association president, got to the heart of the matter when she asked Horner how the government plans to deal with union pushback if wages are frozen for a few years.
Horner responded by saying the government is doing a reset and it would hold the line on wages until the private sector catches up.
The Fraser Institute recently reported that, on average, Alberta’s public sector employees make 10 per cent more than their counterparts in the private sector. Accounting for inflation, it would take three years for the private sector to catch up.
Earlier this year, the government announced a three-year wage freeze for all civil service managers and plans to cut 480 jobs. The government has set the fiscal tone, and it’s a tone regular Albertans want to hear.
Of course, union leaders are howling in protest and are already posturing as many begin their negotiations with government. Just before the budget was announced, the presidents of Alberta’s six largest public sector unions and associations warned that Ralph Klein-style cuts will have a huge impact on the services upon which Albertans rely. They contend the government has a revenue problem, not a spending problem, so don’t punish public sector workers with a three-year wage freeze.
Oh, really? When a business suffers a revenue problem, what’s the first thing it does? It looks at expenses. Back in the recession of 2008 and 2009 many businesses were forced to reduce costs. Staffing levels were cut and wages were frozen while the public sector carried on as if it was somehow disconnected from the rest of taxpaying Alberta. The unions are right – the Redford government is facing a revenue problem, so it’s doing the prudent thing and going after expenses.
The unions need to get with the program and share in the province’s fiscal restraint. The fact that the average public sector employee earns 10 per cent more than his/her private sector counterpart is one thing, but to expect the inequity to continue in the face of a large deficit is absurd.
The only thing the rest of us non-union, private-sector, 50- to 60-hour work week folks have to worry about is the Redford government’s ability to stick with the game plan. It’s going to get very ugly before it gets better. Stories of emergency room snarls and classrooms bursting at the seams will be trotted out before the public. What we won’t hear are stories about four-day work weeks, flex time, personal days, paid sick days (and sick day accrual), and pensions and benefits that would break most private sector firms.
Our challenge is one of fiscal restraint. Ordinary, hard-working Albertans understand and want this from their government. The Tories took a good first step and delivered a fiscally conservative budget. Will it survive the next step – a highly organized, politically charged onslaught from Alberta’s public sector? Will the voters who asked for fiscal restraint stand behind the government on this issue?
