Payouts to public employees in Whistler grew by millions in the midst of an economic downturn. Statements of financial information for 2009 indicate that the Resort Municipality of Whistler, along with a number of comparable communities, saw remunerations for their employees rise on the order of millions of dollars since 2007.In Whistler's case, the remunerations, which included salary, overtime and vacation time, totaled $20,278,306.25, up from $19,545,545.83 in 2008 and $17,488,725.37 in 2007. In 2009, remunerations took up approximately 68.5 per cent of projected revenue from property taxes, as the municipality hasn't yet prepared a statement showing tax revenue for 2009. In 2008 it took up 57.5 per cent and in 2007 it took up 55.8 per cent.
The reason for the rising payouts, said an RMOW spokesperson, was that the municipality was honouring a contract with unionized staff and an agreement with non-union staff that allots annual salary increases of three to four per cent. Other factors influencing the remunerations could have included employees acting in higher-rated positions and being paid a percentage of a higher position's earnings. The number of staff making over $75,000 also grew in the same period. In 2007 there were 47 employees making more than $75,000; that grew to 61 employees in 2008 and 69 employees in 2009.
"Municipal governments are completely out of touch with the realities of the taxpaying families and the salary increase is just a really good example of that," Bader said. "The Olympics may or may not have anything to do with it, but the reality is, this is a trend that's been happening for years.
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The rise in remunerations at the RMOW seems small when compared to the communities Whistler uses for wage comparison, but that was of little consolation to Maureen Bader, B.C. Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. She said Whistler already had the highest cost of per capita service delivery in the province - $5,085 per permanent resident. Bader said that's only getting bigger, although the number on its own doesn't take into account Whistler's fluctuating population as a tourist destination and the infrastructure necessary to service that population.
Asked why remunerations keep going up, she said that's due in large part to negotiations with unions. "The remuneration went up at all of these local governments in a big part because when it comes to negotiating with a union, city councils are completely gutless," she said. "Not only that, the management staff, the non-union staff has got a big incentive to let union salaries go as high as politically feasible because their salaries then go up even more." Brian Bonney, director of provincial affairs in B.C. for the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, said municipalities are looking to each other to decide what their wage increases should be. That's a problem when a local government like the District of Mission last year pitched a 19.4 per cent wage increase over four years to its employees as a first offer in negotiations with its union.
"The other unions in the Lower Mainland now whipsaw their municipality, say this is what we deserve because this is what Mission did," he said. "We get into a vicious circle of unions pointing to Mission saying, this is what they got, this is what we deserve. And municipalities do not have the basic power to say no." The result, Bonney said, is that municipalities are providing higher wages on the backs of local taxpayers - so much that around British Columbia, salaries for municipal employees is on average 35 per cent higher than they would be in the private sector. (more)
3 comments:
It is time for the provincial & municipal governments to mandate that no raises to public servants will be granted unless the unemployment rate is 5% or less and only comparable to the private sector wages from then on.
Perhaps a novel idea for future wage increases in a City in BC would be to put the Union contracts to a vote by the public, such as a referendum. Would be rather interesting to see how the public votes then.
Perhaps the answer is to get rid of "gutless" politicians!
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