The 2015 budget, tabled after months of delay because of low oil prices, estimates $900-million in savings from the disability and sick leave management system in 2015-16, with further savings of $200-million and $100-million projected for subsequent years.
Public sector unions started a new round of bargaining with the government last year to renew collective agreements. A new sick leave regime has been the core issue, one on which the unions are refusing to yield, and they’ve even come together in a solidarity pact for the negotiations.
Don Drummond, a former senior bureaucrat at Finance and a TD executive who now teaches at Queen’s University, said laying out the savings before the negotiations have ended is a “common ploy.”
“You set out the financial parametres and that forces a constraint to the process. It’s a shot across the bow, if you want to put it that way: ‘We don’t have any money, and in fact we’re assuming we’re going to extract money from the sector. Now let’s negotiate,’” he said in an interview.
With the major austerity period over, public servants may have expected some modest increases after hard times, he said, but the government “is clearly signaling” that’s not going to be the case and will instead “continue to tighten the screws.”
Public sector unions and other public sector observers have maintained that the Conservatives would happily make the negotiations an election issue, one that appeals to its conservative base that feels Ottawa bureaucrats have a better deal than most private sector workers.
Michele Austin, a senior consultant with Summa Strategies in Ottawa, said the budget—which will double as the Conservatives’ re-election platform—is the government’s way of telling its side of the story and publicizing the negotiations on its own terms.
“This is their opportunity to tie it to the economy of the country but also to lay it out in their strong suit, which is economic benefits, as opposed to union negotiation terms,” Ms. Austin, a former Conservative ministerial staffer, said in an interview.
The negotiations are an “Ottawa-centric issue” that won’t hurt the Tories outside the region, she said, and it meshes with the overall budget messaging.
“Clearly the message from this budget is keep the spending low, and that includes negotiations with public sector unions,” she said.
The budget document says the negotiations so far “reflect the government’s commitment to good faith collective bargaining” and says the priority is to reach agreements “within a reasonable timeframe” that are “fair and reasonable for both employees and taxpayers.”
“In the event that agreement cannot be reached, the government will take the steps required to implement a modernized disability and sick leave management system within a reasonable timeframe,” it says.
The current regime, which allows for 15 sick days per year with unused ones banked, is “failing both employees and taxpayers,” the budget says.
More than 60 per cent of public servants don’t have enough banked sick leave to cover a full 13 weeks of short-term disability, the document says; one-quarter have fewer than 10 banked sick days. Some long-time bureaucrats, meanwhile, have more “than they will ever reasonably need.”
The savings do come with a caveat: “As required under public sector accounting standards, the government’s liability associated with accumulated sick leave entitlements will be re-evaluated in light of final improvements to the system,” the budget says, meaning the numbers could change based on the outcome of negotiations.
Finance Minister Joe Oliver (Eglinton-Lawrence, Ont.) told reporters in the budget lockup that “good faith negotiations” are ongoing with public sector unions.
“But we have an obligation, and it’s in accordance with federal Cabinet principles, to take into account a number we expect,” he said, before deferring further questions to Treasury Board President Tony Clement (Parry Sound-Muskoka, Ont.).
The budget also shows a $1.4-billion surplus and has been balanced. "Promise made, promise kept," Mr. Oliver said in his speech in the House after tabling the budget.
Original Article
Source: hilltimes.com/
Author: Mark Burgess
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