Since April, the 1,350 members of the Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers (PAFSO) have been disrupting operations, including student and tourist VISA applications and ministerial travel. The impact has been significant, with the National Post reporting that visa issuance fell 25% in June, and by 65% in high-demand capitals such as Beijing and Delhi.
What’s at stake is so-called “equal pay for equal work.” PAFSO says its members currently receive between $3,000 and $14,000 less than other government employees doing the “same” jobs. “Closing the gap” would cost Ottawa $4.2-million over three years, after the union’s contract with the federal government expires in July 2014.
At first blush, the union’s argument may sound reasonable: Why shouldn’t its members be paid an identical salary for the same work by their professional colleagues? But look a little closer, and you’ll find two major wrinkles in PAFSO’s logic.
The first is the definition of “same.” Whatever your role — lawyer, economist, diplomat — are you really doing the “same” job if you are working mostly overseas, with access to opportunities and perks that your colleagues back home do not have? Foreign-service workers get to travel and live abroad, expose themselves and their families to different cultures, and acquire international professional experience. Not surprisingly, there is no shortage of applicants for such positions, and only about 1% are accepted every year.
In its memo outlining the reasons for striking, PAFSO claims that foreign service workers are actually disadvantaged compared to their domestic peers: “Our families must regularly move homes, our children must constantly change schools, our spouses must quit their jobs, we risk our safety and health in hazardous environments, and we miss countless birthdays and other special moments with friends and family while living for months or years at a time in war zones and disaster areas.”
But a read of the government’s contract with PAFSO reveals a host of compensatory measures for these “hardships,” including provisions for family separation assistance, educational assistance for children from daycare to post-secondary, vacation allowances, and housing allowances. And talk about job security: Foreign service workers whose spouses are relocated can take unpaid leave for up to five years, knowing their job, or a reasonable facsimile of it, awaits them on their return.
In other words, PAFSO workers’ jobs are not “the same” as those of domestic bureaucrats. Nor are they the same as those of people doing the same job in the private sector.
Which brings us to the second flaw in the union’s logic: the notion of closing the wage gap up, instead of down.
The fact that other unions negotiated higher wages for the “same” job does not mean that those higher levels were justified, nor that PAFSO’s lower wages should be automatically increased to the higher level. In fact, it could also mean the reverse: that higher-paid workers are overpaid for what they do.
Studies show that public-sector workers are overcompensated compared to workers who do the “same” jobs in the private sector. Research published by the Fraser Institute in April 2013, for instance, showed a 12% gap, confirming earlier studies by the Montreal Economic Institute, C.D. Howe, and others. Public servants also benefit from more generous sick leave and vacation pay than their private-sector counterparts.
The notion of closing wage gaps up between unions and job categories is something many Canadian cities experienced after a wave of amalgamations in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. In 1998, Toronto saw six cities merge into one, with six sets of unionized employees doing the “same” jobs. Over the next 10 years, the cost of “harmonizing” wages to the highest level helped increase annual operating costs by $1.25-billion dollars, according to a 2007 study by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
In other words, foreign service workers shouldn’t be paid more simply because their domestic colleagues are. And salary levels, perks and privileges in the federal civil service as a whole should be reviewed across the board, to ensure Canadians are getting the best value for their dollar in each case.
The government’s current cost-cutting spree is overdue, as the ranks of the civil service grew under its watch since 2006. Minister Clement is right: In this and its other efforts to reform the bureaucracy, Ottawa should not fold.
Original Article
Source: fullcomment.nationalpost.com
Author: Tasha Kheiriddin
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