- NSGEU President Joan Jessome
The president of the Nova Scotia Government Employees Union (NSGEU) is expressing chagrin over the NDP plan to cut 10 percent of the civil service over the next four years.
“We certainly did not expect to be facing this kind of job loss with an NDP government,” Joan Jessome said Monday night. “Members already know what their workload is like and they’ll be wondering how they’re going to do the same work with a thousand less people.”
Jessome was reacting to an e-mail from Peggy Mahon, the party’s president. It assures NDP supporters that the reduction of more than 1,000 civil service positions, to be announced in Tuesday’s budget, will be done through attrition and voluntary departures, not layoffs. Mahon said the job cuts would save about $65 million.
Jessome, whose NSGEU represents 7,600 civil servants, said the union is determined to fight for stronger job security provisions during the latest round of bargaining, which began in February.
“The first thing we want to do is protect our members,” Jessome said, “so that nobody involuntarily goes out the door.” She added that the union is pushing for the retraining of employees whose jobs are cut as the government trims programs.
“I can tell you right off, if we don’t get that at the table, there will be an all-and-all-out fight with this government…That’s going to be the measurement of whether this is a labour-friendly government or not, whether they’re going to treat people right.”
Mahon’s e-mail notes that the government expects more than 2,000 civil servants to retire over the next four years. “A 10% reduction should not require a hiring freeze, but rather will require government to reduce the number of people hired to replace those who retire.” The e-mail adds that the government will pursue a three-pronged strategy to balance its books — cutting provincial spending, promoting economic growth and raising taxes.
This article appears in Apr 1-7, 2010.
Hardly a slash — more like a few nicks. Jessome’s comments are hilarious.
About time.
I take it that health care is exempt.
The pen pushers, PR folk and policy analysts should be the main target.
How many policy analysts in the Education & Health departments ?
Too many I bet; to think that every province has a bunch of ‘policy analysts’ plodding away each day trying to figure out how to spend our money.
Gas tax up 2c a litre, all licences & permits increased by 10%. Sales tax will rise to 14%.
Income tax in the middle and upper bands will be increased. Lower income people will pay less income tax.
Higher taxes on booze and smokes. Education spending will be frozen for 1 year.
Anyone who has worked in, or with, the provincial civil service is fully aware that a 10 percent cut is easily achievable. Even if they don’t want to admit it.
Inefficiencies at the managerial levels – duplication of effort, unclear job descriptions, unnecessary processes – mean that every current manager is busy…sort of…but that if things were sorted out the civil service could easily operate just as well (actually, better) with 7 or 8 managers for every current 10.
On another front, managers and regular workers both could maybe look to their working hours to understand why the private sector doesn’t take them seriously when they say that they are overworked, and how can even a 10 percent cut even be possible. A lot of provincial CS workers have 35 hour work weeks…this means in turn that overtime is more common than it ought to be. The 35-hour work week also lends itself to certain extravagances unknown to private sector workers…for example, working a 37.5 hour week gives you an extra 3 days of leave per year if you’re not in an EDO program. If you *are* in an Earned Day Off (EDO) work unit, working 37.5 hours a week entitles you typically to a full day off every 3 weeks; in theory no useful work hours are lost, but in practice a lot of people on EDO don’t punch timeclocks anyway, so this is simply a program to award extra leave days.
This is all on top of generous vacation – up to 72 months service 15 days a year (3 weeks), between 72 and 92 months (6-15.33 years) 20 days per year (4 weeks), between 192 and 288 months (6y4m service to 24 years) they get 25 days (5 weeks) vacation per year. Over 24 years service it’s still 25 days per year but longevity agreements can (and do) crank this up more. Still, it’s awful nice to get 4 weeks vacation once you’ve just worked for 6 years…throw in an extra 15 days or so that you can get in the remaining 48 weeks just for sort of working an extra 0.5 hours a day for a 37.5 work week, and that’s 7 weeks off. This is reaching teacher territory.
Statistics like this, which the provincial civil service is maybe not so eager to publicize, make a person wonder how overworked they really are. Or more to the point, maybe they *are* overworked now just because they’re at the workplace a lot less than private sector workers…well, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Point is, the very generous civil service employment regulations, all of which are made possible out of the pockets of all NS taxpayers, have made our CS workers an inefficient workforce. A typical CS worker is, by choice (or by their unions’ choice) 10-25 percent less productive than a comparable private sector worker. Under the circumstances, why not get rid of a few of them? I’m personally tired of the situation where the most progressive employment conditions are seemingly always obtained at taxpayer expense.