Bob Rae Is Back

[Evening Star]

Yeah, actually, some of the posts here are convincing me that reducing every employee's hours is kind of a crass way to trim a budget.

Yes, that's the correct interpretation.

"Unpaid overtime" would be just business as usual in the public sector, in my experience.

In fact, I recall working unpaid overtime to catch up the work from my unpaid days off.

The workload didn't change. People either gave up personal time to catch up, or services were slowed down - eg, waiting longer for your new license, building approvals,etc and longer lineups at provincial offices, etc.

So no Segnosaur, the system didn't collapse but the reduced staff time did affect services.

And many worked unpaid overtime to catch up.

It was an attack on the public sector workers who helped to elect Bob Rae, and he'll never recover politically from the backlash from that.

[fellowtraveller]

They were unionized and on contract employment terms. You can't just as management lay people off if you have a legal agreement not to.

Only part of that is true. They were unioniozed. They were not on contracts, personal service contracts for individuals are very unusual for government employees. They are very common elsewhere, like Australia, where civil servants rareky enjoy the kind of lifetime tenure our staff have come to enjoy.

There is no legal agrrement not to lay people off, the civil service contrqcts basically define wages, benefits and working conditions. they do not guarantee a job.

The govt certainly had the oppostunity to lay off staff, it has happened in both federal and provincial workforces and the unions can only bitch, bluff and bluster, which gets lost in the endless drone of bitching.

What prevents management in govt- both senior staff and elected ministers- from layoffs is that there is no personal benefit to them for doing it. No bonus, no more votes and a certain risk that they will lose votes. Not only is there no incentive for lating off staff, there is no punishment for keeping them when they are not required. Being a bad manager has no consequences in the public service and often few consequences for Ministers either. There are no threats from whistleblowers when blowing that whistle means the whistleblower loses their job.

It is a lack of spine. That takes me back to my previous point and previous post: Bob Rae did not have the courage to act right when he was PM of Ontario, he still has no gumption to do what is right now.

[segnosaur]

Yes, that's the correct interpretation.

"Unpaid overtime" would be just business as usual in the public sector, in my experience.

In fact, I recall working unpaid overtime to catch up the work from my unpaid days off.

The workload didn't change. People either gave up personal time to catch up, or services were slowed down - eg, waiting longer for your new license, building approvals,etc and longer lineups at provincial offices, etc.

So no Segnosaur, the system didn't collapse but the reduced staff time did affect services.

And many worked unpaid overtime to catch up.

Lets assume you're being honest and you really did have to put in 'extra hours' to compensate for the 'Rae Days'...

- The important part of that particular phrase is "in my experience". Your "experience" may not be universal throughout the government. While I have never worked for the Ontario government, I have worked for the Federal government (which I assume will suffer through similar problems). In my experience, there were some employees that were extremely skilled/dedicated, some that were competent, and some that were completely inept. Any good cost cutting measures should affect the inept people more than the skilled/dedicated. Rae Days did not do that

- Even if there are employees who are 'skilled/dedicated', there work may end up going to waste. I've seen multi-million dollar software products (in some cases staffed by very competent people) that ended up going nowhere because of management mistakes. Again, a decent cost-cutting process should eliminate those types of excesses (i.e. you'll never miss a project that had no use) rather than cutting everything.

[Bryan]

There's a lot to hang Bob Rae on if he does run in an election as the Liberal leader, but I don't think that Rae Days are one of them.

Back when I was a public employee, we had a similar thing in Manitoba that we called Filmon Fridays. Most people thought it was great. You got a long weekend every second week, and the lost pay was averaged over the full pay period so you barely noticed it. One of the few things I ever saw where good fiscal policy was also a net benefit to the public employee.