Canada's Public Sector Union Workers Always Give At Least 7.7%

[Teddy Ballgame]

- The following report from Wednesday's Globe and Mail should come as no suprise to anyone in any large Canadian city who has ever observed the work habits of our monopoly public sector unionized workers. Nor should it surprise anyone with common sense who knows what happens when public sector workers are essentially guaranteed jobs for life until their early retirement on fully indexed taxpayer subsidized public sector pensions that are better than anything that 75-80% of the great unwashed wretches in the competitive market sector will ever receive.

- As the report notes, the three Montreal municipal work crews were secretly followed for 90 paid hours of work and managed to do a grand total of 7 hours - 7.7% - of actual work during this time. Toronto municipal workers - the ones who funded the election campaign and worked to elect socialist Mayor Miller - are even more outlandishly paid, perked and pensioned than their Montreal counterparts. As well, they have even stronger job security which ensures that after ten years service they have jobs for life unless they commit a criminal offence and wind up behind bars. As well, Toronto municipal workers at the lowest rung on the job ladder - the ones classified as litter pickers - now make a few cents under $20 an hour plus benefits which amounts to nearly triple the minimum wage of the Ontario and MORE THAN DOUBLE what even the best private employers pay their people for identical janitorial and grounds keeping jobs.

- Of course, the lefties who want every job to be unionized and preferably in the public sector see nothing wrong with this extraordinarily inequitable situation whereby the public sector workers typically make 20-40% more pay to be some 20% less productive and to have 7 times the job security and to look forward to much earlier and bigger pensions than private workers. This is not the kind of PAY EQUITY PROBLEM that interests them. But it certainly interests me and should be a concern of anyone who is alarmed at the growing gap favouring public over private sector employees as well as at the increasingly unaffordable cost and declining quality of our public services.

- Anyhow, here is the Globe report:

QUEBEC VIEW: LABOUR

Montreal's cols bleus emblematic of deeper problem

KONRAD YAKABUSKI

MONTREAL -- On the bright side, there are at least two booming sectors of the Montreal economy: Tim Hortons and auto repair shops. The latter can count on an endless supply of drivers who've blown a tire, lost a muffler or smashed into another car plunging into or attempting to swerve around one of the city's exploding pothole population. As for the doughnut shops, that's where you're apt to find the city workers who are supposed to be out there plugging the craters.

The City of Montreal's municipal maintenance workers have elevated work avoidance to an art form, coming up with ever more creative ways to waste away their well-paid days. Homer Simpson himself could take notes from them.

If this sounds like a gratuitous jab at the employees -- known to locals as les cols bleus, or blue-collar workers -- consider this: City investigators followed three work crews in late January. Over a 90-hour period, the 10 employees managed to fill nine potholes. Only seven of the 90 hours qualified as actual labour; the workers spent the rest of their shifts driving around, shopping, idling in parking lots -- or in doughnut shops.

Now, you won't find spying on employees on the syllabus of Motivational Tools for Managers 101. But relations between Montreal's 4,800 cols bleus and successive city administrations have been poisoned for so long, desperate bosses sometimes have to resort to desperate measures.

Did we say bosses? The term is a misnomer here since there is no mistaking where the balance of power lies in this conflict. The leaders of Local 301 of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, under past and current presidents Jean Lapierre and Michel Parent, have lorded over this city like the Politburo. A Stalinesque bust of Mr. Lapierre has even been erected outside Local 301 headquarters.

Labour may say Wal-Mart's a thug. At least it's never, to our knowledge, spread pig manure on its adversaries' lawns or broken down the doors to city hall. The cols bleus were at it again last week. Two thousand of them descended on city hall to lay ceremonial funeral wreaths mourning -- oh, the crocodile tears -- a court ruling that upheld the contract imposed on them by an arbitrator in 2004. The city considered the protest an illegal walkout that left Montreal's icy sidewalks especially hazardous. But the workers aren't finished yet. They're promising to paralyze the city once they're in a legal strike position in mid-2007.

If the cols bleus had invented the city's motto, it surely wouldn't be Salus Concordia -- or well-being through harmony. Try bellum ad infinitum -- infinite war.

So, just what has the cols bleus so upset this time? They saw their workweek increase to 36 hours from 35 as a result of a 2004 arbitrators' decision that harmonized working conditions following the merger of several neighbouring municipalities. At the same time, the ruling awarded an 11.5-per-cent wage increase to white-collar workers over five years, but limited pay increases for blue-collar employees to about 8 per cent. At current levels, Montreal's blue-collar workers earn between $37,000 and $51,000 a year; road crew workers pull down about $41,000.

However, untouched by the contract is the four-day workweek that the cols bleus won from former mayor Pierre Bourque in 1996, or the guaranteed minimum staffing levels that Jean Doré conceded in 1987. So, no matter how much subcontracting the city must do -- how else can it clear the snow or fill at least some of those potholes? -- it can't ever, ever reduce the blue-collar head count, set at 3,837 full-time person-year equivalents.

Montreal's cols bleus may form a rogue union with its bizarre tactics and hostility. But, unfortunately, its resistance to change and extreme rent-seeking behaviour -- that is, protecting its members' economic interests at the expense of society's -- is emblematic of Quebec's union movement, the country's biggest and most militant representing 40 per cent of all workers in the province. Elsewhere in Canada, only about 27 per cent of workers are unionized, compared with 13 per cent in the United States.

No one could begrudge the brave, and now ex-, Wal-Mart workers in Jonquière who last year took on the Beast of Bentonville to improve, if only a tiny bit, their lot. And only someone who has never spent time in an emergency ward could consider nurses unworthy of every pay increase or pension benefit they ask for. Most of Montreal's col bleus probably even earn every cent of their salary. But a society that surrenders to unions' intransigence quickly faces sclerosis.

"This outright resistance to change hurts Quebec because it runs the risk of turning us into the republic of the status quo, a fossil from the twentieth century," former premier Lucien Bouchard and his co-signatories wrote in last fall's manifesto, For a Clear-Eyed Vision of Quebec.

Their message has largely fallen on deaf ears. As Quebeckers debate for the first time in at least two decades the merits of privatizing their state-owned liquor monopoly, la Société des alcools du Québec, the SAQ union mounts a well-oiled scare campaign to smother discussion. As Hydro-Québec solicits tenders for construction by the private sector of more than 2,000 megawatts of wind energy, the utility's unions wage a well-funded advertising campaign calling for the nationalization of the windmills.

The cols bleus are back at it -- have they ever stopped? -- making a mockery of Montreal's motto.

[tml12]

I know I must speak for some Quebecers when I argue that the unions in this province are disgusting.

Too bad they intimidated Charest. I don't think I'll be voting for him or coke-fiend Boisclair in the next election but rather the ADQ. I think Dumont would put the unions in their place.

[August1991]

Teddy, the general policy is to post a short quote and a link. The moderator dislikes infringement of copyright laws.

As to your post, Montreal blue collar workers are a special case, as are Montreal potholes.

[Riverwind]

As to your post, Montreal blue collar workers are a special case, as are Montreal potholes.

Are you saying they are a distinct society?

[wellandboy]

While working with two other volunteers and a contractor last summer installing some recreational equipment we had raised money for, we were approached by two city employess. They has been sitting in their truck for at least half an hour watching us. The one said we were taking away their jobs and that he was going to file a grievance. After some heated words, I suggested that these two "municipal canine fornicators" should leave or I'd call the police. As he stormed away he shouted back "we're outside maintenance workers", then departed.

[geoffrey]

I know I must speak for some Quebecers when I argue that the unions in this province are disgusting.

Too bad they intimidated Charest. I don't think I'll be voting for him or coke-fiend Boisclair in the next election but rather the ADQ. I think Dumont would put the unions in their place.

Welcome back tml, hope you enjoyed your vacation.

This ADQ sounds pretty cool, some good policies. I just wish they could translate their page to English a little better for me. When my rusty French skills make the French writings there make more sense, I worry.

Could also be that I think better in French than English after a few drinks too!

(don't worry children, I'm from a French extended family, no biogtry intended except against myself in humour)

As to your post, Montreal blue collar workers are a special case, as are Montreal potholes.

Are you saying they are a distinct society?

Come on Spar, thats not what is being said. I tend to agree with August. I don't think all public servants are lazy, thats a very unfounded stereotype to hold.

Unions don't encourage 100% effort, I know this. But I doubt if most civil servants work below 90% effort.

[Riverwind]

Unions don't encourage 100% effort, I know this. But I doubt if most civil servants work below 90% effort.

Municipal blue collar unions are the worst of the worst when it comes to wasting taxpayers money and a sense of entitlement. I have many heard stories across the country similar to the Montreal case. The problem stems from union seniority rules - it is impossible to fire people for incompetence. The gov't should bring in a taxpayers bill of rights that makes it illegal for public sector unions to include seniority rules in their contracts.

[geoffrey]

Unions don't encourage 100% effort, I know this. But I doubt if most civil servants work below 90% effort.

Municipal blue collar unions are the worst of the worst when it comes to wasting taxpayers money and a sense of entitlement. I have many heard stories across the country similar to the Montreal case. The problem stems from union seniority rules - it is impossible to fire people for incompetence. The gov't should bring in a taxpayers bill of rights that makes it illegal for public sector unions to include seniority rules in their contracts.

I wouldn't mind seeing that. It'd be all out war between the unions and the media/govenrment though. Getting rid of the fossils isn't in unions best interest.