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Water-cooler discussion thread

DougB said:
Public sevants should earn substantially less than private sector counterparts. They have generous benefits, more paid vacation, less risk of dismissal with our without case, predictable retirement dates and risk free retirement income. With less risk, comes less return.
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I got a weird feeling reading this... cheerleading for people to get paid less because their other work benefits are better. Its the "I don't have it so you shouldn't either" rather than "I don't have it but I should have it too".

I honestly get why the sentiment was the latter, I feel that way too sometimes. My partner works in the public sector and I in the private sector so I live the differences between the two everyday. So I asked myself, why is it that way? Best answer I can come up with is collective bargaining or unions. I haven't been a part of a union in my adult life (I was when I worked at Superstore as a kid). Meaning any raise or benefit increase I got (above inflation) came from me going to my bosses and asking/demanding it or finding another job that was better. In a way both methods (union and asking/demanding it) work.

I'm not sure whose more productive, public or private workers (we can all joke about people standing around at construction sites)? But I guess my point is that if you want what public sector workers have? Ask for it and demand it or start looking for another job that will give it to you. That or go work in the public sector.

What's the saying, don't hate the player, hate the game.
 
DougB said:
It should be dropping due to technology. Government lags in terms of implementing technology, so it should benefit from the learnings of private sector implementation. The Feds have only scratched the surface in terms of outsourcing, meaning that some of that implementation risk could be offloaded to more capable partners. It already entrusts Sun Life to admin benefits for its own workforce, so wny couldn't it outsource admin of veteran's benefits, OAS, CPP and EI to the likes of Sun Life, Manulife and GWL?

Harper took federal spending to records lows relative to GDP and nothing broke, meaning that the threshold had not been reached in terms of improving the productivity of the federal public service. Harper also played fewer favorites and national unity challenges abated, so further leveling should be pursued. I'm sure I would be burned at the stake for pointing out the fallacies that the federal government needs to spend big and play favorites in order to keep the country together.

Public sevants should earn substantially less than private sector counterparts. They have generous benefits, more paid vacation, less risk of dismissal with our without case, predictable retirement dates and risk free retirement income. With less risk, comes less return.
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You gotta think of the low of the Harper years caused by hiring freezes as not sustainable. We've all worked in places where sure, we can get by for a few months with less staff, but eventually less stuff is getting done. And there is no one to cover holidays.

If the work needs to get done, people get hired again.

It turned out for example that the 1000 or so pay advisors shouldn't have been laid off before Phoenix was implemented. Those layoffs helped Harper meet low spending and FTE counts for a single year, but cost the government billions more in the long term. There are similar results from across the government. Layoffs on the Coast Guard, Veterans Affairs, Scientists—were those worth it to save a few bucks? The results were a narrative which defeated the government.
 
Public servants should earn substantially more than their private sector counterparts. They have no bonuses or stock options, less opportunity for advancement within their field, little or no 'soft' benefits like Christmas parties, higher levels of responsibility, higher transparency requirements, and higher exposure to political risk from know-nothings.
 
DougB said:
Public sevants should earn substantially less than private sector counterparts. They have generous benefits, more paid vacation, less risk of dismissal with our without case, predictable retirement dates and risk free retirement income. With less risk, comes less return.
Click to expand...
Had to respond to this since I recently moved from the private to public sector

- I had better benefits in the private sector (slightly)
- I will have the same amount of paid vacation once im a few years in (3 weeks)
- Retirement contributions from my previous employer were higher than my current pension
- I got a yearly bonus at the old gig, not anymore
- No more fancy Christmas parties and client lunches

The main benefits are the complete lack of pressure to work overtime, more respect for a work life balance and just an overall better work environment. I get paid about the same, but take home less because of pension contributions and union dues.
 
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potatopizzafan said:
Had to respond to this since I recently moved from the private to public sector

- I had better benefits in the private sector (slightly)
- I will have the same amount of paid vacation once im a few years in (3 weeks)
- Retirement contributions from my previous employer were higher than my current pension
- I got a yearly bonus at the old gig, not anymore
- No more fancy Christmas parties and client lunches

The main benefits are the complete lack of pressure to work overtime, more respect for a work life balance and just an overall better work environment. I get paid about the same, but take home less because of pension contributions and union dues.
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I too moved to the public sector not too long ago, after having only ever worked in the private sector. There are different benefits to working in both environments. My workplace, is a crown corp, and is non-unionized. I've been told by some of my co-workers that it's a cross between the private sector and the federal government.

At my workplace, the job security stereotype doesn't hold, as I've seen people let go much the same way I have in the private sector. Pay is comparable, but my benefits were better back in the private sector. I will say this, the work environment is much better in my public sector position. About a third of the people in the group I'm part of are out-sourced contractors.
 
darwink said:
I think that is overtime, not new jobs. 12,500 jobs were added.
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The stat of 40,000 new jobs added paying > $100,000 came from the Canadian Taxpayer Federation. You don't appear to have a source for your number.
darwink said:
View attachment 426952

GASP! The number of public servants are up to 2010 levels! oh the humanity. Mostly driven by the drop in population growth due to the pandemic immigration slowdown.

The drop in the Harper years was largely artificial: a hiring freeze without a reduction in the amount of work to be done. It catches up evenutally. And firing people doing work technology that failed to work was supposed to take over but never did.
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According to that chart, the number of public servants in 2021 is not back to 2010 level, it is 13% higher. I don't get the justification that public servant levels have to go up with population levels. There are well known and practiced business edicts like 'do more with the same' or 'do more with less'. If a business sees a sustained revenue increase of let's say 50%, the reaction is not to immediately increase staff by 50%. Technology also plays a factor in reducing staff levels and we all know that there has been an explosion in technology since 2010 that has reduced staff levels everywhere except of course, our federal government. At the very least technology has made workers more efficient and able to do more in the same period of time.
I realize comparing the private sector to the public sector is not always a valid comparison. However, as a taxpayer, I expect my governments to act responsibly before going out and adding a bunch of people to the payroll as the Liberals did during 2020-21. I have no doubt that many of those new hires were made to manage the many CERB programs, the total cost of which we will be paying for decades.
 
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JonnyCanuck said:
The stat of 40,000 new jobs added paying > $100,000 came from the Canadian Taxpayer Federation. You don't appear to have a source for your number.

According to that chart, the number of public servants in 2021 is not back to 2010 level, it is 13% higher. I don't get the justification that public servant levels have to go up with population levels. There are well known and practiced business edicts like 'do more with the same' or 'do more with less'. If a business sees a sustained revenue increase of let's say 50%, the reaction is not to immediately increase staff by 50%. Technology also plays a factor in reducing staff levels and we all know that there has been an explosion in technology since 2010 that has reduced staff levels everywhere except of course, our federal government. At the very least technology has made workers more efficient and able to do more in the same period of time.
I realize comparing the private sector to the public sector is not always a valid comparison. However, as a taxpayer, I expect my governments to act responsibly before going out and adding a bunch of people to the payroll as the Liberals did during 2020-21. I have no doubt that many of those new hires were made to manage the many CERB programs, the total cost of which we will be paying for decades.
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Lots of things that take the most people that the government does, like prisons and customs, and income tax enforcement, and federal justice hires, and EI processing and CPP processing, they require masses of people to do.

You can see department by depart here: https://www.canada.ca/en/treasury-b...lation-federal-public-service-department.html

For the 2020-21 period the growth mostly came from:
ESDC (administering EI and all the youth employment stuff)
CRA (Administering CERB)
Fisheries and Oceans (Oceans protection plan, a political compromise to support the Transmountain pipeline)
Public Services and Procurement Canada (buying pandemic shit, boats for the navy, and fighter planes for the air force)
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (keeping citizenship and visa processing going)
Shared Services Canada (running the IT behind the new public facing programs)
Statistics Canada (census surge)
PHAC (Covid, and employees transfered from health canada)
Canada Border Services Agency (COVID)

It wasn't like they were doing things we don't want done.

It doesn't help that just like with arriveCan, many of the services the feds do, are used a lot by technologically illliterate people. And by choice we haven't put in massive automation databases for public payments/employment insurance/welfare/pension.
 
JonnyCanuck said:
The stat of 40,000 new jobs added paying > $100,000 came from the Canadian Taxpayer Federation. You don't appear to have a source for your number.
Click to expand...

What you may have been deceived with these statistics is that there's a thing called inflation. A job that pays $100,000 now would have paid perhaps $80,000 in the Harper era to buy the same goods and services. The CTF doesn't like to do things like adjust for this, because honestly reporting the data makes their arguments look weak. Now, not everybody thinks about or knows about inflation; luckily there are people on these forums that can help you. For instance, this fellow:

JonnyCanuck said:
Inflation is hitting new home construction just like every other industry, if not more so. The price expectations of the past are long over.
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Now, if these don't sway you, look up the same statistics for the Pierre Trudeau government; that guy had tons fewer public sector workers and almost none of them were paid over $100,000. You'll love that guy, he ran a much tighter ship than Harper.
 
By inflation I assume you mean wage growth, and not material costs that I was referring to in the construction industry. By your example, a job that pays $80 K in 2015 is now worth $100K in 2021? That is much higher than the rate of inflation in a 6 year period. The truth is we don't know why there are now 71,000 more jobs in that pay range in 2021 than there were 6 years earlier, or why all of those jobs needed to be added. We do know that the total cost of the federal government is a whole lot higher in 2021 than it was in 2015 .... significantly more than the rate of inflation.
 
Overtime, employees moving up the grid, the grid moving up. All these things happen. A big factor in the 2010-15 period was making all the pension plans sound - the one I was in at the time bumped up to a 16% contribution rate. On the government books that looked like my compensation went up considerably, on my books by compensation went down. Now the pension in question is 15% overfunded, and not like we get refunds :)

A surge of employees over the line in 2020, the simplist explanation is also the most likely: they were pulling extra hours due to COVID, and/or defering time off. Both create additional cash compensation.
 
CalgaryTiger said:
I got a weird feeling reading this... cheerleading for people to get paid less because their other work benefits are better. Its the "I don't have it so you shouldn't either" rather than "I don't have it but I should have it too".

I honestly get why the sentiment was the latter, I feel that way too sometimes. My partner works in the public sector and I in the private sector so I live the differences between the two everyday. So I asked myself, why is it that way? Best answer I can come up with is collective bargaining or unions. I haven't been a part of a union in my adult life (I was when I worked at Superstore as a kid). Meaning any raise or benefit increase I got (above inflation) came from me going to my bosses and asking/demanding it or finding another job that was better. In a way both methods (union and asking/demanding it) work.

I'm not sure whose more productive, public or private workers (we can all joke about people standing around at construction sites)? But I guess my point is that if you want what public sector workers have? Ask for it and demand it or start looking for another job that will give it to you. That or go work in the public sector.

What's the saying, don't hate the player, hate the game.
Click to expand...
Benefits, risk free retirement income, predictable retirement dates, paid time off, job security, predictable hours, predictable salary escalation via a grid, lower risk of dismissal are all forms of compensation to be added to salary. Ideally, all-in compensation should be the same.

I briefly in the public sector while I was in University....it is were hope, dreams, ambition and self respect go to die. When I worked for Alberta Health, a coworker filed a grievance because I was using this radical tool called Excel that could accomplish in 15 mins what took her all day. I briefly dabbled in the public sector right before I left Australia and ended up resigning in frustration of how slow things move and the constant fake sick days, fake disability claims and fake grievances from co-workers. Never again. The public sector generally has soul crushing moral as people who dislike the work stick around because they are over-compensated.
 
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