A third-generation former federal bureaucrat says the Public Service Alliance of Canada made unrealistic demands..Philip Cross spent 36 years with the federal civil service, including a stint in 2008 as the chief financial analyst for Statistics Canada. The senior analyst for the Macdonald Laurier Institute, Cross said PSAC has it good and its demands at the start of the strike were extreme. .“The union demands, as is always the case in the federal civil service, is ridiculous. It's not to be taken seriously. I don't think they take it seriously,” Cross said in an April 24 interview with Western Standard..Can Ottawa afford such demands? Maybe, but why would they, asked Cross..“This is the same government that before the budget promised fiscal restraint, and then delivered nothing of the sort. So obviously, they feel they have the fiscal capacity, even if it's not infinite. I think the bigger question is, why would the federal government meet these demands at all?”.Cross said if PSAC employees get a big raise, it will trickle down to other unions and jeopardize the ability for the Bank of Canada to reduce inflation to its target rate of 2%. He believes if PSAC workers want to work from home, they must forfeit wage hikes in exchange..“Private sector employers, when they're faced with people demanding to work from home, they invariably extract wage concessions. There's an obvious benefit and lower cost to employees from working from home. You don't have parking, you don't have mass transit, you can make your own lunch at home. It's very clearly much less expensive,” Cross said..“In the private sector, this is taken as a reason to demand wage rollbacks from employees whereas here in the public sector, there's really a l'et's have our cake and eat it, too' attitude that we'd want both the right to work from home. And oh, by the way, we want a big wage increase on top of it. That's why when I get into the math of it, it's hard to take this seriously.”.Cross says federal employees would do anything to keep their pensions, which are guaranteed to pay 2% times years of service times an average of the best five years of pay, all indexed to go up with inflation. This means a civil servant who makes $100,000 annually at the end of their career will make $70,000 annually in retirement, inflation-protected, for life. Cross said there’s many ways those pensions could be changed, or threaten to be changed as a bargaining tool to get other concessions..“They can change any aspect. They could de-index it, they could increase employee contribution levels, they could reduce benefits. They can do whatever they want, and it's not subject to negotiation,” Cross said..“This is the greatest leverage that an employer could ever bring on a union in Canada, and they never use it.”.Cross said defined-benefit pensions would be OK if they were properly funded, but Ottawa keeps going to taxpayers to cover the shortfalls..“So much of the benefits are not funded that, at the end of the day, it's the taxpayer that's on the hook. I mean, if you're willing to contribute to sacrifice 20% of your salary in order to have an extravagant pension, go ahead. That's your choice. You're sacrificing income today for more income tomorrow,” Cross said..“But civil servants, they want everything. They want to be able to work at home, they want a wage increase, and they want to keep their taxpayer subsidized pension benefit. It’s frankly ridiculous.”.According to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, the federal government paid out more than $559 million in bonuses since 2020. The Parliamentary Budget Officer also noted, “less than 50% of targets are consistently met within the same year.” If the government is failing at its own goals, how did these bonuses take place?.“That's another joke with the civil service. For senior executives there’s been performance bonuses for years. And since everybody gets them, it's no longer a reward for exceptional service, it's become just part of your basic wage increase. But that's just another comment on the insanity of managing the civil service these days,” Cross said..“We have the most pampered unions with the most lavish benefits of any union in this country. Because there's just nobody there to say no, this is ridiculous. It's unfair. And it's unnecessary. I mean, any employer should be saying, we will only pay enough to attract the workers that we need.”
A third-generation former federal bureaucrat says the Public Service Alliance of Canada made unrealistic demands..Philip Cross spent 36 years with the federal civil service, including a stint in 2008 as the chief financial analyst for Statistics Canada. The senior analyst for the Macdonald Laurier Institute, Cross said PSAC has it good and its demands at the start of the strike were extreme. .“The union demands, as is always the case in the federal civil service, is ridiculous. It's not to be taken seriously. I don't think they take it seriously,” Cross said in an April 24 interview with Western Standard..Can Ottawa afford such demands? Maybe, but why would they, asked Cross..“This is the same government that before the budget promised fiscal restraint, and then delivered nothing of the sort. So obviously, they feel they have the fiscal capacity, even if it's not infinite. I think the bigger question is, why would the federal government meet these demands at all?”.Cross said if PSAC employees get a big raise, it will trickle down to other unions and jeopardize the ability for the Bank of Canada to reduce inflation to its target rate of 2%. He believes if PSAC workers want to work from home, they must forfeit wage hikes in exchange..“Private sector employers, when they're faced with people demanding to work from home, they invariably extract wage concessions. There's an obvious benefit and lower cost to employees from working from home. You don't have parking, you don't have mass transit, you can make your own lunch at home. It's very clearly much less expensive,” Cross said..“In the private sector, this is taken as a reason to demand wage rollbacks from employees whereas here in the public sector, there's really a l'et's have our cake and eat it, too' attitude that we'd want both the right to work from home. And oh, by the way, we want a big wage increase on top of it. That's why when I get into the math of it, it's hard to take this seriously.”.Cross says federal employees would do anything to keep their pensions, which are guaranteed to pay 2% times years of service times an average of the best five years of pay, all indexed to go up with inflation. This means a civil servant who makes $100,000 annually at the end of their career will make $70,000 annually in retirement, inflation-protected, for life. Cross said there’s many ways those pensions could be changed, or threaten to be changed as a bargaining tool to get other concessions..“They can change any aspect. They could de-index it, they could increase employee contribution levels, they could reduce benefits. They can do whatever they want, and it's not subject to negotiation,” Cross said..“This is the greatest leverage that an employer could ever bring on a union in Canada, and they never use it.”.Cross said defined-benefit pensions would be OK if they were properly funded, but Ottawa keeps going to taxpayers to cover the shortfalls..“So much of the benefits are not funded that, at the end of the day, it's the taxpayer that's on the hook. I mean, if you're willing to contribute to sacrifice 20% of your salary in order to have an extravagant pension, go ahead. That's your choice. You're sacrificing income today for more income tomorrow,” Cross said..“But civil servants, they want everything. They want to be able to work at home, they want a wage increase, and they want to keep their taxpayer subsidized pension benefit. It’s frankly ridiculous.”.According to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, the federal government paid out more than $559 million in bonuses since 2020. The Parliamentary Budget Officer also noted, “less than 50% of targets are consistently met within the same year.” If the government is failing at its own goals, how did these bonuses take place?.“That's another joke with the civil service. For senior executives there’s been performance bonuses for years. And since everybody gets them, it's no longer a reward for exceptional service, it's become just part of your basic wage increase. But that's just another comment on the insanity of managing the civil service these days,” Cross said..“We have the most pampered unions with the most lavish benefits of any union in this country. Because there's just nobody there to say no, this is ridiculous. It's unfair. And it's unnecessary. I mean, any employer should be saying, we will only pay enough to attract the workers that we need.”
