Inflation is here and all across the nation, public sector unions are smelling money. As year-over-year inflation rises to levels not seen in more than three decades, union negotiators are digging in their heels with truly exorbitant demands for wage and benefit hikes. This is madness. To wit:.The Public Service Alliance of Canada’s (PSAC) “operational services group,” which represents 10,400 federal building maintenance and service workers, is asking for a 47% raise in total compensation over the next three years, an outcome that would leave taxpayers on the hook for more than $370-million..Across-the-board, the PSAC is seeking pay and benefit increases for its 120,000 members that would cost taxpayers nearly $10 billion over the next three years..The 35,000-member Union of Taxation Employees is demanding a 30% wage hike over the next three years. The union has threatened to go on strike, just in time for tax season..Tax collectors screwing over taxpayers. It doesn’t get any more Canadian than that!.Significantly however, federal unions aren’t the only ones getting in on the action. The provincial labour reps are presenting their ask. Last fall for example, a union representing 55,000 Ontario educational support workers demanded an eye-popping 11.7% annual wage increase from the Ford government, prompting stunned Premier Doug Ford to invoke the notwithstanding clause of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. (The education workers later settled for a still sizeable 14.4% increase over four years.).Robert Hickey, a labour relations expert at Queen’s University, says these steep wage demands are a sign of things to come for collective bargaining across Canada..“The bargaining environment has been fundamentally changed by inflation,” Hinkley told the CBC in a recent interview..Albertans should therefore buckle up for what are sure to be a turbulent series of labour negotiations..Both the United Nurses of Alberta (UNA) and the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees (AUPE) are set to return to the bargaining table next year..The Alberta Teachers’ Association’s contract will be up by around the middle of the next premier’s term in office..Public sector salaries already eat up more than half of the total Alberta government operating budget..Whoever wins the provincial election on May 29th will be tempted to use Alberta’s latest resource windfall, expected to bring over $28 billion into the provincial coffers this year, to placate the province’s rapacious public sector unions. This after all would be far more pleasant than the alternative course of public sniping, labour demonstrations, and possible strikes..Past experience (and common sense) tell us that Rachel Notley would be likely to quickly succumb to this temptation were she to become premier once again..After all, one-time labour lawyer Notley has a record of growing the public sector when she had the chance. That was the lean stretch between 2015 and 2019. Per the Fraser Institute, Alberta saw 79,000 new public sector jobs created over a four year period encompassing the first three years of Notley's term. (Private-sector employment decreased by 3% over the same period.) This worked out to roughly 20,000 new public sector jobs each year..If Notley was such a steadfast ally to the public sector during a multi-year economic downturn, imagine what she’ll do with a near $30 billion windfall and an unrestrained chequebook?.The prospect of a second Notley premiership undoubtedly has Alberta’s public employees salivating. The 9-in-10 Albertan workers who do not belong to a public sector union however, won’t be so lucky..“Who do you most trust to manage Alberta’s resource windfall?” is the only ballot question that matters heading into May’s provincial election. Do we allow the windfall to be cannibalized by exorbitant public sector wage and benefit hikes, or do we invest the nest egg in paying down the province’s debt and spurring more broad-based economic prosperity?.This is the question all Albertans should be asking themselves as they prepare to head to the polls..Rahim Mohamed is a freelance writer based in Calgary.
