Public unions ‘absolutely’ won’t agree to wage cuts

Bargaining units for provincial workers say 3.5% rollback won’t fly

Finance Minister Donna Harpauer’s admission that attempts to save hundreds of millions of dollars by imposing a 3.5 per cent pay cut on public sector workers “doesn’t look promising ” has been echoed by two of the province’s largest unions.

The Saskatchewan Governmental and General Employees’ Union (SGEU) and Service Employees International Union (SEIU-West) said this week that none of their local bargaining committees are expected to agree to the proposed compensation cuts.

“There is absolutely no interest in this … total compensation decrease,” said SEIU-West President Barbara Cape, whose union represents about 13,000 workers in education, health and other sectors, almost 85 per cent of whom are facing the wage rollback request.

“There’s a solid resolve across all of our bargaining units that they’re not going to agree to it,” added Bob Bymoen, president of SGEU, which represents around 18,000 public sector workers, the vast majority of whom will be without a contract by the end of next year.

Bymoen and Cape said virtually all of the public sector workers their unions represent will be negotiating or preparing to negotiate new collective agreements within the next 12 months.

Premier Brad Wall unveiled the proposed compensation cuts ahead of the Saskatchewan Party government’s unpopular 2017-18 budget, which aimed to halve a $1.2 billion deficit. MLAs, political staff, and ministry and Crown heads have already accepted the reduction.

Opposition to the rollbacks was strong from the outset, and resulted in the government halving — to $125 million from $250 million — its expected savings for this fiscal year. Last month, a SaskPower union became the first to formally reject the proposal.

While the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 2067’s decision may not increase the confidence of other unions at the bargaining table, it certainly reinforces their position, according to Saskatchewan Federation of Labour president Larry Hubich.

“It confirms what they’ve been saying — our members will not accept a 3.5 per cent wage rollback,” said Hubich, an outspoken critic of the Sask. Party government whose organization represents around 100,000 people belonging to other unions in the province.

Harpauer was not available for an interview on Thursday, but government spokeswoman Kathy Young said in an email that the government’s plan to save money by reducing total compensation costs by 3.5 per cent has not changed.

The newly appointed finance minister said earlier this week that “no decisions have been made” on whether intransigent unions could face layoffs, adding: “We want to keep all of our workers; they do a great job, but somehow we also have to make ends meet.”

Another possibility is that the government continue dipping into a contingency fund built into the budget, though the Ministry of Finance reported in August that more than half of the $300 million fund had already been spent to keep the budget plan on track.

“It’s concerning, because it’s large dollars and resource revenue is down and so we’re looking for that money,” Harpauer said this week, adding the government was hopeful unions would follow the lead of MLAs who took a wage reduction.

Bymoen acknowledged that while some workers may be concerned about looming layoffs, his hope is that the government will look for other ways to save money and provide each SGEU bargaining unit with the opportunity to negotiate a contract fairly.

Cape, meanwhile, said the government is awash in ideas about how to deal with the shortfall, including unpaid leave and layoffs, but that “nobody seems to be able to provide a clear direction.”

SGEU and SEIU-West are not the only major unions to come out against the proposed cut. The Saskatchewan Teachers Federation, which has around 13,000 members, has confirmed the cut was not among the proposals its members are bringing to negotiations.

“We know that we’ve got a set of proposals that has been passed by our membership and it’s quite different than a 3.5-per-cent cut,” STF president Patrick Maze told the Saskatoon StarPhoenix last week.