Up in Canada, the government sector is pretty much run by unions.
They go on strike for more money more benefits.
It used to be that union workers in the public sectors were paid lower than the private sector but their benefits made up for the gap.
Now the union workers are paid 15-20% more than the private plus have great benefits.
The problem is that these workers are often not efficient and is a drain to the budget.
I’ve heard that 50% of the budget goes to salaries.
But shouldn’t we remove unions from the government organizations since they cannot go bankrupt? the unions will continue to leech more money from the government, which leads to less services or more taxes. The unions treat the public money as if it’s endless.
Is it even possible to remove unions once they are in place?
Well, yes, it’s a service industry. Where else do you expect the budget to go to? Office supplies? Organizations like government offices, police departments, schools, banks, insurance companies, strip clubs, etc. that are based on people providing services (as opposed to manufacturing or selling products) are going to have salaries as their main expense.
If we assume (or establish) that these workers are inefficient and a drain on the budget, I think a better question would be ‘how can we make government workers more efficient?’ Maybe the answer is removing unions, maybe not (I don’t know much about the public sector in Canada).
For example our transit workers.
TTC wokers are unionized.
The ticket collector makes a base of $60k-70k…
Job description = collect/sell transit tickets to people. (no education required)
Several of them made 100k with overtime.
Why are they paid 60-70k base + benefits to collect tickets?
Because it’s the public money.
If it was privatized, do you think the salary would be 60k-70k?
More like it will be 30-40k which is right if you think about the job and the requirements.
The government says we are running a deficit but it’s because it must hand over money to overpaid staff.
BTW, I’m paid fairly well but I hate that my tax money is being given to overpaid union workers. i hate that services get cut because there isn’t enough money, then the union goes on strike for more money. they hold the city hostage as they stop services like transit, garbage collection, teaching…
In the US, Federal employees are generally not allowed to strike.
There is a significant pay disadvantage (about 20%) for federal employees.
State and municipal employees however can and do go on strike and their pay can get fairly high.
Perhaps eliminating the right to strike would be enough to get Canada’s federal pay scales back into line (and for our state and municipal employees as well)
The problem with this is that is makes every problem worse. Everyone winds up spending massively to support the union, the unions themselves neccessarily start knifing each other to preserve their slice of the pie, while the actual services and output decline. This is exactly what’s happening in California, although it hasn’t gotten to the point of turning on each other. Instead, they’re still cooperating to keep bleeding the state dry while offering increasingly poorer services.
TTC employees belong to the Amalgamated Transit Union, which is international: it covers transit workers in both the US and Canada. It is probably big enough and has enough resources to strenuously fight any decertifying effort brought by the people or city of Toronto.
I think the word you’re looking for is “decertified.” Decertifying a union or a union local effectively makes it disappear. Additionally, unions tend to be private organizations anyway. Their members may provide services to the public sector (and in some cases, only to the public sector, as OPSEU and AFSCME do), but the union itself is not considered to be part of the public sector.
Of course it’s a problem here in the US. It’s a problem anywhere where there are protected industries. I say this as a supporter of unions in the private sector.
The problem arises because public sector jobs are insulated from any kind of competition. In an ideal system, unions will protect a worker, but must balance the act of striking and demanding of better pay/benefits with the goal of staying competitive in their sector. No such balance exists with public sector jobs. No matter how inefficient most public systems are, they will continue, as most don’t have to stay competitive. They control a monopoly, or a near monopoly, on their product or service. They will continue to push for better compensation (as any sane worker would), but there is little pressure to become more efficient or cut costs. That’s a very bad combination for the consumer.
Many are surely performing work that could not be effectively done in the private sector, and certainly many of those public sector employees earn the pay they get. Looking at the figures though, I’m inclined to say that public sector employees are over compensated in general, and I’m sure that the unions don’t help the situation.
With all due respect, this shows a remarkable misunderstanding of how government budgeting works.
Every single person who works in government realizes that there are budget constraints that are well outside one’s own control. If the director of the transit administration knows that his salaries are going to average, say, $70 grand a worker, and multiply by so many workers, that money isn’t “free.” The more he pays “his” workers, the smaller his budget will be for buying new buses, improving the subways, etc.
The idea that government agencies only have to ask the powers that be for endless streams of new money is kind of a conservative, anti-government fantasy.
I’m not going to defend unionization of every job, but unions have done a great job at insuring that workers get wage increases at a time when CEOs pay is exploding, but CEOs are not giving real wage increases to the average worker.
If you, as a worker, feel you’re getting screwed by your employer in terms of wages or benefits, looking at a union is a very reasonable proposition.
If the OP doesn’t feel that the situation he describes is a good thing (what with the workers forming a cartel to control the supply of labour and the government decision-makers being spendthrifts with other people’s money without personal consequence), this is sort of like saying “If you’re so poorly paid compared to bank robbers, why don’t you rob a bank?”
TTC for example.
Strike to get pay hike.
Services degraded because there is no room in the budget.
TTC begs province for more money
Province says no.
TTC says screw you public you now pay more (fare hike) for less service
They reduced bus schedules, cut plans for transit expansion, and as a slap in the face, the fares increased.
Instead, what the employees and TTC should do is scale back salaries to match private sector, use all that freed up money to keep fares reasonable, increase or at least maintain services, etc.
Union workers at the rumours of such talk go on strike and demand 3% wage increases plus more benefits, bank sick days so they can cash it out at the end, and more more more… all the while taxes are raised, fees increase for less service.
What should happen is that every budget time is that every sector gets their budget so it balances.
Then unions and management must make sure they don’t go overboard.
Cut staff, reduce wages, whatever they can to balance the budget.
In a private company, do you think the CEO will say, “OMG we’re losing money but we CANNOT fire people or reduce wages. Let’s run a deficit endlessly.”
The CEO would probably look at the services and see what is critical to maintain business. Then most likely look at staffing and cut people to reduce costs.
And not sure if it’s pricey or not but we pay $3 cash for 1 way TTC ride. $6 cash for 2 way.
Robbing banks is illegal. Well, it is in the USA. I’ll bet Canada has similar laws. Belonging to unions is legal in Canada; perhaps the OP can see about changing the law in his country.
By the way–where are his cites? Doesn’t Canada have any right wing think tanks?
No, it’s like saying, “If you are so poorly paid compared to people who drive a hard bargain, you should drive a hard bargain yourself.” If one is disinclined to drive a hard bargain, but doesn’t like how much he’s being paid, then it is difficult to help that person.
I understand that you are opposed to service cutbacks and shortfalls in modernization, but you seem to be saying here that the transit authority is running permanent deficits. Is that really the case? I wouldn’t think that local agencies like that would be capable of running deficits. My guess is that they’d either cut spending or try to raise revenues to pay for the costs.
The TTC has been losing money for several years now. This has been attributed to the popularity of the Metropass over one-off transit fees and tokens. Roughly 260,000 people a month buy a Metropass, and they account for over half the adult ridership on the system. Apparently nobody at TTC headquarters foresaw the possibility that regular commuters would find it more fiscally beneficial, especially in these trying economic times, to purchase the unlimited pass rather than trying to budget out a handful of tokens over the course of a month. Why they didn’t foresee this is beyond me, but that seems to be the case. So, as a result of a predicted $100 million shortfall in 2010, the TTC is scrambling for a way to make up the deficit. In a few weeks they’ll be meeting with city councillors who will be presented with the three options the best minds of the transit unions could come up with. One, cut back service. Two, ask the government for more subsidies. Three – fare hike
…
Why does the TTC not have any money? At the current prices, Metropasses alone account for over $28 million a month. That’s $340 million a year, just from Metropasses. That doesn’t take into account token sales, one-off rides, day passes, week passes or any of the other options offered by the Commission.
According to the TTC’s own 2009 budget their operating costs max out at about $1.2 billion per year. A full third of that is covered by Metropasses. The city of Toronto gave them an additional $282 million in subsidies in 2008; now we’ve covered $620 million – over half the operating budget.
Now I don’t know about you, but I travel the TTC every day, and I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if the sheer number of people crammed onto subways and streetcars every day can’t account for the $4.8 million a month they’d need to shore up the rest of the budget. At $2.75 a ride, that’s about 1.7 million rides, or 872,000 round trips.
The TTC boasted in May they’d delivered 470.8 million rides in the previous twelve months, so let’s break it down.
470.8 million rides in a year breaks down to 39.2 million rides a month. If each rider paid the regular fare that would amount to $107.8 million dollars a month. Now we know that isn’t the case because 260,000 people buy Metropasses, and there’s no real way to tell how many rides each of those passes accounts for.
But let’s take me for an example, since I’m on the high end of the transit spike as far as the amount of time I spend running all over this city. On average I swipe or show my card four times a day, six days a week. That’s 24 rides a week, or 96 rides a month. I think that’s reasonable as an estimate. If every Metropass user did about the same we pass holders would be accounting for 24.9 million rides a month – again, sounds about right.
So of the 39.2 million rides a month the TTC claims, that leaves about 14.3 million rides to the non-pass users. If they all paid the full fare (which they don’t), that’s a total of $39.3 million dollars a month coming in from the non-passers. Let’s assume only 30% of those people pay the full fare (as opposed to day or week passes) or 4.3 million full-farers. Works out to $11.8 million, folks.
That’s more than twice the amount they need to shore up the budget. Even if you take into consideration student, senior and child fares,** I cannot for the life of me figure out how they’re looking at a hundred-million dollar deficit coming into 2010.**
So the question comes back: why do they have no money?
I searched high and low for reliable estimates on TTC salaries, benefits and retirement plans, but I’ve not been able to find any that match, so much as I would love to lay this at the feet of the fatted calf of yet another Canadian union (a favourite whipping post of mine) I can’t do it in conscience. But I can assume that, given the number of people the TTC employs, they’re shelling out a fair chunk in union-determined payments. Where the rest of the money is going, I really can’t say. They’ve talked for years about extending the subway line up to York University – hasn’t happened. The so-called Light Rail system is slated to begin construction in a few years, but we’ll see if that actually pans out. And as I’ve beaten to death already, it’s pretty clear not a great deal of money is being dumped into upkeep of the transit system.
My point in all this is that I’m tired, sick unto death really, of being asked to pay more and more for less and less. If my transit prices are going to go through the damn roof, I want to see some bang for my buck. And by “bang”, I do not mean the sound of a streetcar being derailed, a train screeching to a crushing halt (and staying there for an hour) or a bus running aground on a sidewalk.
Toronto is the best city in the world, and it’s time our transit system reflected that. To the TTC: I’ll pay you if you pay me back. Don’t leave me stranded in the middle of the night. Don’t make me late for work. And do not complain to me about your budgetary concerns until you’ve gotten yourselves in order and started providing the kind of service the long-suffering commuters of this city deserve. If you’re going to call yourself “The Better Way”, start living up to it.
In some states public employees can strike. In Missouri, they specifically are forbidden by law to strike. Public employees can, by law, bargain collectively, but they can not strike, nor are public agencies (governments, school districts, etc.) required to submit to binding arbitration.
Except for the fact that it happens all the time. Do you really need cites for the fact that government spending at all levels has continually been rising faster than inflation+population, and has been for decades?
Every single person who works in government realizes you never, ever leave a budgeted dollar unspent. You spend every dime so that you can command more next year. In the example you give, the solution is to spend the money on salary, then if you need equipment, complain that your budget is too small.