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Once upon a time when budgets were largely balanced, getting a federal civil service job meant lesser pay than the private sector, but great benefits and a gold-plated pension.
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Not anymore.
The “lesser pay” angle has been wiped out.
A federal civil service job has become a tidy little sinecure, with the odds of getting fired too long to even entertain.
Also . . .
“It’s pay for failure,” Conservative MP Kelly McCauley said after looking at the numbers from the Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS) showing $171 million in bonuses being paid out to civil servants despite departments achieving less than half of their performance objectives.
As first reported in the National Post, Justice Canada led the way, spending $16 million in bonuses to 98% of its executives, and to 1,400 non-executive employees.
Coming in at No. 2 is the Canada Revenue Agency — the dreaded Taxman — which spent $13.5 million in bonuses to 97% of its executives and 2,000 of its non-executive employees.
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Examples. The Liberals’ promise of clean drinking water on all reserves? Unfulfilled, but bonuses paid.
The chronically-ill Phoenix pay system doesn’t get fixed, but bonuses are paid.
The implosion at the Department of National Defence over sexual harassment being rife in the ranks? Not rectified but bonuses paid.
“You can only shake your head at it,” said McCauley. “I call it a very expensive participation award. Whether you fail or not, you get it.”
As of 2020, there were 300,450 public servants in the federal ranks, which is bigger than the population of the city of Kitchener, bigger than the city of Windsor, but almost equal to the population of Markham.
So it is no small number.
No surprise, however, that bonuses were doled out to 89% of the public sectors’ executives. They always feed their own. It represents bonuses to almost 8,000 people — despite departments failing to accomplish more than 50% of their performance goals.
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But there are side issues that were also in play.
The Public Service Alliance of Canada, the federal civil service’s largest union, says it has scored “a major victory” in April for federal civil servants who had to use sick leave, family leave or vacation credits to manage life during the pandemic.
It grieved the policy, wielded its power, and won.
Board adjudicator Marie-Claire Perrault said family leave, sick leave and vacation leave all have specific definitions in collective agreements and are not meant to be used as a bucket of leave time to draw upon when employees are willing but unable to go to work.
“I find that requiring the manager and employee to consider other paid leave is a violation of the collective agreement,” Perrault concluded. “The rights and entitlements negotiated in the collective agreement exist as separate entitlements; they are not meant to be melded.”
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Perrault said civil servants should not have to use family leave, for instance, to cover the problems created by schools or daycares being closed due to COVID-19.
“It is unreasonable to use leave that is meant for another purpose — short-term events — for a reality that may be ongoing,” Perrault said.
In a news release, PSAC hailed the decision as “a major victory for federal public service workers hardest hit by the pandemic.”
The word “entitlements” is found everywhere when talking about federal worker’s’ agreements because this isn’t the federal civil service of old anymore. Then again, budgets have long gone unbalanced.
It’s as if the rank-and-file now have their own exclusive club.
This meant bonuses in finance and treasury since failure to produce does not stop the payments.
A nice job once you get it.
