The relationship between City of Prince George management and their unionized employees has fallen so low that they can't even agree on how much the wage increases from the last contract were for, never mind hammering out a new contract.
The city issued a press release saying that the wages of city staff belonging to the Canadian Union of Public Employees locals 1048 and 399 rose by 16 per cent between 2008 and 2012.
Union rep Janet Bigelow said the increase was three per year for five years.
They're both right.
A three per cent increase over five years is a 16 per cent increase, compounded over that time period. The union may not like how that 16 per cent number looks but it's accurate. To put that in real world numbers, someone at the city who was making $30 an hour in 2008, the first year of the last contract, made $34.80 an hour in the final year in 2012.
Whether the union wants to admit it or not, that last contract was a great deal. Their public sector union colleagues in health and education have not seen their wages rise by 16 per cent over the last decade, never mind in the last five years. Unionized B.C. government employees, health-care workers and teachers went several times without an annual wage increase during the last 10 years.
It hasn't been much better in the private sector, as unionized staff have often accepted increases of one or two per cent, roughly tied to inflation. During no time in the last five years did inflation reach three per cent, meaning city workers today are ahead of where they were in 2008.
CUPE doesn't want to talk about provincial employees because they know how bad it's been for them. Bigelow stressed the annual two per cent increases B.C. municipalities have been giving their unionized staff.
There's nothing wrong with the union trying to get the best it can for its members. It did a great job in 2008. The last contract was negotiated in good faith and the city met its obligations to its staff.
But this is a new day.
There is a new city manager in place who cut her teeth working at the senior level in various provincial ministries under the Liberals. If Beth James followed the Liberal playbook faithfully, she offered zero across the board and told the union to find the operational savings to pay for the wage hike.
She and senior city staff must have felt generous since the city's offer was a three-year deal with zero, zero and two per cent in the last year, sources say. They've even helped the union out by pointing at sick leave accruals and other costs and benefits within the previous collective agreement as sources of a wage increase in the new contract.
The message is clear: there is no new money to invest in wage increases for city staff.
Last month, CUPE B.C. president Mark Hancock said city staff will start leaving for the private sector if wages don't go up.
Well, that's the risk all businesses face so why should be the City of Prince George be immune from that possibility? All workers are free to leave their place of employment for greener pastures any time they like. That's the benefit workers enjoy in a capitalist society. City taxpayers shouldn't be forced to pay a premium on wages, based solely on the hopes that staff don't leave. Doing so creates a sense of entitlement, a poisonous ingredient to a workplace that stifles creativity and productivity.
Mediation didn't work, there are no further bargaining talks planned and a list of essential services are being put together, at which point either the union will serve strike notice or the city will serve notice to lockout its staff.
Whatever the outcome, the political winners will be Mayor Shari Green and her fellow councillors, for standing up to the union and holding down city wages.
Just in time for next fall's municipal election.
