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    Well-paid on the public tab.

    Ontario has just come out with its annual 'Sunshine List' - civil servants who earn in excess of $100,000 CDN. (approx 50,000 GBP). There are now 42,000+ people on the list, including Mayors, Premiers, Judges, Doctors, Nurses, Auditors, School Principals, etc etc.

    Obviously, the local bog-rag is having a field day, saying that 'average Ontarians' should be insulted at the excess, etc. The average Ontarian apparently earns $38,000.

    My question is whether there should be cause for outrage. Setting aside the prima-facia 'geez, that's a lot of money', should it not be paid if the job warrants it? Does the public sector, as it claims, compete in the same job market for talent as does the private sector? Should it? Do we want the best and the brightest to run our civil sector, or just the best and the brightest who'll work for, perhaps, significantly less than they'd earn in the public sector?

    #2
    Well-paid on the public tab.

    Further, a scan of the list itself shows a staggering number of "Teacher, Elementary" and "Teacher, Secondary" on the list. A quick call to Mrs WOM (a teacher) reveals that it's pretty easy to reach that level if you continually update your qualifications over the years and have 15 or 20 union-years under your belt. Yoy.

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      #3
      Well-paid on the public tab.

      Good question. It's a particular issue with "the professions", law, finance etc. Although by no means everyone in the private sector earns huge salaries, enough of them do to make hiring people of the expected calibre very expensive. I presume this can cause a problem when trying to integrate them into existing salary structures. I have a theory (dreamed up about a minute ago) that "the consultant culture" is partly about avoiding these political problems. If someone hasn't got a grade, it's harder to see what they earn.

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        #4
        Well-paid on the public tab.

        I've been involved with helping manage the recruitment of accountants into the Civil Service in the UK, and the salary scales can be a problem in attracting applicants, inasmuch as we appear to offer to "pay" a great deal less, for the jobs we want them for, than the market rate salaries they could attract with the same skills. However, published salary scales for civil servants take no account of "the whole package" - in particular the non-contributory index-linked final salary pension scheme, that it's impossible to fund the equivalent of as a private consumer. It's estimated that that, in itself, is truly worth something like 20% of salary, so a published £40k salary is actually £50k. And then there's the still quite generous annual leave entitlements, and other non-valued benefits like in-work flexitime arrangements and ability to work from home, so overall even an apparently meagre accountant's £40k package to join the Civil Service could be viewed as the equivalent of one that would mean earning as much as £60k "outside", but having to work your knuckles off for it. And that's before anyone's even mentioned job security (and the compensation package for redundancy from the Civil Service, which is probably the most generous for any career outside of being a Premiership football manager).

        I guess overall the point is that there are many more things to take into account than simply the published salary rates in comparing "like-for-like" appointments, and what matters to particular individuals is a function of where they are in their life at that moment.

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          #5
          Well-paid on the public tab.

          I did some HR consulting for the US government a few years back and the issues are similar to what Rogin describes. While the salaries are slightly lower than in industry, the overall package can be more enticing. Unfortunately for the governments, the overall package has many long term elements, and most people do not look at those. They want to know that the amount they get in their paycheck is big enough to cover what they want to spend in a given month.

          Another thing that governments tend to lose out on in comparisons is the payment of bonuses. In industry, particularly finance and legal, at a managerial level, you are likely to get some sort of annual performance bonus opportunity. While this can be smoke and mirrors at some companies, it provides a short term carrot for people to join. Government agencies tend not to be able to pay out annual incentives in any significant fashion.

          Also, with the exception of certain CEOs who bankrupt companies and get massive payouts, there are very few instances where I think it is warranted to complain about how much someone else makes. They are just trying to make what they feel they are worth, pay their mortgage/rent, send the kids to school, etc. These things don't get paid through "good feelings" or "mission."

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            #6
            Well-paid on the public tab.

            The whole pension thing is often cited as a quid pro quo for the relatively poor salaries in the civil service, though both routinely find themselvse under attack. A lot of what benefits civil servants do have, of course (and here comes the stuck record), also stem from having trade union recognition and well negotiated arrangements.

            Talking of which, some other public servants appear a bit miffed here:
            http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7325000.stm

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              #7
              Well-paid on the public tab.

              Rogin, the sort of recruits you're talking about have traditionally had good pensions in the private sector. And indeed good leave. I had 22 days when I started at a City accountants, and higher grades got more, I think. So not that much difference from the public sector.And in any case new entrants to the civil service don't get the old pension.

              I suppose flexible working is an advantage that they might not have had in the private sector, and they might be prepared to forgo some money in return for that.

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                #8
                Well-paid on the public tab.

                Having a final salary scheme is only an attractive proposition if (i) your final salary is reasonably high and (ii) you intend to retire at the civil service.

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                  #9
                  Well-paid on the public tab.

                  The average blue-collar worker in Montreal makes $64,000. Unions have been very successful at putting the interests of their membership above the public good.

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                    #10
                    Well-paid on the public tab.

                    So what average salary would meet the public good in Montreal?

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                      #11
                      Well-paid on the public tab.

                      Unions have been very successful at putting the interests of their membership above the public good.
                      That's their function.

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                        #12
                        Well-paid on the public tab.

                        Also, distinguishing between "union members" and "the public" makes unions sound like some sort of shadowy cabal, and that makes me sad.

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                          #13
                          Well-paid on the public tab.



                          Canadian inflation (rates for the year ending each month). Those out of control unions don't seem to have ruined the economy successfully yet.

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                            #14
                            Well-paid on the public tab.

                            I've detected two different reactions to this story, driven by slightly different emotions

                            1) There's anger over the kind of thing (front page on the Sun yesterday) where a ticket-taker on the Toronto Subway was revealed to be making roughly 50,000 pounds per year. That puts him comfortably in the top 10% of income earners in Canada. I think people see that and say "that's crazy, lots of people could do that for a lot less". The anger is about the city being impecunious, whereas the ticket taker is seen as legitimately taking advantage of the over-time, etc on offer to him.

                            2) There's also anger about the very high pay of very senior public figures, like the various university presidents/vice-chancellors making 200-250 000 pounds. The case against them is worded slightly differently: they are fat cats, paying themselves (so it's seen) more than is seemly from the public purse.

                            In both cases, people think reward is out of whack with effort. But in one case, it's the employer who is stupid and in the other, the employee who is enriching him/herself at the public's expense.

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Well-paid on the public tab.

                              In both cases, people think reward is out of whack with effort

                              Isn't the first case isn't it reward seen as out of whack with skill/ expertise level? The ticket guy may need to make as much effort as a corporate exec even if he's quicker to train, replace etc.

                              I'm slightly at odds with Wyatt. My union has a rather wider role than boosting my paycheck and working conditions (not that they've been so effective at that recently, arf).

                              Comment


                                #16
                                Well-paid on the public tab.

                                Tubby: wages have far outstripped the inflation rate, which as your graph shows has been oscillating around 2%. The cost of living in Montreal is quite low. The average price of a home here is little over 100,000 pounds.

                                QUOTE:
                                Unions have been very successful at putting the interests of their membership above the public good.
                                That's their function.
                                So what average salary would meet the public good in Montreal?
                                At some point, those salaries become so high that the tax burden they impose on residents and small businesses leads to more poverty and economic hardship in the general population, especially working class members. The city of Montreal for instance has had to double subway prices in the last decade. It's more or less a zero sum game.

                                You have for instance a lot of immigrant cab drivers, often people with advanced degrees, who work much, much longer hours and make around a third of what the average unionized blue-collar worker makes. There are hundreds of thousands of working poor and lower-middle class residents who would kill to have jobs that would pay half of what a blue-collar worker makes.

                                Comment


                                  #17
                                  Well-paid on the public tab.

                                  AG, presidents and provosts, etc, of universities don't "pay themselves." There's a board that decides those things. Same with CEOs. Of course, sometimes there are all sorts of favors swapped, corruption and other sorts of shenanigans.

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                                    #18
                                    Well-paid on the public tab.

                                    Yes, I know that, Reed. I'm just saying that's not the popular perception of how it works.

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