Why public sector negotiations matter
Topnotch piece by Jonathan Montpetit on why public sector negotiations matter to all wage earners in Quebec. Basically, real wages stalled between 1978 and 2015. “The buying power of salaried workers in the province flatlined for nearly 40 years.”
So if you’re wondering how an ordinary working joe in Quebec could expect to buy a house back then, this article goes a long way to explaining it.
“Between 1983 and 2017, the productivity of the Quebec economy increased by 34.5 per cent. Hourly wages, though, increased only 9.5 per cent during that period, while the salaries of unionized workers increased even less.”
“Between 15 and 20 per cent of salaried workers in Quebec collect their paycheques from the provincial government. By forcing public sector wages downward, the government may have brought other wages in the province down with them.”
But read it, I could quote it all day.
Public sector workers held a demo Tuesday afternoon inside the World Trade Centre building.
Tim S. 08:44 on 2021-05-26 Permalink
I’ve posted about this before, but one inaccuracy in the article: Legault “isn’t willing to offer pay increases beyond inflation: five per cent over three years.”
There’s no guarantee that inflation will stay at or below that, and already this year looks to be around 4%, depending on how you calculate it. A big part of the union demands is actually to just keep increases adjusted to inflation.
mare 10:40 on 2021-05-26 Permalink
“Quebec has an unusually large number of unionized public sector workers by Canadian standards”
Why is that? Maybe because we tend to replicate all federal functions and end up with a lot of bureaucracy? Because we have very strong public sector unions so underperforming workers are impossible to lay off, and efficiency gains are blocked?
I have no answers, just suspicions.
thomas 15:40 on 2021-05-26 Permalink
Bureaucracies are larger in Quebec at all levels of government. For example, The city of Montreal employees 30,000 people compare this with the City of Toronto (with a population 1.7x larger ) with 34,000 employees and the City of Vancouver (a population 0.4x Montreal) with 7,000 employees.