l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 21世纪头10年，加拿大阿尔伯塔省政府雇员工资上涨119% ，远远超过全国63%的增长率
；政府官员工资增长吃掉95%预算增长
National Post editorial board: A wage cut for Alberta’s future
Ted Jacob/Postmedia News
The province’s public servants are among Canada’s highest-paid.
Alberta was once the model of public fiscal prudence for the entire country.
No longer.
Over the past dozen years, Alberta’s government has leapt from the eighth
highest-spending provincial administration on a per capita basis to far and
away the highest-spending — higher even than such well-known spendthrifts
as Quebec and Ontario. Increases in provincial expenditures have turned an $
8.5-billion surplus in 2006 into recent deficits in the $1-billion to $3-
billion range. This spending spree is due not to an expansion of public
services to Albertans or to a boom in infrastructure construction, but
almost entirely to an explosion in public-sector pay. And it is
unsustainable.
According to a study released Thursday by the University of Calgary’s
school of public policy, “the public-sector wage bill in Alberta has
increased 119% in the decade following the turn of the century.” While
wages for civil servants, nurses, teachers, police officers, firefighters
and other public employees have increased 63% across the country, they have
risen by nearly twice that amount in Alberta. And they were already
competitive with those in other provinces before the rapid increases of the
past decade.
Even accounting for inflation and for the rapid increase in Alberta’s
population — since 2001, the province has grown by nearly 900,000 people —
the rise in public workers’ pay amounts to a real rise of over 20%.
The tragedy is that all these increases have added little to the level of
public services enjoyed by Albertans, at least directly.
Since 2001, Alberta has seen a remarkable expansion of provincial revenues,
due mostly to rising oil and natural gas prices. Even excluding health,
education and welfare transfers from Ottawa, Alberta’s provincial revenues
have risen 56% in the past decade, despite the worldwide economic downturn.
So where has all this additional money gone? According to the U of C study,
public sector wages have “consumed 95% of the increase in provincial
revenues over the past decade.” For every new dollar Alberta has brought in
— nearly $11-billion extra a year — 95¢ has gone into the pockets of
civil servants and other public-sector workers.
Alberta teachers, nurses, hospital workers, janitors and doctors are among
the highest — if not the highest — paid in the country. Senior provincial
bureaucrats bring home salaries as good as or better than their federal
counterparts, even though they are administering a jurisdiction only about
one-tenth as large as the country as a whole.
Most of the extremely generous public-sector wage and fee agreements that
have led to this explosion in pay were signed by the current Tory government
in the name of securing labour peace and at a time when the government was
awash in resource revenue. Alberta teachers were given a 10-year contract in
return for wage and benefit increases about double the rate of inflation.
And it is not unheard of for Alberta nurses to make $70,000 to $80,000 a
year because of a clause in their last contract that permits them to claim
overtime pay for every hour they work above what they were originally
scheduled for, even if they were scheduled for just eight hours and ended up
working an average work week of 37 to 40 hours.
Because of these and other sweetheart deals with public-sector employees, “
the total wage bill rose to nearly 45% of total expenditure in 2010, from
just over a quarter in 2000.” Not only is that a bigger piece, it is from a
much larger pie. In 2000, Alberta public service pay consumed 25% of
expenditures of $20.8-billion. By 2010, that had risen to 45% of $38.9-
billion.
Staggering.
There is little chance the current Tory government will find the courage to
rein in this exorbitant compensation. Newly selected Premier Alison Redford
won the Tory leadership last October, largely by convincing unionized
teachers to take out Conservative memberships in return for her pledge to
restore a planned $107-million cut to education funding. It seems unlikely,
then, that Premier Redford will do anything to upset provincial employees or
supporters of higher government spending.
But Alberta must get control of public-sector wages. As it learned the hard
way in the 1990s, excess public spending has a way of coming around to haunt
governments when good times fade. Overspending in the 1980s led to huge
deficits and skyrocketing debt that had to be tackled by former premier
Ralph Klein’s famous cuts — 18% of total provincial spending — between
1993 and 1996.
If Alberta does not want a repeat of those tough times, it needs to control
public workers’ wages now. | S*********n
发帖数: 4050 | 2 Conservative party. What can u expect
country.
★ 发自iPhone App: ChineseWeb - 中文网站浏览器
【在 l****z 的大作中提到】
: 21世纪头10年，加拿大阿尔伯塔省政府雇员工资上涨119% ，远远超过全国63%的增长率
: ；政府官员工资增长吃掉95%预算增长
: National Post editorial board: A wage cut for Alberta’s future
: Ted Jacob/Postmedia News
: The province’s public servants are among Canada’s highest-paid.
: Alberta was once the model of public fiscal prudence for the entire country.
: No longer.
: Over the past dozen years, Alberta’s government has leapt from the eighth
: highest-spending provincial administration on a per capita basis to far and
: away the highest-spending — higher even than such well-known spendthrifts
| y****t
发帖数: 10233 | 3 you become a joke now.
【在 S*********n 的大作中提到】
: Conservative party. What can u expect
:
: country.
: ★ 发自iPhone App: ChineseWeb - 中文网站浏览器
| S*********n
发帖数: 4050 | 4 your rear end got poked again.
【在 y****t 的大作中提到】
: you become a joke now.
|
|
