Job Cuts Expected to Hit Inside Workers at City Hall
Tuesday, January 17, 2012 @ 4:02 AM
Prince George, B.C.-You will have to wait until later today to get the full information on how the City will cut jobs in order to meet a cut of $1,679,816.00 in wages from the 2012 budget.
The City is working with a provisional budget that calls for tax increases to be held to 3.12 %. That means job cuts, but how it will impact services is not yet known.
At the end of November 2011 there were 724 people working for the city, with 157 of them being part timers.
CUPE Local 399, the outside workers, has a “no layoff” clause in its contract. CUPE local 1048, which represents the inside workers, does not. That means those workers in 1048 could bump more junior employees, but in order to reach the proposed figure in personnel expenditure savings, that would have to be substantial.
A number of workers in local 399 are heading for retirement, but that would not be sufficient to meet the figure proposed.
So if the Fire Department and the police department are not faced with cuts, that leaves only management and the inside workers from which to cut the $1.7 million dollars. That, according to information from some at City Hall will likely translate into about 15 to 20 jobs.
The previous Communications Director has already left the building, the City will pick up $125,000 in salary there, but that certainly is not enough. The City Manager also says $243,465.00 must be cut from overhead expenses.
Added to all this are comments from many departments that at least one department at the Hall is short three to four workers that either haven’t been replaced or were not hired in the past.
The contract for 1048 ends December 31st of this year and bargaining could become a major issue in the City.
While a special council meeting was called yesterday, it is pretty evident the outcome of the meeting was known well before the meeting got underway. A media release announcing the decision by Council was distributed within seconds of the Mayor calling the meeting “adjourned.”
The City is expecting to receive just over $800,000.00 in new money for this fiscal year. Additional expenses amount to $3.9 million.
The general levy will increase under the proposal by 1.47%, snow and ice control will remain the same, and the provisional budget calls for no new enhancements, the road re hab will increase by just over one half of one percent at .65% and the Canada Winter Games levy will account for 1.00 % in the increase.
Councillor Cameron Stolz told Council that he did not want to see the PG Air Roundtable grant ($70 thousand dollars) discontinued. Councillor Brian Skakun was opposed to approving the provisional plan.
Neither of these two councillors, nor any of their colleagues, suggested that the $84,500.00 in increases to the salaries for the Mayor or Councillors be rolled back.
In her campaign pledge, newly elected Mayor Shari Green said she would seek cuts of up to 10% in City spending.
The Council and Mayor will meet the media today at 3:15pm.
Comments
How the heck does a union get a “no layoff” clause? I definitely work in the wrong place…
I guess the no layoff clause explains why so many lazy useless people still have their jobs.
20 people represents 1.7 million dollars? That’s $85,000 a piece. Wow.
Finally, a Mayor will Cahones.
“…is short three to four workers that either havenât been replaced or were not hired in the past.”
Welcome to what began happening in PRIVATE industry about two decades ago and has become standard practice ever since.
$85,000 benefits loaded likely is about $60,000 salary plus 40% for benefits loading (consistent with union benefits) of $24,000. Still alot but people tend to forget the high cost of benefits and payroll taxes such as CPP and EI and pension matching that the employer pays.
$70,000.00 a year for pg air round table! Really??? Their 5 year plan is to look at vehicles idling at drive though windows and surprise surprise……wood stoves.
I think that money would be better spent keeping one person employed and paying taxes.
Lets get rid of whoever is in charge of snow clearing as he/she obviously has no idea what he is doing.
Start from the top and work your way down. This includes the increase for councillors and mayor. Take what the rest of the reg. joe blow get – nothing.
Then the major cut backs are city management – reg staff know how to do the jobs.
As for PG Air – in the long run in will be increasing taxes anyways with the type of sand/gravel they would like to see. As for the wood stoves – that has already been done with gov. grants for new stoves.
No union contract should have a no layoff clause.
why is the fire department not open for review? I am not saying we should reduce our level of service or protection but could it be possible to have some cost savings in that department without reducing service/safety? I see why right now it is politically impossible to suggest there could be any money savings in policing but I don’t understand not looking and the fire department.
The no layoff clause for outside city workers explains a lot. No wonder most of them stand around having coffee most of the day and talking to each other when there is no danger of losing thier job through redundancy. I wonder if they have a no fire claus as well. Wouldn’t surprise me. Unions have been out of control and out of sync with reality for a long time now. How else do you explain an uneducated cashier that works for the city making over $20/hr.
They could go CLAC Union LOL ;)
:)
not-so-random I agree with you whole heartly. I could not believe it this morning when I heard the grader,2 front end loaders and municipal truck plowing our street. The loader was having trouble getting enough snow and ice in the bucket. As I type this they have now made their 3rd pass leaving the end of my driveway where I have to go out in -30 weather to shovel it clean before it freezes there. I put a call in to Mayor Greens office left a message for her to call back but to be truthful I do not expect to hear from her.
The grader has just made a 4th pass.
I’m suddenly very worried about my lungs…
Grader and loader just passed again for the 5th time.
No union contract should have a no layoff clause.
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Every union contract should have a, “no layoff clause”
What the city doesnt need is the severance pacages they have for the CEO and the directors. These are the people that need to shape up or get out of town.
if youi see people standig around talking to each other its the supervisor that needs to go. And yes I worked in industry for many years and its no different people will talk and f** the dog.
Its all about motivation and having your employees fitting in and respecting their effort that gets the job done. And thats managements job If they walk around with their nose in the air and act like managers someone will thrip them.
Cheers
We complain about the lack of snow and ice removal, we complain about getting it done. We complain about the driveways being cleared, we complain about the driveway not being cleared.
My oposts are not appearing
http://laborpress.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1102:court-rules-no-layoff-clause-doesnt-mean-what-it-says&catid=88:lary-cary&Itemid=102
The internet is full of the following legal rulings.
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November 29, 2011
By Larry Cary, Partner, Cary Kane LLP
When the Village of Johnson City abolished the positions of six firefighters out of budgetary necessity in 2009, the Firefighters union sought their reinstatement contending that the collective bargaining agreement with the Village prohibited layoffs for the life of the agreement. The clause read: âThe Village shall not lay-off any member of the bargaining unit during the life of this contract.â
Thinking they had a good case, the Union filed for arbitration and twice the lower courts agreed, ordering the Village to arbitrate the dispute. This month, the New York Court of Appeals, the stateâs highest court, ruled otherwise.
The Court of Appeals ruled the language of the no-layoff provision was not sufficiently explicit to prevent the termination of firefighters under the circumstances where the Village was eliminating positions. The majority of the Court held, âthe clause here does not explicitly protect the firefighters from the abolition of their positions due to economic and budgetary stringency.â
In support of this decision, the Court also looked to the fact that the âterm âlayoffâ is undefined in the CBA, and is open to different and reasonable interpretations. Indeed, the partiesâ disagreement over whether the term âlayoffâ constitutes a permanent or non-permanent job loss, and whether the Villageâs abolition of the firefighter positions constituted a layoff, underscores its ambiguity.â
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So, where is the agreement the CIty has with the outside workers?
My post are appearing .
There are also many areas where management needs to have a closer look to cut cost. Like the Firemen chasing ambulances. We were never in a position to take on the Winter Games but we did. Of course these were not the presnr councls ideas but lets keep an eye open for future expenditure of ths nature.
Tbe city needs to get rid of all the property that they have downtown. On one hand they are trying to increase the tax base and on the other they have all this property that brings in no taxes at all.
There are many other areas they can look at rather then laying off “WORKERS”.
Cheers
http://www.lrb.bc.ca/cas/WUG28.pdf
Both agreements
Well Gus try and find a court in BC for examples of employee harsament. All the Americans know is that the God will look after them. They dont care about uniomn contracts.
Cheers
No mention of IPG money pit or tourism pg?
“There are also many areas where management needs to have a closer look to cut cost. Like the Firemen chasing ambulances.”
I disagree. Take a car accident for example. The Firemen are often first on the scene, they do traffic control, they can do extractions that ambulances are not set up for. Heck, they might even put out a fire. If these guys are on shift anyway what is the actual cost for them to attend? A couple bucks worth of fuel? Or would you rather sit in your car and bleed while some committee review every incident on a case by case basis to decide which resources to send?
Amazing what is revealed on this site – the outside workers have a no-layoff clause!
This seems to explain why ALL suggestions for the city to buy an automated pothole patching machine have been steadfastly ignored!
This highly effective and efficient machine requires only one operator and another person to direct traffic!
It would eliminate at least two to three workers and pay for itself in a couple of years with the savings of wages and benefits!
Does the city really need a “Coordinator Animation, Audio and Display Services” for $28.25/hr????????
The no layoff agreement ends Dec 31 2012, should be city’s #1 priority to re-negotiate.This only applies to full time employees so the city could lay off part timers and reassign work accordingly.
Another option would be to use the “no work” clause and send workers home at the start of the shift even though they would have to pay them 3 hours. This would also encourage them to use accumulated banked time to top up the checks during slow times.This is used quite often by the heavy equipment dealerships in town and works well.
Sounds like the grader and loader mentioned above is a make work project. If the city used the no work clause it would also save cutting edges on the equipment and fuel(pg air fairies would rejoice;)
One would be amazed where it starts for the backlog for the court. Perhaps the City can explain. Check out the politics and if anyone else has been hired in the past few years for the people hired to work at the RCMP such as the data processor clerks………
Take a look back to the Nov. 16th/2010 Citizen and review the front page story entitled “A big part of the Equation”. Note there are nearly 70 employee’s in City Hall and the Fire department making near or well over one hundred thousand a year.
These figures include payroll burden which accounts for between 35 and 40 % in addition to basic wage.
These amounts far exceed those of the outside work force. (The outside work force meaning labourers, tradesmen, etc., doing the physical work of keeping the City in order.
A comparison can be if a tradesman makes twenty five to thirty bucks an hour, plus 40% payroll burden , the guy making $30, costs the Taxpayer (based on a 2000 hr. year) approximately eighty four grand annually.
Now by my experience in the trades for over 40 years, I can attest to the fact that a tradesman working in all kinds of conditions puts in a much tougher day than someone sitting in an Air Conditioned office at a desk. And if one thinks there is more brain power used by a desk worker than a tradesman, your way off track.
Look again at the positions and wages of those listed in the above mentioned news paper.
While I “know” firefighter are an important necessity in the overall picture, I must suggest that their value is grossly overrated when it comes to wages. Seeing fire dispatchers making upwards of 93 grand a year makes you wonder how hard they work?? Or seeing firefighters retiring at age 51/52 with a pension of 70% of annual wage, plus a substantial pay out causes me considerable consternation.
Of course I will be considered picky, but I we need solutions to our tax burden we must look at some of these situations.
When a general manager of projects gets $158,000 a year as a part time worker because he runs an Engineering Firm on the side, makes me wonder if we are getting the best and the brightest in our administration, or is much of it just patronage.
Take note also of same family names and one must be envious of the fact that over two hundred thousand dollars of taxpayers money goes into single families because of relative, spousal, or sibling hiring.
There is no question that I am envious of course, but facts are facts and if cuts are to be made, they must be on the inside.
But our new Mayor who gets over 90 grand a year to lead city council and another 30 thousand to sit on the regional board will be untouchable and will make sure her administration colleges are as well.
STOP any waste of money on Downtown revitilization .. We have wasted millions up millions on this area.. its DEAD.
Hey Green Spender… nice waste of $350,000 for some analyst to say stop paying $350,000 to have an analyst look at your books. I am sure you have a controller and way to many accoutants that this should be part of their job. Might be time to pull a bunch of managers from the PG taxpayer trough while you are at it.
20% cut in salary before their last raise for Mayor and council,cut a couple of city engineer jobs. Have all city workers do their own janitorial i.e. dusting off their own keyboards cleaning their offices washrooms and wiping their own butts…
It’s easy to see why Ben’s firm went bankrupt. Leadership means doing the things the loud-mouths won’t. I’m Henderson and that’s one (honest) man’s opinion
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