City Not Speaking to Cost of Job Cuts
Tuesday, February 21, 2012 @ 4:24 AM
Prince George, B.C.- The City of Prince George will not be releasing any further information on severance packages given to those employees let go in order to reach the budget target for 2012.
Manager of Financial Services, Kathleen Soltis says the City will be following the requirements of the Financial Information regulations and will include those numbers in the 2012 year end reporting. That is information which will not be made public until May, or early June of next year.
Soltis says the cuts made were intended to reap “long term “ savings. However, the report to City Council, which was delivered one day before the cuts were made, clearly outlined that in order to reach the budget target for 2012 ( a 3.12 percent tax hike) there would have to be salary (and associated benefit) cuts of $1,679,816.00.
Just how much the City paid out in salary and severance packages is not known, so it is it not clear if that targeted “long term reduction” actually ended up costing the City more than it would have paid in salaries and benefits for 2012.
On January 17th, the City announced it was eliminating 28 positions. Of that number, 19 were already vacant and would not be filled, a further nine people (five union, 4 managers) were given notice on the 17th.
Comments
Another unaccountable council. They should price their decisions and not try to hide it in long term financials reported more than a year from now. Its seems spending big is alright so long as it doesn’t appear for more than a year and then can be said to be a legacy cost.
I would have preferred they just renewed management contracts when they come due for 25% less to a minimum of $85,000… could have saved far more and brought compensation far more inline without the severance issues.
There is no honor in the PG council chambers it seems.
Does anyone ever get the feeling that the right hand does not know what the left is doing at the Hall?
Foot in Mouth disease appears to be rampant.
money talks yummy..Is it still the cigar smoking, whiskey drinking, big boys club with hidden PG (or hidden) money. I sometime am ashamed to be apart of this establishment
called PG. And I lived here all my life
Not surprising they don’t want to release info of how much they are going to pay one manager to sit at home for the next 2 years after they gave him an early retirement deal as part of these job cuts.
Heads up people, there is a contract signed upon hire at the city, whether you are hourly hourly, or management.
They sign the standard deal, and it sometimes works out to the employees benefit.
I’m sure if it were any one of you, you would expect the city to honour the deal.
Guess what, the City honoured a CONTRACT, its what they do, all the time.
Every time something like this comes up, people piss and moan about it, until the next time it happens.
As they say, “don’t hate the player, hate the game”
If you are naive enough to think that this is the only place it happens, open your eyes.
Isn’t the industry standard 2 years?
“Soltis says the cuts made were intended to reap âlong term â savings” .. translation: we had to pay a huge amount of money now to maybe save a little later.
And when things blow over they will probably just reopen those positions and hire new people anyways.
Severence packages vary from one organization to the next. Severence packages can also differ between management and the rank and file. Standard severence rates in BC are:
After three months of consecutive employment an employee may be eligible for compensation, written working notice, or a combination of the two as follows:
â¢After three months – one week
â¢After 12 months – two weeks
â¢After three years – one week for each completed year of employment, to a maximum of eight weeks
No severance pay is required when an employee quits,retires or is terminated for just cause. It is up to the employer to show termination was for just cause.
Additional notice or pay is required if 50 or more employees are terminated within a two-month period at a single location.
Not quite as lucrative as people seem to think.
That is information which will not be made public until May, or early June of next year.
It is legal. It’s nothing new and the principle has been carefully developed over many generations. And it relies on public amnesia. Out of sight, out of mind. Works reliably all the time.
Now you see it – now you don’t. Houdini would be proud.
The costs of severance won’t be out of line. Zack has described it fairly close for union members. There is also bumping that can occur so some time might pass before it is determined who is out of a job.
Management on the other hand can vary and can be as much as one month pay per year of service but with a rider that the funds only flow until the manager is paid out or finds other employment, whichever is less. Some variation of this can also occur when you factor in holiday pay, etc.
The bigger issue will be the loss of service that was performed by the positions that are gone. The environmental division, social development and community policing all got tossed under the bus.
One would think that they had to get these severance packages out of the way before the crunch comes.Hence the early layoffs.
Mr Bates is just looking after his own. What a bunch of money grabers.
Cheers
It’s time public service organizations require new hires to sign a “full disclosure” contract as a condition of employment.
That contract would make salary and benefits an severance public at all wage levels. It should also make public the resume/application of the successful applicant.
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