CUPE, BC Assessment Negotiate Tentative Contract
Sunday, November 25, 2012 @ 4:10 AM
Victoria, B.C. – BC Assessment has reached a tentative agreement with CUPE Local 1767.
The deal, if ratified, would cover approximately 600 employees working as appraisers, administrative support, and property inventory collectors for the field offices, and for head office in the functions of information technology, finance, assessment valuation and quality assurance, and customer solutions.The two-year agreement provides for modest wage increases which are being funded from savings found within existing budgets, as required under the 2012 Cooperative Gains Mandate.
This is the fourth agreement reached at a provincial Crown agency. There are settlements between Community Living BC and the BCGEU, as well as at ICBC and BC Hydro with COPE Local 378.
The ratification process by the parties will proceed in the coming weeks.
Comments
Seems all these increases for various Government contracts are being found from savings within existing budgets.
Wonder what that means exactly. Are we to believe that this money was just sitting around??? If it is being cut from the thier budgets it would be interesting to see from what??
We are talking about millions of dollars here.
The money isn’t ever “just sitting around”, Palopu. The process is borrow, spend, tax. In that order. Governments are always initially deficit financing in terms of actual cash flow. So are private businesses for that matter. Most likely, I would think that in the government’s accounting there would be some ‘stretching out’ of when expenditures are made, and some ‘compressing’ of when funds from general revenue are received.
The problem with the whole process is that there is not currently a proper, complete, set of books for the Province, similar to what would exist in any private business that provides goods and services to the public, (as does government, too, apart from its three core functions of enacting laws, administering those laws, and interpreting them).
Consequently, we have the illusion created that a “balanced Budget” means that the government is not increasing its indebtedness, but only spending in any given fiscal period exactly what it takes in. This is not, never has been, nor ever could be the case.
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