Metro Vancouver has always been an odd beast, as politicians from 21 municipalities with weighted votes make decisions about all manner of issues that they sometimes have wildly differing opinions on.
It has seemed even more fractious lately, with the tussling over the new growth strategy. And now the complete disarray, some say gong show, that is going on with what to do about labour relations and collective bargaining. (And that means 72 contracts for 15,500 workers, by the way.)
Seven of the 18 municipalities that participated in the Labour Relations Bureau, as they call it, have now left or served notice to leave. Now everyone’s trying to figure out, What next.
A just-released (after being held in secret for a month) report by labour consultant Jim Dorsey says the big municipalities should just go, if they want to, and the smaller municipalities should band together in an employers association. Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie told me yesterday he thinks that’s the wrong way to go, that Metro Vancouver should do what all of the city administrators recommended, which is to have the district provide a menu of services to all the municipalities that can be provided on a fee-for-service basis.
West Van’s director of human resources said that, even though that municipality has served notice to leave, they might consider staying in if the whole function can be restructed. The City of North Vancouver wanted to force everyone to remain in the collective bargaining group as a condition of being part of Metro Vancouver. Apparently legal letters are flying around with differing opinions on whether municipalities that have given notice will be allowed to do their own bargaining when contracts expire this December or whether Metro is still in charge.
And who cares? Well, all taxpayers should. Contract costs make up more than half of spending in any tax increase. They set the bar for what non-union staff get too. If municipalities are in disarray and they end up settling for rich contracts, guess what that means?
Many of them say that, with the regional system broken apart, they’ll actually be able to come to more reasonable agreements with their local unions. Hope so. The problem is that it’s so hard for the general public to assess. We schlubs in the media and public tend to focus on percentage wage increases. But there are lots of other pieces of contracts (benefits, vacations, sick pay and more) that can cost money.
As the Dorsey report shows, by comparing just the firefighter costs for each municipality, the salaries per firefighters and the cost to the taxpayer vary widely. New Westminster pays its firefighters the most at $88,291 per firefighter. But it only has 1.4 firefighters per 1,000 population. In West Vancouver, there are 2.2 firefighters per 1,000. So even though each firefighter in West Van is paid $68,111, the cost per 1,000 taxpayers is $152,557 compared to New West’s $122,219.
One of the best recommendations Dorsey makes is that collective bargaining agreements be put into an open database that the public can look at. That’s a start. Distilling those agreements down so that the public can truly understand what they are paying for, when all parts of the contract and the level of staffing are included, would be even better.
The report, by the way, is fascinating reading, since the bitterness that exists between the municipalities bubbles up frequently. (Here’s a link to it, which is weirdly only on Geoff Meggs’ site, but not on the Metro Vancouver site.)
This paragraph, for example, highlights the fears that some municipalities have that others will give away everything to their unions because they can afford it, without any concern for the consequences that will have for others,
Some believe the success since 1983, when the current letters patent were issued, has led to an erroneously diminished assessment of the risk of work stoppages, whipsawing and leapfrogging. They believe national and international unions will take advantage of any erosion of employer solidarity. A broad-based defensive organizational structure must be maintained and strengthened to prevent undisciplined, wealthy municipalities from making agreements, some say sweetheart agreements, for which everyone else will have to pay in taxes or realigned budgetary priorities.