Are public sector cuts 'tame' compared to private sector?

Dwight Duncan claimed yesterday that compared to the belt-tightening endured by workers in the private sector, his legislation restricting collective bargaining in the public sector "is tame stuff".

Sounds like a claim worth investigating.

Wages are the most important single item bargained -- for both workers and employers. So it's a pretty good way to compare outcomes for different sorts of workers.

According to Ontario Ministry of Labour own data, public sector and private sector workers have done about the same in collective bargaining. In 2010, private sector annual wage settlements averaged 2.0%, while the public sector averaged 1.9%. In 2011, the private sector averaged 1.9% versus the public's sector's 1.6%. So far this year (January through July) both public sector and private sector have averaged 1.7%.

Compounded, the private sector is actually 0.4% ahead of the game.

Duncan, perhaps might claim that if you went back more than the last two years seven months, a different picture might emerge. And true enough, the private sector did worse than the public sector for eight out of the ten years from 2000 through 2009. But the public sector did worse than the private sector eight out of ten years from 1990 through 1999.

So, taking the longer term into consideration, it's about a wash.

This, of course, says nothing of the blessed few earning a salary. As reported many times here, they are doing much better. This year and next they are projected to get 2.7% average increase. The salaried class did even better in 2011.

Comments

Huge cuts in public sector wages predicted

The Ontario Financial Accountability Office (FAO) says that, with inflation, real wages in the public sector will decline 11.3% over the three year period 2021/2 - 2023/4 . This would radically deepen the trend towards lower wages during the last ten years. The FAO reports that since 2011, the average annual salary for the Ontario public sector employees (defined here as employees of schools, colleges, provincial government, provincial agencies, and hospitals) has increased by $10,385 -- or 1.6 per cent on average annually. This is the lowest increase of all the sectors and lower than inflation, which averaged 1.8 per cent per year. Over the ten years that would be about a 2% pay cut. The FAO reports that wage settlements were the lowest in the provincial public sector over the last decade: Hospital Wages Especially Challenged: The FAO predicts hospital wages will increase even less than in the public sector -- just ...

Are health care administrative expenses out of control in Ontario?

The Progressive Conservative government has justified its health restructuring plans with the claim that administrative expenses are much higher in Ontario than in Canada. When introducing the reforms, health minister Christine Elliott claimed , “Over the last five years, Ontario has spent 30% more than the Canadian average in administrative expenses on its health care system.” Elliott did not indicate her source of information. Presumably, however, the Progressive Conservatives are referring to the CIHI simplified and user friendly “ Your Health System ” graphs. Those graphs show “administrative expenses” in Ontario at 5.8% in Ontario while it is 4.5% in Canada. This CIHI measure is actually fairly narrowly defined. It is the percentage of “the legal entity’s” total expenses associated with the administrative, finance, human resources and communications functional centres. However “the legal entity” used for this estimate is [1] only...

Too many public sector workers in Ontario?

Opponents of public services often try to portray the public sector as having grown disproportionately. In fact, since 1976, the number of public sector employees has not quite kept pace with the population. In 1976, the number of public sector employees in Ontario as reported by Statistics Canada averaged 830,800. By 2012, the number had increased to 1,330,700 -- a 60.2% increase. That sounds like significant growth -- true. But the population has increased from 8,413,779 in 1976 to 13,505,900 in 2012, a 60.5% increase. In other words, population growth has run slightly ahead of the growth in public sector employment. In 1976, close to 10% of the population worked in the public sector. It stayed pretty much this way until the Mike Harris government came to power when it dipped below 9%. It returned close to the historical range in the last six years or so, declining in 2012 to below the 1976 averag...

Defend Public Healthcare

Search This Blog