21 Replies to “CTF: Growing Government Pay and Pension Gap”

  1. These people are going to get allot of death threats by the Liberal Left over this.

  2. The private sector doesn’t have armies, navies or air forces, so our military services do inflate the percentages of “public service employees”. In fact, those services had built up in excess of $27 billion in overpayments before Paul Martin “retired the surplus” so they were more than self-sustaining. I don’t think we need geriatric soldiers so they do have to retire early and “death technicians” are not in general demand. That said, the civilian components of the government workforce should be compensated in comparison to their private sector equivalents.

  3. Another 1972 v. 2012 stat I’d like to see:
    public sector/private sector employment as a percentage of the workforce.

  4. If you want to work for the TAXPAYERS don’t expect anything over minimum, minimum wage for all government employees, from the Prime Minister all the way down to the part time community centre janitor, or like one or 2 of the small east coast states who have there legislators meet once every couple of years and no one gets paid for it.

  5. “That said, the civilian components of the government workforce should be compensated in comparison to their private sector equivalents.”
    Cool. That means I get a raise….if you can actually find a public sector equivalent.

  6. Always hilarious to hear public sector types try to turn this around and argue that if you reduce their benefits or salaries, or curtail union power in any way, it will drag everyone else down too.
    Must be awesome to think that increasing your own government job salary, security and benefits is improving the quality of life for everyone else that you’re skimming from.

  7. Jamie I’d very much like to see that stat too. Maybe I’ll go down to the public library and see if they can look that up for me. It could be fun.
    I can tell you that in 1960 (when the middle class was biggest) government spending was about 29% of GDP. It reached an all time high in the 1990s of around 46% (remember our own debt crisis?) and now hovers at around 40%. [Search for a PDF of “Public Spending in the 20th Century” by Vito Tanzi and Ludger Schuknecht for some more interesting numbers.]
    I think it’s been bobbing up against the ceiling for the past 15 years or so of what Canadians can afford or tolerate. If you ask a left-wing academic however, they’ll reveal that this “15 year decline” is all part of a vast neo-liberal conspiracy bent on eliminating big government as it was intended by our nation’s founders. (Ignoring, of course, the preceding century or so of unchecked growth in government spending and intervention.)

  8. Just watched the stupid video. Hopefully most of you are smart enough to understand his rant is an apples and oranges comparison…

  10. Talk about rightwing yahoo class envy. What this means is that the private sector is woefully underpaid. So unionize, you dumb mofus. Don’t try to drag everyone else down to your pathetic level. Or get an education and a government job and deep six the whining, teabagging class warfare. To the phony CTF, until you speak to the issue of cradle to grave, freeloading, rural conservative welfare bum farmer subsidies, shove it. You’re not speaking for taxpayers, you’re speaking for that tired, partisan, rightwing teabagging agenda. You’re hypocrites. And a hypocrite is a liar. And the point of view of a liar don’t mean sh*t.

  11. Curious how the resident troll’s solution is to have people get a government job to get better pay. Yes, money grows on trees and all we need are more government employees to pick it so we can pay the unicorn breeders enough to ensure that every family has at least one in their garage.
    The biggest whiners I see are government employees who believe that they are entitled to their entitlements and get very upset when I don’t ok their “stress leave” from their “toxic workplace”. The majority of these people wouldn’t be able to get a real job if their government job disappeared.
    I’d be happy to see an immediate 50% cut in all non-military branches of the snivel service. That would be for starters and then we could see which departments were totally superfluous. Much of government is spent enforcing and studying the effects of government over-regulation and pondering how to fix the government caused problems with yet more government.
    The military at least does something useful. The oxymoronically named “health protection branch” is one of the most useless branches of the snivel service having an effect which is as pernicious as that of HRC’s. Both of these institutions could be totally eliminated with immediate positive results. (One of the recent HPB announcements was to decree that any open source medical software would require very expensive certification by another branch of the government kleptocracy meaning that giving away software might be very expensive if the HPB got involved).

  12. What a dumb rant. Remind me, how did we get into this race to the bottom of the pension barrel game again? Business must be lovin’ it.

  13. What a dumb rant. Remind me, how did we get into this race to the bottom of the pension barrel game again? Business must be lovin’ it.

  14. “The biggest whiners I see are government employees who believe that they are entitled to their entitlements and get very upset when I don’t ok their “stress leave” from their “toxic workplace”. The majority of these people wouldn’t be able to get a real job if their government job disappeared.”
    This attitude makes you incompetent in your profession. I deal, on a daily basis, literally, with the consequences of workplace stress in the federal civil service. From serious clinical mental and physical health issues (including potential suicides, to family issues due to low pay – many civil servants work two and three jobs to make ends meet and feed their families, just like “ordinary folk”. The pension is only respectable in terms of retirement if you manage to make the 35 years, and even then, it falls behind many large employer pensions in the private sector. Due to conflict of interest guidelines, civil servants generally have restrictions on external employment. The Canadian federal government is the largest single involuntary financier of small business in Canada through un-remitted source deductions and GST. These are monies stolen from the rest of you “taxpayers” and used for private gain. It’s in the billions. I get a really big kick out of sitting in a Bay Street bankruptcy proceeding in downtown Toronto, and being the poorest, least well paid, least well dressed person there, including the bankrupt.
    Our entire western economy oprates on money laundering – kiting add-on value to money in the guise of service with next to no new productivity under it. We stopped being a producer-based economy decades ago. All 90% of us do is recycle the cash that’s out there. Whether you give it up voluntarily or are forced to in fees and taxation, you’re mostly paying for a “value-added” service that adds no “new” wealth (which is an entirely arbitrary concept, by the way). Canada exports most of its new wealth production in order to be able to obtain cash to kite in an “value-added” somoke and mirrors economy.

  16. Skip, an appropriate name as that’s what I do when I see yours at the bottom of your worthless drivel.

  17. Skip: If civil servants were working 70+ hour weeks with no real breaks or vacation time, like many small business owners, I’d believe workplace stress was a real problem in the civil service.
    As it is, you know as well as I do that the typical alleged victim of “workplace stress” is the spoiled daughter of a middle class family who is unqualified, scholastically and psychologically, for any work any more demanding than selling clothing in a shopping mall or being a kept woman. (She tends to have been passed over in the marriage market for very good reason—no man in his right mind wants to spend his life dealing with her “issues.”) She starts complaining of “stress” when it sinks in that the government is not in fact an undemanding husband who coughs up his paycheque every two weeks and doesn’t demand she put out but an employer who demands she either pull her weight or find some other way of feeding her cats, and was it not forced to by bad labour legislation would have neither the time nor the inclination to deal with her “issues.”
    Loki: have you ever dared recommend, unofficially, to employers that the application for stress leave be granted at once to the malingering applicant, unpaid, for as long as the employer deems appropriate? 🙂
    Fire them all, and if their pension funds are so insultingly small confiscate them and give Canadian taxpayers a tax cut. Do that and many more Canadian men will be able to afford to get married—presumably to younger women with better looks and far better attitudes towards life than the “stressed-out” civil servants the Government of Canada would be well rid of.

  18. My brother in law is a prime example of a government employee. Other than waiting to reach retirement age, he cannot explain to me what exactly it is that he does – something about investment banking, but when my company met with his people, they claimed they had no money to loan. As time has gone by, he has advanced through the ranks, and now manages whatever it is that he cannot explain.
    Lots of perks, however, as he waits until retirement and an indexed pension.
    Do I hope that he gets his butt canned? – not really – then I’d probably be responsible for looking after him all by myself.
    I know another government employee who gained a government job solely on the basis of his university education – ZERO experience in the real world, but by continuing to do whatever it was he did at university, he is happily advancing in the civil service. He can’t give a decent explanation of what it is that he does, either.
    POOR CANADA!!

  19. Dave. Don’t care what you think of what I write. Have a nice day.
    Slater. Just. full. of. shit.
    Kaka – maybe he can’t just explain it to you And re the uni experience, and that’s different from the private sector how, exactly? Other than he wasn’t sleeping with the bosse’s daughter to get the job.
    Oh, and Slater, if you really want a tax cut- pay your taxes. If all you “taxpayers” actually did, the country would be literally, awash in cash.
    Kate’s blog has drifted so far from what it was, its hardly worth reading anymore. Most of the actual knowledge base of commenters have long since drifted away, leaving nothing more than a collection of tired old retreads that keep moaning about the same old shit, most of which they know nothing about.

  20. I would like to know:
    Which private sector jobs have as a benefit, 12+ bankable “sick” days annually.?
    Which private sector jobs have 1-2 paid “personal” off days per month.??
    Which private sector jobs offer Fully indexed pensions..?? based on their 5 best years.????
    uhuh. Snivel Service indeed.

  21. Steakman – I’m not going to do your research for you, but start looking at companies with more than 250 employees.
    For sick day news, look first at group insurance plans for large companies or small ones. 1 1/4 days per month accrued sick time has be workforce standard for decades in Canada. If your company isn’t offering at least that, then see what their group plan insurance program looks like for sickness and disability. If they don’t have one, you’d better get one, or look for another employer. You’re being screwed over.
    I know of no (federal) dept that gets 1-2 personal days per month. We get 2 per year. We got the second one in the last contract, after Flaherty rolled us back to beloe cost of living provisions (which weren’t but at least they were something, and we, again, weren’t going to get caught up from time we got screwed by Paul Martin. We’re STILL about 12K pa below where we should be on a comparative scale to like jobs in law enforcement.
    I realize I work in an office that has more employees than most small western towns have citizens, but that’s because there’s more than enough REAL work to be done. I recover millions of your defrauded tax dollars every year, sometimes every week. What have you done for Canada lately?

Proudly powered by WordPress & Skyrocket Themes

MENU

Navigation