Civil service labour strife poised to heat up

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This article was published 19/06/2023 (842 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A massive labour dispute is simmering this summer as nearly 17,000 employees at Manitoba liquor marts, MPI and colleges are working under an expired contract and their union has told them to prepare for a strike vote.

The Manitoba Government and General Employees’ Union said it’s been at the bargaining table since March and the employer won’t take into considering high inflation and the sorry state of a civil service that’s struggling to recruit and retain workers.

“Strike is always the last resort and our goal is to bargain a deal at the table,” said Kyle Ross, president of the union that has 32,000 members. There are 11,000 provincial government employees, 1,780 at Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries, 1,716 at MPI and 2,000 MGEU members at Manitoba colleges. None of them has a collective agreement.

In a bargaining update Wednesday, however, the workers were told that in order to get a new contract that helps revitalize provincial services and provides fair wage increases, the MGEU “will likely need to ask members to provide a strong strike mandate.”

In an interview, Ross called it “an unfortunate situation.”

“It means we’ve not had fruitful negotiations at the table and I don’t think the employers or the government understand the environment right now with the world we’re living in,” said Ross. “They’re in a different world, frankly. Their offers are out of the realm of reality. So it’s been a challenging time.”

Currently, 27 per cent of positions in the Manitoba public service are vacant after years of wage freezes and civil service cuts. It’s a struggle to fill them and maintain services, according to “State of the Civil Service 2023 — Cuts and privatization catching up with Manitoba’s public services.”

The MGEU report was unveiled Wednesday at the same time as its new slogan “Catch up, keep up.”

The union is looking for a contract similar to that of their federal counterparts that takes into account the rising cost of living and high inflation. The Public Service Alliance of Canada announced Friday that members who were on strike for 12 days in April have ratified a contract that includes a 12.6 per cent pay increase over four years and closes the gap with inflation.

“Last year alone, inflation was 7.8 per cent in Manitoba,” said Ross. “We have yet to see more than eight per cent offered over four years to our members,” he said.

“Food has gone up, fuel has gone up, housing has gone up. Our members are really feeling the pinch. They’re doing more with less. There’s less of them to do the job. It’s been really challenging,” Ross said.

Because unionized workers’ wages are set by collective agreements that last several years, they’ve been hit harder by inflation than non-unionized workers, who have benefited from higher wage growth due to tight labour markets, said University of Manitoba economics Prof. Jesse Hajer.

Seeking a contract with pay bumps on par with their PSAC counterparts seems fair, said Hajer.

“It is reasonable that unions like MGEU are asking for increases to make up for these losses.”

Under the Progressive Conservative government, public sector workers have seen their purchasing power fall due to wage freeze legislation that while not enacted, set the bargaining mandate across government, and later high inflation, he said.

“The result has been falling real (inflation-adjusted) wages, uncompetitive salaries, and a deterioration of the public service in terms of a smaller civil service and very high vacancy rates,” he said.

“Since 2017, core civil service workers saw wages increase by 10 per cent, but over this period the cost of living increased by 22 per cent,” Hajer said. “This means that workers have seen the purchasing power of their wage fall by 12 per cent since 2017.

The situation is even worse for MGEU workers at MPI, MLCC and in the college sector, where wage losses have been in the 16 to 20 per cent range.”

In a statement, a spokesperson for Government Services Minister James Teitsma said the size of Manitoba’s core government has decreased since 2016 mainly because of “a natural attrition, fluctuations in seasonal staffing and the movement of approximately 900 employees from Manitoba’s public service to Shared Health last year.”

“Our government is implementing recruitment strategies to address employment needs, focusing on key changes to advance innovation and the modernization of Manitoba’s public service,” the statement said.

“These changes are aimed at better outcomes for Manitobans as well as better value-for-money for taxpayers,” it said.

“Some organizational adjustments have been required, and efforts have been made to redeploy affected employees to other priority areas where possible. We are also filling priority vacancies to support continued direct service delivery, a data-driven workforce, succession planning and targeted outreach.”

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca