MPI wage-freeze demand sparks furor By: Carol Sanders Posted: 7:00 PM CST Monday, Jan. 11, 2021

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/01/2021 (1710 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Two days after Manitoba Public Insurance signed a deal with brokers to give them a cut of online sales — estimated to increase commissions by $23 million over five years — the province demanded a two-year pay freeze for MPI employees.

“All Manitobans are meeting unprecedented disruption and hardship” during the COVID-19 pandemic, Crown Services Minister Jeff Wharton wrote in a Nov. 26, 2020, letter to MPI leadership.

The message to Crown corporation chairman Michael Sullivan and interim president and chief executive officer, Satvir Jatana, said amidst the COVID-19 environment and with a “very large deficit” expected, the government’s collective bargaining mandate is an immediate zero per cent compensation increase for the next two years.

The order not to negotiate a wage increase for MPI workers followed the Nov. 24 signing of a deal with the Insurance Brokers Association of Manitoba. The five-year agreement gives brokers a percentage of online Autopac renewal fees “whether they do anything to earn it or not,” the union representing MPI workers says in a Jan. 5 letter to Wharton.

“This lucrative deal will increase commissions for brokers by $23 million over five years,” Michelle Gawronsky, president of the Manitoba Government and General Employees’ Union, wrote last week.

“All these people have done really good work on behalf of Manitobans,” Gawronsky said Monday in an interview. Now they’re not being allowed to negotiate a cost-of-living increase from a Crown corporation so financially healthy it has issued rebate cheques to customers, she said.

“That’s my question to Minister Wharton and my question to the premier: you’re not willing to let MPI negotiate a collective agreement but you quietly signed off on $23 million of Manitoba’s MPI money to brokers?” Gawronsky said.

“Where’s the fairness? Where’s the transparency?”

The 16-page contract was not publicized by either MPI or the brokers association. It was signed after the government appointed a conciliator to get the two sides together on the future of online product sales.

MPI had produced internal financial models that showed the Crown auto insurance corporation could save millions of dollars in broker fees if its products were available for purchase online.

Brokers said they were not opposed to the greater use of online insurance purchases, but insisted such transactions must go through them — even if the customer doesn’t ask to consult a broker or uses the public insurer’s website.

Under the deal signed Nov. 24, Manitoba insurance brokers will receive a commission from all online Autopac renewals when modernized service delivery becomes available in 2023.

In her Jan. 5 letter, Gawronsky cites a 2019 email from then-CEO Ben Graham to the MPI board stating: “Your government directed the corporation to hand over 100 per cent of online transactions to brokers,” and MPI and brokers agree “demonstrating mutual respect” and “good faith co-operation” was critical to reaching an agreement.

“It is disappointing that the employees at MPI have not been granted the same respect and good faith in their negotiations, as your government continues to illegally force wage freezes on them without free and fair collective bargaining,” Gawronsky wrote to Wharton.

On Monday, when asked to respond, Wharton’s office issued a statement, saying part of government’s role is to set broad public-sector mandates.

“We have done this in an open and transparent way, recognizing the unprecedented challenges caused by COVID-19,” the email says. “Many Manitobans have experienced outright job losses. and we continue to offer a broad range of assistance and stabilization programs for them, while making massive investments in public health, safety and protection.

“We appreciate the efforts of all Manitobans, including public-sector unions and employees, as we lead an all-hands-on-deck approach to fighting the pandemic while avoiding layoffs and keeping taxes low.”

There was no response to questions about the timing of the letter demanding a wage freeze.

“You see the government’s priorities reflected here,” NDP Opposition Leader Wab Kinew said Monday.

“We all know this government has been freezing wages like the MPI employees’ since they got in,” Kinew said in an interview. “Now, all of a sudden they’ve been doing it because of the pandemic.”

In June, 2020, the Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench ruled the Tory wage-freeze legislation (Public Services Sustainability Act) violated the constitutional rights of unionized public-sector workers by eliminating their right to collective bargaining.

The province has appealed, but no court date has been set.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca

Carol Sanders
Legislature reporter

Carol Sanders is a reporter at the Free Press legislature bureau. The former general assignment reporter and copy editor joined the paper in 1997. Read more about Carol.

Every piece of reporting Carol produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.