Vacancy management erodes services

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/07/2016 (3377 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

At first blush, the term “vacancy management” doesn’t seem all that threatening.

Vacancy management is the method by which large organizations — companies, governments — calculate the value of unpaid wages and benefits to employees who leave in the course of any year. The departures could be for a multitude of reasons: retirement, illness, another job offer, maternity/paternity leaves. The important point is that they leave, and in so doing, create a savings for the organization for which they work.

No biggie, right?

The reality is public-sector vacancy management has become a major but under-reported concern that has the potential to significantly erode the value of the services we pay for with our tax dollars.

The concept of vacancy management burst into the news recently when we learned a handful of bus mechanics and technicians was pulling down salaries well in excess of $100,000. One earned over $160,000.

Why all the extra pay? Transit is budgeted to employ 118.5 full-time mechanics this year but has only 86 on staff, 30 of which are apprentices. There is no consensus on why Transit is suffering a shortage of mechanics, although it has been suggested the city’s hourly wages are not competitive with the private sector. 

Regardless of the root causes, Transit is paying a handful of employees to do most of the work that was supposed to be done by a larger group of employees. And that is ultimately not good for all involved: the existing employees, the transit service and — finally — the taxpayers who support transit services in Winnipeg.

Vacancy management has become incredibly important to government in these days of slow economic growth and deficit financing. It’s what allows government to operate on a day-to-day basis with far fewer actual employees than they claim to employ. This is not only financially important. It has political benefits as well, allowing a government to claim it is avoiding layoffs and austerity, even when that is exactly what it is doing.

In 2016, the city has forecast a savings of $20.9 million from vacancy management. That is the equivalent of 268.07 full-time equivalent (FTE) positions out of a total workforce of about 9,000 FTEs. The savings from vacancy management are significant and were relied upon heavily by council to mitigate the property tax increase for this year.

But that is only the forecast target. In 2015, the city budgeted to save $17.7 million from vacancy management. When the year was finished, however, savings totalled more than $30 million — 72 per more than forecast. 

This level of vacancy management has a number of immediate and dramatic impacts, including the amount of overtime the city pays out.

The most recent figures available, reported this week in the Free Press, show a steady and (in some years) alarming increase in overtime paid to city staff. In 2010, the city paid out 390,654 hours in overtime; by 2014 that number had risen to 592,780. That is a 52 per cent increase in just five years.

The city obviously saves way more money from vacancy management than it pays out in overtime. However, that only makes sense if the quantity and quality of civic service are being maintained. And it’s pretty obvious they aren’t.

“All those delays you face to get a permit, all that time you spend on hold waiting for someone to answer your call, any time you see the grass that hasn’t been cut or the delays you experience waiting for someone from the city to get something done, you can bet it’s vacancy management,” said Gord Delbridge, president of CUPE 500, one of the largest unions representing city employees.

City officials maintain savings from vacancies are the result of a natural turnover in staff. And once a position has become vacant, for whatever reason, the department affected is authorized to fill that spot as quickly as possible. The city denied it has issued any edict to department heads to leave vacant positions unfilled to create greater savings. “Organizationally, we do not identify positions to be held vacant for vacancy management,” a senior official in the human resources department said. 

That assertion is somewhat betrayed by the actual levels of vacancy management and the fact the city is exceeding its forecast targets by significant amounts. Public-sector unions confirm there is no formal policy directing department heads to keep positions open to produce savings. However, anecdotally we know most senior managers can read the writing on the wall. They know missing their vacancy-management target is, at the very least, frowned upon. In many departments, managers appear to be erring on the side of caution and delaying the posting of vacant positions to bolster overall vacancy-management savings.

The biggest concern for taxpayers is that they are not getting what they paid for. High taxes are often seen as a scourge. But if there is anything worse than high taxes it is getting poor or diminished service for the money you are paying. 

It could be that vacancy management is the natural consequence of the decade-long freeze on property taxes that seriously eroded the delivery of some civic services and diminished the funds available for infrastructure. Having lived through those long, lean years, senior civic managers are trapped in a mindset that sees unfilled positions as a much smaller problem than exceeding their budgets.

It’s also important to note that despite the fact Winnipeg is growing every year, the city is employing dramatically fewer people than it was, say, 25 years ago. Back then, the Winnipeg Association of Public Service Offices — the union representing professional, administrative and supervisory staff — had more than 1,300 members. Now, that number has shrunk to about 650. That is a whole lot fewer people to deliver services to a city of expanded population.

Right now, Winnipeggers are paying a high price for city services from departments that are, in many areas, understaffed, overworked and ultimately compromised.

And as a result, we are simply not getting what we paid for.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca