Last year, I decided to renew my bus driver's licence so that I could have the pleasure of continuing to hone my driving skills with lots of people on board and even earn some money in return. I did a few trips for the private sector where the pay was $12.50 an hour for working rotten shifts and with no benefits whatsoever. Then, for fun and because, like the mountain, it was there, I applied to the City of Montreal transit authority, the STM, where I discovered the starting rate to be somewhere above $21.00 per hour with all sorts of benefits thrown in.
So taking benefits into account, in this case at least, the ‘cushy' public sector pays a starting wage of more than twice that in the private sector. As it happens, the STM turned me down for refusing to be sufficiently racist to sign a form claiming membership of ‘...the white race...'. This is true. I'm not making it up. They actually wanted me to sign a form affirming that I was ‘...homme, race blanche d'origine Européen.' Just think, most of the people that you see driving Montreal buses have signed a form claiming membership of the ‘white race'.
But, getting back to the question of ‘overpayment' in the public sector we should first consider that most public sector employees are actually fairly paid for the work that they do while many, if not most, private sector workers are not. Government, after all, is constituted to look out for the interests of the people and government would, by definition, be expected to treat fairly the people that it employs.
However, the reason that I pity the overpaid public sector workers is that they live in a cocoon that for most becomes a cage from which few of them lack the courage to ever emerge. Imagine the plight of the overpaid prisoner in the Metro ticket booth, spending his or her working life underground and developing no skills whatsoever to escape to the outside and, even in the event of doing so, unlikely to earn anything like the same money.
People in the private sector often have more stress but they have more control over their lives. When I was interviewed by the STM personnel people they told me that, if I was employed by them, I would do horrible shifts for ten years (yes, ten years) and that after that I would start to get decent daytime shifts.
Ever wondered why so many STM drivers appear so miserable and insular. If they are driving the day shift they have just gone through ten years of torture, driving nights, weekends, split shifts and other ignominies that the employers think up. For many of them, by the time that they graduate to the day shift, the happy work spirit has been broken and they are just driving the next twenty years to retirement.
Looking at other areas of the local public service we come to the famous ‘blue collar' workers. As a Montreal city councillor for many years, I was often asked ‘...why does it take ten of them to fill a pot hole and why are eight of them just standing around watching?' The answer is that, like the bus drivers, they are relatively well paid but that, unlike the bus drivers, they lack sufficient resources to actually be able to work anywhere near full capacity. Bus drivers at least all get buses to drive but, for blue collar workers, the city budget never allows them enough concrete, asphalt and heavy machinery to work anywhere near full capacity. They are like an army with insufficient transport and the inevitable result is that many are unable to take part in the battle.
If we were to give the blue collar workers enough equipment, money and supplies to work at full capacity, they could replace and renew every broken road and sidewalk in the City of Montreal in record time. There are enough of them to get the job done but currently their ‘high' salaries take up a disproportionately large percentage of the public works budget. When you see blue collar workers standing around watching while others work, consider that they would probably prefer to have the resources to be doing something useful themselves.
Employment in the public service can be a curse in any country. When, as a professional economist, I left university in England, I was immediately employed by the Inland Revenue Authority as an Inspector of Taxes.... which meant visiting and checking the books of small businesses with a view to catching them out and putting them out of business. Well, all of us would enjoy that but, after five months, I discovered that I was able to calculate my yearly salary increments and promotions and even my retirement pay and I quickly got out and, as I saw it, saved myself. Naturally, having quit, it would have been impossible to have ever again gained employment in the public sector. And that is where the trap lies.
Pity the public sector workers....
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