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My email at home, my website messages, and my Teams messages at work have been beeping at me quite regularly ever since the federal budget came down. Many of them are from people who I haven’t heard from in a while, saying, “So, what’s new?” followed almost immediately by “…and what do you know about the upcoming cuts?”. It’s not a surprise question.

From the supply side, I did work on Strategic Review and DRAP 10+ years ago for our branch of about 750 people. In addition, I have spent a good portion of my last 20 years not only as a manager but also plugged into the broader management agenda in my branch and department. Partly by job function, partly by interests. And, of course, people know I am heavily interested in HR stuff. So, it’s not an unreasonable thought that I might know something.

On the demand side, “nobody knows nothing!” Rumours are flying, pundits are pontificating, and staff are nervous, to say the least. Any insight people can glean, they’ll take.

The problem? I know nothing either. Nothing really concrete, at least. All I really have is some background and context to interpret things a bit differently.

What are the three main factors at play?

So. *cough* Right, a way forward. Sure.

Why am I hesitating so much? Because this instalment is inherently challenging to nuance correctly. When I write, I try to stick to “explaining what is”, not “what should be” nor even very often “what could be”. I describe, I elaborate, I explain. I unpack complex elements. I try very hard to leave “shoulds” to others. And even in this post, I’ll try to stick only to what is possible, not what we “should” do.

As I’ve argued in the last four posts on this topic, there are certain realities we have to face:

a. There is nothing sexy about the rack rate (i.e., how much it costs for you to get out of bed), and any room for enhancement is likely limited to arguing that certain basic human needs (like food) might have gone up by a much larger inflation rate than the average consumer cart/basket;

b. Within the commute rate, there might have been some room to build out some nuances around transportation or childcare, but well, the narrow group of FMs who didn’t understand the issue and yet went on blast with their opinions forced TBS into a blanket one-size-fits-all response that stifled any hint of creativity.… Read the rest

In a previous post, I argued that most rhetoric espoused by some of the f***muppets (i.e., a narrow group of PS who disseminate ill-informed opinions on blast and crowd out more productive conversations) doesn’t accurately reflect how wages and labour markets work, not even in the public service context. My original argument was that the PS combines three wage elements (reworded here for simplicity) that are already baked into wage rates:

• R — The “rack” rate, i.e., how much it costs for you to get out of bed;
• C1, C2, C3, C4, C5 — The commuting compensation to leave your house to go to a job site; and,
• L — the cost for actually expending energy to do the “physical” labour of the job.

I also apologized to academic specialists for renaming the elements and ignoring the long history of these elements, and to non-academics who will likely still find me too wordy.

What about C(ommute) costs?

As I outlined in my initial post, wages in the public sector agreements are based on rates that were in existence before widespread telework and the wages already had commuting costs baked in. They weren’t and aren’t generally visible, but they’re there.

And as I said above, there are some very important groups who go off the rails when sh**diots and f***muppets wrongly suggest that we should suddenly “start” getting a premium for RTO, when in fact, we are already paid for our commuting costs.… Read the rest

I am active in the Canadian Public Servant /Reddit forum, not the least of which for issues that I generally cover in my HR Guide. People share the link regularly, which is humbling, but the forum is about way more than simple HR. I often have views but I don’t often engage, deferring to others who have better insights and/or more palatable ways to explain some things. On a few topics, I try to avoid engaging because, well, there are too many idiots in the forum who have virtually no understanding of how compensation works in a formal system, and think whatever they “want”, the unions can and should get just by asking. FFS, really?

The latest started off innocently. Someone legitimately asked a question about costs of living, costs of commuting, etc., and then said, “Why don’t unions take this on and get us more money now that we have RTO?”. Then a bunch of people chime in saying something like “Right on, power to the people, man” having virtually no understanding of how labour markets work, or even how wages are set. They often make outrageous claims that they’re entitled to this or that, and generally make the PS look like a bunch of self-entitled idiots.… Read the rest