TIMING ISSUE
The hold-up of $1.5-billion for ERI
This is not unfolding the way many hoped. The government has allocated $1.5 billion to entice voluntary departures using the much-ballyhooed Early Retirement Incentive, a way to dramatically reduce how many people get affected notices.
The program was supposed to come first, letting people volunteer out before departments triggered the Workforce Adjustment Directive. But the ERI can’t open without budget approval. Bill C-15, the budget bill, still hasn’t passed – and some say it may not until March.
ERI was designed to encourage early exits: If you’re over 50 and want to leave, raise your hand and see if your deputy minister approves. The incentive? It waives the early-retirement penalty, which is normally five per cent off your pension for each year you retire early.
Between ERI and WFA, the government had hoped to mostly avoid layoffs. But timing may have derailed that strategy.
“MAXIMUM ANXIETY”
If only ERI had come first
ERI would have been faster and cheaper for departments. Whoever is approved is off the payroll within 10 months — and the pension surplus covers the costs, so departments don’t pay a dime. The WFA process can drag on for 18 to 24 months and the department foots the bill.
“Every single deputy would prefer to do ERI first,” said one longtime senior bureaucrat. “If your ERI makes up half of what you need, that changes how many people you send letters to.”
Those approved for ERI could have then been matched against the programs being cut. Some departments might have covered a large share — maybe even all — of their reductions through ERI and attrition, meaning far fewer employees would ever have been given affected letters or dragged through “who stays, who goes” competitions known as SERLOs.
Instead, it’s the exact opposite. Departments have to send out affected letters to the maximum number of people because they can’t assume ERI will reduce their targets. “They’ve created maximum anxiety, stressed the largest part of the department possible — all because of a timing problem.”
Not to mention the impact on morale – and productivity.
“At a time when the government needs everyone firing on all cylinders, it’s hard to be focused on delivering everything if you have the sword of Damocles hanging over you," said a senior official.
“The sequence creates considerable, unnecessary stress in the system. If you got one of these letters, are you just sitting down and working 100 per cent at your job with no impact? No. You’re stressed. You’re more likely to take sick days. People don’t work as efficiently. Now the government is taking a productivity hit while doing this.”
ERI has never sat well with unions. It operates outside the WFA, the process unions negotiated and embedded in all collective agreements. PSAC is considering legal action over what it considers an end-run.
It’s unclear what the take-up rate for ERI will be. Treasury Board earlier sent letters to 68,000 people, saying they appear to qualify. Sources say Treasury Board did some modelling and estimated a quarter of them could take it. That would be 16,000 to 17,000 people. Some say that’s a stretch.
Although ERI will come later than expected, it could end up pushing total departures well beyond the original 16,000 target. It could attract people a department wants to keep but can live without. That gives departments flexibility: they can open up positions for targeted hiring or hold them in reserve if more cuts are coming.
SHARING THE PAIN
Executives are in the crosshairs
Executives are prime targets for ERI. Treasury Board has told 90 departments and agencies that 12 per cent of their roughly 9,155 executive positions must go — including nearly 70 assistant deputy ministers.
There’s a lot of messaging wrapped up in that: too many layers, too much management, and a clear expectation that executives absorb real pain alongside rank-and-file employees losing their jobs.
But the driver isn’t just savings. It’s speed. Cutting layers of management is meant to accelerate decision-making — a top priority for clerk Michael Sabia.
Speaking of morale ….
What about RTO? Public servants have also been braced for news on whether they’re going back to the office five days a week. But nothing. Nada. By all accounts the decision is still being “sorted out” by PCO and TBS. So it’s not dead, either.
Why now — or not now? Some are in favour of ripping the Band-Aid off and getting it over with: go to five days in office now alongside the cuts. Others say now’s not the time to further burden a public service under pressure to be fast and efficient.
Does anyone really want to spend time tracking who’s in, booking desks, and upending workers’ child-care and transit routines just to have them at their desks five days a week?
SERVICE IMPACTS
So, Canadians won’t even notice? Hmmm
Canadians have no idea which programs and services are on the chopping block because of the spending cuts. No details have been spelled out in the budget. The PBO has been fighting to get those details ever since, trying to map how the 15-per-cent cuts will translate into staffing reductions and service impacts.
One senior official worries the lack of details could signal “political nervousness” over yet-to-be-revealed cuts to programs or grants. It would have been better to reveal everything upfront, but now the government can’t control the timing. If there’s any backlash as the cuts roll out, that’s riskier for a minority government.
After wrangling with Treasury Board, the PBO got all the details from a sample of five front-line departments — Fisheries and Oceans, Canada Food Inspection Agency, Correctional Service Canada, and two regional development agencies — on the condition it keep the details under wraps until workers are notified.
The PBO has taken on this battle before. In 2012, it went to court to get service-level information when the Harper government’s budget that year didn’t reveal specifics of program cuts or the impact on service levels.
This time around, the sample shows five departments/agencies plan $1.5 billion in savings and 1,927 fewer jobs by 2029-30 while reporting “low” or “limited” impacts on services.
Fifteen-per-cent cuts, $1.5 billion in savings, all those jobs gone — and Canadians will barely notice? Really? It’s worth noting that deputy ministers — the government’s accounting officers — signed off on these assessments.
For that reason, “I take their assertions seriously,” said Jacques.
