GN is losing valuable employees

Negotiations for a new collective agreement for government workers began last December when the Government of Nunavut and the Nunavut Employees Union exchanged proposals.

These can be found on the NEU website. However, the GN’s chief negotiator has since quit and this will delay the next meeting. In the meantime it is worth considering some of the factors which GN’s cabinet must take into account if there is to be a settlement.

This month the Conference Board of Canada, a non-partisan national research organization, published its 25th annual report on the trends in employee pay across Canada.

The board expects that Canada’s economy will continue to perform well in 2007 and unemployment rates will continue at record low levels. As a consequence, Canadian workers can once again expect a solid increase in real wages in 2007. In 2006 government sector increases were 3.8 per cent. This year they are expected to average 3.9.

The Conference Board also predicts that – with labour shortages looming, recruitment and retention issues are intensifying. Of the employers surveyed 74 per cent reported challenges with recruitment and-or retaining employees with specific skills. This is up from 67 per cent last year and 49 per cent in 2004.

None of this is good news for the GN, which must compete in this tough marketplace for its skilled workers. By March, 2005, GN had staffed 83 per cent of its positions, well below any other government in Canada.

Over the last year that has fallen by more than three per cent. In spite of the GN cabinet recognizing that housing is a key factor in employment in Nunavut and that there was stiff competition for skilled workers, they introduced a five-year program of rent increases and a payroll tax which have effectively reduced real wages for most GN workers.

These measures have had a direct and negative impact on employee retention. For example, a 2005 survey conducted by the Registered Nurses Association of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut reported that 81 per cent of Nunavut’s nurses believed that the changes in GN’s housing policy would have a negative impact on their employment.

It is obvious that to hold on to their workers the GN cabinet must make up both the losses in pay which they have inflicted on their employees and compete with the increases that will be offered elsewhere. They cannot look to their own paymasters, the federal government, which provides more than 90 per cent of GN’s budget.

Until the GN cabinet puts its house in order and no longer draws critical reports of their administration from the likes of the Auditor General, Thomas Berger, and, most recently, the Globe and Mail, the federal government has served notice on more than one occasion that there will be few, if any, increases in funding.

The problems are not insurmountable and geography is not a sufficient reason to explain why this cabinet cannot provide good service to a population that would rate small-town status in Ontario. Nor can the GN cabinet rely on the pool of skilled beneficiaries. Ultimately, most people will go and work where they are most valued.

The Conference Board study is a warning to the GN cabinet that, if they continue to try to pay for their inefficiencies on the backs of their employees, the current leaking of skilled employees will become a flood with disastrous consequences for the noble project of Nunavut.

John Bainbridge
Executive Director
Nunavut Employees Union