Much ink has been spilled and the airwaves cluttered with cries of outrage that employees of Ontario's revenue ministry, who collect the retail sales tax, will receive up to 26 weeks salary when their jobs are eliminated this summer. Politicians and pundits, who normally would be expected to defend the right to severance for employees who are losing their jobs, have jumped on the issue, under the guise of protesting the cost when Ontario is running a huge budget deficit. It's a tactic to stir public opposition to the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) and, thereby, to undermine support for the governing party. Like much of the opposition to the plan now underway to replace the federal GST and provincial PST with one common tax, the HST, the effort has been fuelled more by misrepresentation and falsehood than fact and enlightenment. It's a short step to proclaiming the potential $100+ million cost a government mis-step when it is nothing of the sort. To not make the payments the government would have to put itself above the law and violate the collective agreements it has with its employees. Do the critics think that blunder would look better on the government?
"Tax collectors get $45K severance, keep jobs
More than 1,250 Ontario tax collectors will get a severance package worth up to $45,000 each despite the fact they won’t be losing their jobs. The move, part of the province’s plan to harmonize sales taxes with Ottawa, will see the provincial collectors become federal employees, triggering a payout critics said amounted to tens of thousands of dollars to change business cards. The opposition parties said it shows how wrong-headed the HST is, but Premier Dalton McGuinty said the province is simply honouring an existing collective agreement."
link: Tax collectors get $45K severance, keep jobs - thestar.com
Two facts are critical to understanding the employees' rights. First, the payment of an allowance of one week's salary for every year worked, to a maximum of 26, has been part of the terms of employment for unionized and non-union public servants in Ontario for at least 40 years.1 The provision applies regardless of the reason the employee leaves the public service; those who leave for other jobs are eligible, those who leave to take a pension are eligible, those are terminated because their jobs are eliminated are eligible. The reason, makes no difference – "you do the time, you get the pay". What the critics want to ignore is that the allowance is part and parcel of the compensation package every Ontario public servant receives, just in the form of delayed payment for work performed.
Second, the employees are being terminated; they are losing their jobs. That the federal public services is expanding and has a need for employees with specialized skills, at the same time the provincial service is shrinking, is irrelevant. The provincial employees who choose to accept jobs in the federal service will be starting-over with no seniority (anyone who has been touched by unionized labour relations knows what that means) with little or no job security should the federal revenue ministry choose to reorganize, downsize or relocate. That the employees might welcome a small cushion against such an eventuality is reasonable.
Employees who are eligible for the maximum payment, i.e. those with 26 years of service, have virtual iron-clad job security and seniority in Ontario and are losing a lot when their jobs disappear. They may choose to remain in the Ontario service and use their seniority to secure similar employment in another department (and collect their payment when they retire) or they can choose to take the payment now, along with the risks of moving to a new employer.
Some critics have highlighted that British Columbia public servants will not be getting a similar payment. That too is irrelevant. They have a different employer and different terms of employment. They also have better weather, generally. An Okanagan peach is not a Thornbury apple.
Critics who would never question employees' rights to fair treatment under their terms of employment, and who would rise up in rage if the government were to introduce a special law to exempt itself from paying the allowance, are leaping on this not out of concern for the expense but as another way to attack the HST. They have claimed the tax will cost Ontarians hundreds/thousands of dollars a year even though every credible analysis has determined the net affect will be insignificant. Even this payment will be offset in payroll savings in about a year, while the savings continue indefinitely.
Enough with opposing the the HST on the backs of public servants who are not permitted to defend themselves. Pay the public servants what they are due. The attacks are vile.
- The provision has been unchanged in the Public Service Act since long before the author joined the Ontario Public Service in 1973. It's as old, if not older, than the PST itself.↩
