The Myth of the Public Sector Wage Gap

In 2008 the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) published a study claiming that federal public employees enjoyed a wage advantage over private sector counterparts of 17.3% -- and as much as 41.7% with benefits included.

The study was widely distributed and commented upon by the media, who published the CFIB's talking points without doing any research into the methodology of the study.

The fact that Treasury Board never once used the study as an argument for wage reduction during contract negotiation should pretty much tell you that the claims are ridiculous.  However, the National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) asked an independent economist from the University of Guelph to review the CFIB's study.

His conclusions?  The study's methodology "would not be accepted in a second-year university economics course." Not only that, but "Some of the equations used in the 2008 Wage Watch report,... are simply mathematically incorrect."

In late 2011 the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) published their own study.  Their study used a sample set of over 4 million full-time, full-year employees in both public and private sector positions covering 520 different occupations.

Their results?

The public sector enjoys a premium of 0.5% over the private sector on average salary.  That's about $248.  When you factor in pension and benefits, the gap increases to 4.6%.

However, there are some really interesting numbers that came out of the study.  Women in the public service are paid 4.5% more than in the private sector.  Men in the public sector are actually paid less (-5.3%) on average than men employed in similar occupations in the private sector.  Women are paid more in the public sector because of much stronger pay equity legislation.

When considering average wages by occupation, it becomes apparent that there is greater equality of wages in the public sector.  Average earnings are consistently lower for the higher paid occupations, and consistently higher for the lower paid occupations.  Light duty cleaners make 15.6% more in the public sector than in the private sector, while computer programmers make 9.6% less in the public sector than in the private sector.

The Phantom Menace

According to the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada -- the union that represents the more than 57,000 professionals and scientists in the public service -- 139 employees of Environment Canada have received 'affected' notices.

The union represents 41 different knowledge-based groups, from auditors to museum staff, from health professionals to engineers, from air traffic controllers to (the largest group) IT professionals.

So, of those 139 Environment Canada employees represented by PIPSC (the union of professionals and scientists), how many are actually scientists?  They aren't saying.

But, how many of those 139 employees have been fired to date?  Zero.  That's right, none.

There's your war on environmental science.

NBA to enforce sportsmanship and fair play. How dare they?!

The NBA announced on Wednesday that there is a new rule on the books to prevent flopping.

“Flopping” will be defined as any physical act that appears to have been intended to cause the referees to call a foul on another player.

 The penalty will not be a trip to the foul line for the other team.  It will be far worse.  Well, the first violation will just result in a warning from the league head office.  The second through fifth offenses though will incur penalties ranging from $5K to $30K.  More than 6 violations could result in an increased fine and/or suspension.

So, I think after the first day of regular season NBA games, we'll see warnings for every player in the league (except Kobe, who says "flopping is a chump move").  Then, the office pools will start.  Who will get the first $60K game?  Who will get the first suspension?  How long does Kobe last before getting fined?

But wait!

The NBA players' union said it would file a grievance with the league and an unfair labour practice charge with the US National Labor Relations Board.

Raptor's guard John Lucas III explained it this way: "Any given day, some guy grabs my jersey I’ll sell it like they grabbed my spine outta my body...  You learn (flopping) as a child, and now it’s taken away, so it kind of makes you take away part of your game,"

Sorry John, if you think flopping is part of your 'game', then you aren't an athlete, you're a con artist.

How many of those emails are about penis enlargement?

Shared Services Canada, the agency created last year to tame the federal government's chaotic IT infrastructure, has been given its first marching orders.  Simplify the email!

It is a daunting task!  There are 43 departments under the umbrella of Shared Services Canada.  Between them they use 21 different email systems installed on over 1700 servers.  There are over 640,000 email accounts holding over 950 Terabytes of data!

Wait, how much is that?

Well, if you consider a simple magazine with, say, 5000 characters per page, then just 1 terabyte would be the equivalent of a magazine about 220 million pages thick.  The federal government -- well no, just the 43 departments in the project -- are currently storing 21 trillion pages of email.  That's three times more than all the web data captured to date by the US Library of Congress.