Diplomats and Tories duke it out over perks
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By Medicine Hat News Opinon on August 12, 2013.
It’s a fine line that separates the good fight on behalf of Canadian taxpayers and a lack of respect for our representatives around the world.
The Conservative government may have crossed that line.
A series of rotating strikes by Canadian diplomats, which began quietly under the summer radar, has now been ratcheted up to the point that it is getting very expensive, hurting tourism, potentially splitting families, denying needed temporary workers and keeping foreign students from studying in this country.
It is embarrassing Canada abroad and stalling work on key bilateral files.
Once a curiosity, it now verges on crisis.
Much has been written about the plunging morale in a Canadian bureaucracy which feels diminished by its Conservative government masters and you can now add our representatives abroad to that list.
This does not mean the Conservative government cannot find accommodation with the public service it can, and has come to contract agreements with technical service workers, correctional officers and aviation inspectors in the past month.
But the Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers is a much tougher nut.
The diplomats feel demonized but the government believes they already have plum jobs and cannot be compared with other public servants, who, the diplomats, say earn $3,000 to $14,000 more annually than they do.
Tony Clement, the treasury board president, has served notice he would not fold like “a $3 suitcase” in this now four-month-old battle with the bureaucracy.
To hear Ottawa tell it, the 1,350 striking diplomats are living a life of champagne and canapŽs on Boardwalk, holding down glamorous posts that people are breaking down the doors to get.
During the last foreign service exam, 9,000 people applied for 141 appointments, Clement’s office says.
Their children are entitled to taxpayer-funded private schools or daycare, they receive taxpayer-subsidized vacation flights out of their posting, are entitled to living allowances and have their household effects and vehicles shipped to them. This, Ottawa says, costs the government $127 million per year.
But foreign travel hardly automatically equals glamour.
For every posting to London, Paris or Washington, there are many more postings which equal wars, squalor, natural disasters, Third World conditions and distance from extended family and friends.
Tim Edwards, the association president, says such perks are available to every Canadian posted abroad, not just his membership, and they hardly compensate for the lack of a second salary which is almost always forfeited during a posting.
The only free cars and drivers his members receive are those travelling in armoured vehicles in zones of war or violent upheaval, he says.
Even with the perks, he says, diplomats returning from the most expensive postings find themselves in tougher economic shape than before they left.
Still, treasury board says these jobs can’t be compared with public service lawyers or economists because their jobs are so substantively different.
The perks are not part of the negotiations, “but it is part of what they get,” says one government source.
The association maintains it would take a mere $4.2 million over the life of a three-year contract to bridge the wage gap, but the impasse has already cost the country, according to some estimates, $280 million in lost tourism revenue.
The largest visa-issuing offices are now shut and a significant portion of the $8-billion that foreign students bring to this country will be lost.
Overseas intelligence and security is now imperiled. Trade negotiations have been hampered.
The Canadian employees will picket each time a foreign minister arrives in Ottawa, they have picketed in front of Canadian ministers when they travel abroad and are targeting all facets of Canadian participation in next month’s G-20 summit in Russia, refusing to provide briefing books, planning scenarios or logistics help.
Both sides are dug in.
The union has taken the government to the Public Service Labour Relations Board, charging it is bargaining in bad faith.
“The foreign service, which is already well-paid and a highly sought after posting, is asking for a hefty wage hike that is neither fair nor reasonable for taxpayers,” said Matthew Conway, a spokesperson for Clement.
But if this is a battle on behalf of taxpayers, there is another factor at play.
According to the diplomatic association, nearly half of all foreign service officers leave within 14 years, citing pay inequity with public service colleagues.
If that is the case, taxpayers are getting a lousy return on their investment and perhaps that’s the taxpayer issue the Conservatives should be focused on.
Tim Harper writes on national affairs for Torstar Syndication Services
http://medicinehatnews.com/2013/08/commentary/opinions/diplomats-and-tories-duke-it-out-over-perks/
