August 3, 2007 - NEWS RELEASE

Vancouver Taxpayers Should Be Careful What They Wish For
Richmond deal much richer than it looks on the surface

Burnaby, B.C. – As pressure mounts on the City of Vancouver to break off from the GVRD Labour Relations Bureau and sign a deal with CUPE similar to Richmond’s, Independent Contractors and Businesses Association president Philip Hochstein warns that taxpayers in Richmond are paying a lot more than they think.

“They got the math wrong when they reported the Richmond deal at 17.5%. When the numbers are compounded the base salary increase is 18.76%. And that is a minimum, because of crazy “me too” language in the final year which entitles workers to an even higher raise if wage settlements in the GVRD exceed four percent.”

Hochstein also claims the Richmond deal is full of outrageous but hard to recognize cost inflators and benefits that private sector workers wouldn't dream of.

According to a recent article in the Richmond Review, CUPE 394 President Dave Shapiro claimed that a proposed “job re-evaluation” plan could mean that the actual increases could be closer to the 28% councillors received and called the deal “the best we’ve ever had.”

“On the benefits side, the City of Vancouver deal already contains ridiculous concepts such as three Gratuity Days on top of an already generous vacation entitlement and ten days of sick leave,” says Hochstein. “And the Richmond deal piles on a long list of additional extravagances like nine days of work every two weeks and $500 allowances to hire dieticians.”

Hochstein, who represents industrial, commercial and institutional construction contractors, says that municipal services to his industry such as permitting, licensing and inspection response times have deteriorated drastically in the last decade and worries about how an even richer package with more days off will affect the construction industry.

“We all want the strike to end as soon as possible,” Hochstein says. “But taxpayers and businesses should be aware of the direct link between the outrageous settlements we are seeing and the increases in taxes that are inevitable to pay for them, without any increase in service.”

Hochstein goes on to state that the system in which we continually bargain with public sector unions under duress is clearly broken.

“In Canada, we suffer 50 times the strike days per capita compared to Britain because our labour laws allow unions with essential service monopolies to intimidate our citizens by removing those services during bargaining,” says Hochstein. “The result is that we have institutionalized bargaining at the point of a gun. Governments at all levels need to address the systemic problems we have with these union monopolies.”