PSU President: We’re Not Trying to Dictate CEOs’ Pay  

Last week, the Joint Unions Negotiating Team, unanimously rejected the government’s offer of a three percent salary increase, calling it far from enough to meet the needs of public workers. The unions’ frustration is fueled by what they see as a glaring double standard. While public officers are being offered modest raises, CEOs reportedly received over a fifteen percent salary bump following the last general election. President of the Public Service Union, Dean Flowers, isn’t mincing words. He’s warned the government that the unions are prepared to take swift and disruptive action if their demands aren’t met. Flowers emphasized that the unions aren’t trying to dictate CEO salaries, but they won’t back down from their fight for a fair and equitable pay structure.

 

Dean Flowers, President, Public Service Union

“The Public Service Union nor the joint unions for that matter, does not wish to value or  put a cost or a price on the work of the CEO. That’s not our place. That is for the experts who do classification of jobs, who value jobs,  who can tell you exactly what that word, what their word should be. So we’re not questioning whether a CEO should earn. Sixty thousand dollars a year, seventy-six thousand a year, eighty-eight thousand dollars a year. We’re not questioning that. We’re saying that if we’re all going to contribute to the growth and development of the public service, then the structure has to be one that equitably distribute the benefits. So you cannot say that because I’m the CEO. I’m entitled to a hundred thousand because the reality is you bring limited experience in the public service. When you come here, you come in oblivious to really and truly how the public service run, and that’s the reason why the con, the public service continues to get worse because of your leadership, because of your inability to identify the deficiencies in your ministry, in your department. Whether it’s human resource, whether it’s operations, whatever it is, you are being paid to identify that. So you cannot simply come in, demand a hundred thousand, but nothing fixes. The corruption gets worse, in most cases, gets worse gets worse.”