Hot Economy only good sometimes

I want you to read this article here and pay close attention to the comments by Dan MacLennan and Liberal MLA Dave Taylor.

As the article points out, yesterday, MLAs approved a pay increase. The news media is now trying to create a public storm over this. But why should there be? MLAs have no control over what they are paid because they follow the average weekly earnings index. If the economy is hot, then they will most likely be given a raise. If the economy is not hot, then their pay remains stagnant. What is always overlooked is that if the average weekly earnings is a negative number, the pay of MLAs would go down. Name me another job where this occurs!

Dan Mac remarked that the public sector will be expecting a greater pay increase because the MLAs have received such a large increase. I find this very interesting because the wage increase that is coming to the public sector was negotiated by Dan! But now that he sees the economy being hot, he says that this is not good enough. How can this be? It seemed good enough last year when this was negotiated through collective bargaining? I have no problem with the increases and Dan is doing good work for the AUPE...I hope he doesn't talk without ensuring he gots the straight goods!

And Dave Taylor remarked that the optics are never good when MLAs are putting in their own pay raises. Well Dave, just to clarify, MLAs do NOT put in their own pay raises…Statistics Canada puts in their pay raises and MLAs just follow the formula so that it is open to the public and the public will know what to expect. The reason the formula is followed is so that MLAs don’t “decide” to give themselves massive increases. And Dave also wants an independent body to determine pay raises. He must have forgotten what happened that one time, a couple of years ago, when the independent body gave judges a massive increase. But of course that would never happen again, would it? An independent body would always give low, politically justified increases? Having stable, predictable increases are just to outrageous for this province…right Dave?

Doug Griffiths, MLA Battle River-Wainwright, brought forward a motion that would have tied all public service employees wages to the average weekly earnings index effectively making them paid in the same way that MLAs are paid. Of course the Liberals, NDs, and even some Conservatives spoke out against motion although for different reasons. But one of the reasons given, especially by the NDs and the Libs, was that the motion takes away “the democratic right of collective bargaining.” In other words, everybody is allowed to participate in their democratic rights except MLAs? Oh I get it, MLAs are paid so well, any group that is treated the same would be above everybody else. Or maybe it’s because everybody knows that MLAs are not paid that great and nobody wants what they have…that would explain the attitude of Unions being against a move of this nature.

My hope is that everybody does some checking into this issue before they go stupid. And to help you out, check this right here…this might give you a start. And if you want to blame anything for this increase, blame the economy for being so good. It really is too bad when you have a province that is super successful I guess.