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Originally Posted by Doug
The ones that work for private companies do so for less than UNA scale. The same is generally true for teachers working for privates schools: the wages are lower.
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For nurses you have to take into account a lot of private nursing jobs are 9-5 are UNA jobs are shift work with 24 hour coverage. A lot of the study suffered from poor methods too, comparing police with private security, teachers with early childhood educators and other apples to oranges comparisons.
Just important to remember lowering wages is really hard. This is not the 1990s with a large recession and unemployment. Housing prices bottomed out in the mid 90s and cost of living I would bet was falling.
What was done in the mid 90s made sense for the economic conditions that existed then. For the amount services needed just to keep up with population growth holding the line will be hard enough.
If people think you could cut 10% off of government payrolls and not hurt front line services I guess you have a right to think that, but it doesn't make it true. It would not solve the deficit issue, coming in decidedly less than $2 billion. Even the Wildrose has protested the government's attempts to limit the increase in compensation to doctors saying it would limit recruitment.
There is little fat to cut. The government (the central services minus schools, hospitals (AHS), universities and colleges) has less employees this year than it had in 1996. AHS spent the least amount on administration compared to the systems in other provinces. Administration gets a bad rap, but it was a lack of administrative controls and over-site that has been implicated in recent controversies.
Cuts would be real and hard. Less services for more people. Even the government's no increase plan is going to be hard. The province is likely to top 3% population growth this year. Considering the growth of the economy, inflation, and population growth a freeze has a big impact on a real per capita basis.
If you want to check out a neat tool, the government has put together
http://www.budgetchoice.ca/ where you can try your hand at adjusting the budget into balance. You can also suggest other budget measures on the site.