November 27, 2007

Cost Containment questions:

Sept.27 2007, to Deputy City Manager Sue Corke from Jutta Mason:

Hello Ms.Corke, Below is a bit of the transcript from yesterday's council session, in which you and Brenda Librecz both refer to expenses related to the collective agreement, that prevented you from shrinking full-time staff hours to reduce costs this fall. Would you be able to clarify your comments for our website? (we're confused).

Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong: Did you provide a list of recommended cuts to the deputy city manager?

Parks, Forestry and Recreation General Manager Brenda Librecz: Yes

MW: Were there suggested cuts that you proposed that were not part of the cost containment package?

BL: All of our cuts were taken.

MW: We were surprised to see that full time staff were still at their posts. Why do we not have the flexibility to act the same way we did with our part-time staff, with our full time staff?

Deputy City Manager Sue Corke: In general terms, it doesn't make much sense to lay off full-time staff to meet a short-term commitment. It's actually quite expensive to lay off full-time staff, and then you can't recover very quickly from it, to change direction.

MW: If we had laid off all staff at community centres, what would have been the financial impact?

SC: Well it's actually more complicated than that, because the full time staff don't just work Mondays, so you wouldn't be laying them off, you'd be rescheduling their….

MW: Why could we not have done that?

SC: Well, we reinstated the permits and at that point we actually did need the full-time staff.

MW: That's not my question.

BL: If I could break it out in terms of what it actually costs to run an operation, so in terms of maintenance, and people to run the programs. So when the permits are coming, you do need people to do them. In our recreation service programming area, most of our staff work flex service hours anyway. So although there's a perception that all our full-time staff will be sitting in a building doing nothing, quite frankly in most of the cases our employees work Saturdays and Sundays. So Mondays, they wouldn't be there, because that's their flex-time. So actually on the recreation side, it's not as clean-cut as is being illustrated here. …

MW: If we had wanted to cut all recreation programs, could we have found savings by not having any of these employees there?

BL: As the deputy city manager has indicated, these are full-time city employees, Because it's one day a week, what you're asking is for them to forego a pay of one day a week. That's a lot more difficult to do for a full-time employee than it is for a part-time employee.

MW: Can we do it?

BL: Not based on the existing collective agreement and not certainly based on the cost to do so, because you would have to pay severance pay.

MW: Was this negotiated at some point in time that we can't do that? When?

BL: I believe it was the last collective agreement.

Oct.3, 2007, from Deputy City Manager Sue Corke, to Jutta Mason:

You asked what were the expenses related to the collective agreement that prevented us from shrinking full time staff hours to reduce costs this fall.

The collective agreements set out a specific order to be followed when laying off full time staff - full time staff must be laid off based on their seniority and qualifications without regard to location. Notice is also required for the layoff of full time permanent staff. The City has greater flexibility when reducing the hours of work or laying off part time or temporary staff.

There are indirect administrative costs associated with laying off junior full time staff and then moving more senior full time staff to the locations where they are needed based on qualifications. In certain circumstances, where longer term layoffs are involved, there may also be the liability of severance pay. In addition, if the City were to reduce the hours of work, or lay off full time staff in a manner contrary to its collective agreements, it could incur financial liability that would offset any potential cost savings.

I hope this helps sort out any confusion.

Nov.20 2007, from Rhonda Hamel-Smith, Manager, Labour and Employee Relations, to Jutta Mason

I am writing to respond to the questions you posed to Deputy City Manager, Sue Corke in your email of November 2, 2007. My apologies for the delay in responding to you as these questions are not easily answered from one source and require that I request information from several sources, including the Human Resource Information System, the Parks, Forestry & Recreation Division (PF&R Division) and the Payroll section, to name a few.

At this time, as you have correctly identified, there are also some privacy issues that will have to be addressed through a Freedom of Information Request (FOI). I have separated those FOI issues. I have repeated your questions below and indicated which can be answered and which will require an FOI request.

Q. In terms of the layoffs: this past fall, PF&Rec management gave the impression all their workers are FT permanent except PT rec, which is not the case. I'm educated-guessing that about 50% of the Full Time bargaining unit that are Temporary. Temps are let go for operational reasons when their contracts end. Their contracts are rarely even a year long. (1) how many PF&R staff are Temporary full-time on contract?? What is their contract length and timing? How many contracts commenced during the cost containment period (June until now)?

A. I have referred this question to the PF&R Division.

Q. We need to find out more about the Harmonization and Pay equity process, which has not occurred in the PT agreement. From what I hear, it resulted in very few job categories, and in some cases the jobs of say a Support Assistant is a job in many divisions but has very different skills. Most senior workers in these large job categories do not have the broad skills, since they were hired before harmonization, and do not have the broad new qualifications for another job. So if you have a senior person in Scarborough doing only phone reception, they do not have the skills or the interest in being moved down to the prosecutor's office where they need rapid typing skills, excel, and a familiarity with legal lingo. This means that to lay anyone off takes so much fiddling it becomes not worth it. So the senior workers, who get to keep their jobs no matter what cuts are made, but perhaps would have to be moved, are the least capable of moving and doing other jobs.

To Ms.Corke: (2) is my description here accurate?

A. Your description is not quite accurate. The process to harmonize pre-amalgamation classifications for the Full-Time Local 79 bargaining unit included an evaluation of pay rates and ensuring compliance with Pay Equity legislation. There were more than 2,500 different classifications that were harmonized to approximately 335 classifications. The City and the union negotiated this process and when they could not agree, a final decision was made by a labour arbitrator.

The 2,500 classifications of the former municipalities had many overlapping functions and the City determined that it was most efficient and effective to have fewer generic classifications rather than specific ones so as to provide management with as much flexibility as possible in assigning work. Although no harmonization of this many classifications is perfect, the City continues to work through some of the issues you have identified with respect to certain classifications being too generic. However, because several of the former cities had very specific classifications for small numbers of employees which significantly restricted management’s ability to assign work outside of a narrow set of duties, it was determined that generic classifications were preferable for operational and business reasons.

Q. (3) How many workers have requests for fewer hours in place and their aprox distribution by division. (Letting people who want to work less and earn less is one solution to cuts).

A. Unfortunately, there is no way to determine the number of employees who have requested reduced hours. To determine this would require a survey of every single supervisor and manager in the City and would involve a very inefficient and costly paper exercise. However, we are able to provide the number of City employees in both union and non-union positions who are on voluntary leaves of absence without pay and the approximate dollar value of those leaves annually. In addition, we can also provide the number of full-time Local 79 employees who requested and are currently on part-time hours (sometimes called job-sharing) because they wish to work reduced hours for a period of time. As such, I have referred these requests to the Payroll section.

Q. (4) What was PF&Rec management's total merit increase in 2006? What was it in the first half of 2007? The Toronto Sun reported 5.6% of total management payroll for 2006. Is that true?

A. I have referred this question to the PF&R Division, recognizing that it may require an FOI request from you.

Q. (5) How many people were moved or AR'd (alternate rated) or hired as temporary during the time when the cuts were made?

A. I have referred this question to the PF&R Division.

Q. (6) Why not just assign higher rated work to lower paid workers rather than creating new Alternate Rate workers? They could simply assign higher paid work and not pay people more for doing harder or higher rated work. When seasonal workers are laid off, they get U.I., calculated using their hourly rate of pay for the City. When temporary rec workers get laid off, they don't go after U.I because their wage rate is so low and their hours are so few, it's not worth it.

A. If the City were to do as you suggest and assign higher-rated work to lower-paid workers without paying the higher rate associated with the higher-rated work, we would be in breach of the collective agreements, which contain, directly and indirectly, the principle that an employee is to be paid the rate of the position they are performing. This is also a fundamental principle in employment legislation which is described simply as “equal pay for equal work”.

Q. (7) Knowing that these seasonal workers are much better fixed than the temporary rec workers, why did the City decide to go after the lower-paid rec workers?

A. The City did not “go after” the recreation workers. The Local 79 Part-Time Recreation collective agreement provides terms and conditions for employees whose services the City does not require on a full-time basis. As you must be aware, the nature of the work performed by recreation workers is seasonal and variable; the work/programs depend on the City’s changing demographics and the recreational demands or preferences of its citizens. Hence the collective agreement specifically provides that the City has the ability to cancel programs or services for any reason. These reasons can include financial constraints, insufficient registration, etc.

There is also the premise that while many Recreation employees choose recreation as a career, the majority choose to work part-time as a lifestyle choice since not only can the part-time employee not be called/scheduled for work by the City but the employee in turn has the ability to decline work when called if he/she is not available. Full-time employees are required and expected to have a longer-term commitment to work.

Q. (8) How many management (non-union) positions were hired at PF&R during the cost containment period?

A. I have referred this question to the PF&R Division.

Q. (9) How many management (non-union) positions are there at PF&R? How many have union business: negotiating grievances etc as part of their jobs?

A. As at July 2007, the PF&R division had 251 permanent management positions. Of these, five (5) have specific responsibility for labour relations matters such as hearing and responding to grievances during the formal grievance procedure. However, all management staff are involved in labour relations matters on a daily basis, such as hiring, work performance issues, discipline, attendance management, terminations, dispute resolution, grievance hearings, arbitrations, etc.

Q. (10) How much did the recent PF&R re-org cost?

A. The reorganization of the PF&R Division has not been completed. However, throughout the review the division’s mandate and objective has been to remain within its current budget.

Q. Chrysler's cuts of 23,000 jobs in the spring plus yesterday another 12,000 jobs across North America -- those are lay offs. Lay offs are not firing and not simply not-renewing a contract. Lay offs mean that some kind of severance or other amount is paid for the years of service. Because newer employees are likely to be laid off before longer serving employees, the severance amount calculated by years of service could in fact be rather low. However in the past some commissioners have been laid off with a handshake package of hundreds of thousands.

(11) Over the past 4 years how much has the city paid out to laid off employees, broken down by whether they were management or union? What is the standard cost per employee for the city to 'buy' a lay off -- one month's pay? one week's pay? retraining?

A. The City does not “buy” layoffs and there is no standard cost to layoff employees.

The City hires approximately 2,000 temporary (temporary means they work full-time hours for a limited period of time, e.g., summer months) unionized employees to work on a seasonal or non-seasonal basis. In the majority of cases, the layoff date is known when they commence work. As such, when they are laid off, it is considered a temporary layoff because they have recall rights for a period of 24 months and will in most cases return the next season. Because individuals have been recalled/hired for a pre-determined period of time and because they have this right of recall for 24 months, neither employment law nor the collective agreement requires the City to pay termination pay.

Only where a temporary layoff becomes permanent (i.e., the employee is laid off for more than 24 months) does the City become responsible for paying termination pay. In addition, if the layoff is permanent and the employee has worked with the City for more than 5 years, then severance pay may be owed. However, these are infrequent since most temporary employees are recalled and laid off year after year.

With respect to your request for financial information regarding management employees whose employment was terminated, the nature of this information requires an FOI request from you.

Q. (12) Re-scheduling employees, what latitude does the city have to require employees to work weekends, so that the Monday closures could have been thoroughly implemented?

A. For employees who work shift work, the collective agreements provide that where the City wishes to change an employee’s shift, they must provide the employee with 48 hours notice. If 48 hours notice is not provided, then the City must pay the employee at the overtime rate (one and one-half times their hourly rate) for the first shift changed and if there is still not 48 hours notice, then the employee must be paid the overtime rate for the next scheduled shift as well.

For a Local 79 employee who does not work shift work, the City must provide 30 days notice and first solicit volunteers and if not sufficient, then junior employees are assigned the new work hours. For a Local 416 employee who does not work shift, the City consults with the union to change their shifts from days to shift work.

Nov.22 2007, from Jutta Mason to Rhonda Hamel-Smith, manager, labour and Employee Relations:

Now that we've gone through the points in your letter about staffing issues raised by cost containment, I have several questions remaining.

You have referred six of my questions to other branches or divisions or to FOI. Since the referrals may get lost in the day-to-day, I've sent them all to Corporate Access. We have some time constraints here since we want to produce a small "Citizens' guide to cost containment" and we want it to be available at the city's outdoor rinks this winter. Rinks, as you know, tend to be under the gun at times when there's a budget squeeze, so it's important for Torontonians to be brought into the discussion earlier and more than has been the custom.

My remaining comments or questions:

I see what you mean about the generic classifications. It sounds difficult indeed, a project of this scale.

You say there is no way to determine the number of employees who have requested shorter hours (other than a very time-consuming "paper exercise.") Does that mean there is no formal way for full-time employees to request shortened hours? And if there is a formal way, would it be fairly simple to count the requests?

I agree with you that equal pay for equal work is what's fair. However at times of colleagues' illness, budget shortfalls, and other temporary crises, workers often step up to help. If it's a choice between shutting down and pulling together in a crisis, some wages may not be adjusted during that time. If it's a choice between shutting down community centres, libraries and rinks and temporarily asking extra work of existing workers, is the fairness of wages the leading concern?

You have no figures re the PRF re-organization cost. Does that mean there was no budget, no variance report, no interim reporting either?

Thank you for giving these questions your attention. I am aware that it's taking you extra time, but considering the workers and park/rink/library users who are affected by recent and upcoming cost containment measures, I hope you'll agree that your efforts, and ours, are worth it.

Nov.22 2007, from Deputy City Manager Sue Corke to Jutta Mason,

Ms. Mason - just a quick question: as the rinks are no longer subject to cost containment, what is the benefit of such a guide?

Nov.22 2007, from Jutta Mason to Deputy City Manager Sue Corke:

Hello Ms.Corke, thanks for asking why we're doing this "citizens' guide" when rinks are not currently subject to cost containment.

Cost containment: 1980s: artificial ice rinks ran for an average of 106 days. Winter 1998/99: A.I.R.'s cut down to 84 days. Winter 2001/02: A.I.R.'s cut 2003/04: rinks back up to 84-88 days. Last three years: some rinks back up to 93/98/99 days, but lengthening was at the wrong end. This winter: a major threat, to be cut again, worst ever, to 62 days. Rescinded back up to 87 days for most neighborhood rinks. Next winter: cost containment of how much, in the face of the remaining $240 million shortfall?

Since amalgamation: city's population stayed almost the same. PFR staff increased by over 700, PFR expenditure increased by $60 million (after inflation adjustment).

In the past 15 years, we've made our neighbourhood rink a beautiful community gathering place, with over 10,000 visits per month. For almost as many years, we've had to brace ourselves for the next shocker decisions coming down from the meeting rooms in City Hall.

It's winter already, but the city's rinks are still closed, because of insufficient funds to run them for the whole rink season. We can't wait for the next big blow, we have to find out as much as we can now, so ordinary people can help shape policy and not just endure it.

Want to come on over and have a coffee and a cinnamon bun and talk to a few of us about this? We're really quite nice people, and we do more than rinks.

Content last modified on March 19, 2008, at 04:39 PM EST