THUNDER BAY — Mayor Ken Boshcoff's plan to ask city council to approve a hiring freeze isn't sitting well with the Canadian Union of Public Employees.
CUPE Local 87 represents about 770 full-time and part-time workers with the City of Thunder Bay.
President Deryk Fournier feels council should look at management jobs for possible savings rather than focusing on the rank and file.
In an interview Wednesday, he said there are currently 73 unfilled non-management positions.
"There are a lot of positions the corporation hasn't filled as far as the workers go. I don't know how they plan on running their entire operation without any workers. I would like to see those positions filled before we see any hiring freeze."
Fournier said he understands that council is obliged to do its best to find ways to save money, but it's a mistake to shrink the number of frontline workers.
"Basically, what we're talking about is boots on the ground, our people who are actually doing the physical labour and the labour within the offices...It's really stressful for the ones who are taking on extra work because positions aren't filled. They want to do a good job for the corporation, and they take this stuff home with them."
He said he believes the city needs to re-examine management roles.
"They've got seven departments, 20 divisions, 12 directors, three general managers, 28 managers and 61 supervisors. I've talked before about how I feel it's a little top-heavy, and I think that's something they should consider as well...There's a lot of supervisors and there's a lot of managers...They need to do some more digging around and cut some of that excess off."
Fournier said CUPE is currently in the midst of bargaining with the city on a new collective agreement.
"I think it's going to be a very touchy subject. We want to make sure that our people are taken care of."
City Manager Norm Gale responds to mayor's proposal
In response to an inquiry from TBnewswatch about the comments Boshcoff made Tuesday, City Manager Norm Gale issued a statement saying he's confident in what he called the city's "rigorous hiring process, where management carefully scrutinizes each vacant position."
He said vacancies are reviewed to consider the rationale for hiring and whether posting can be delayed, or the position eliminated.
Gale also said the vast majority of city positions are essential frontline jobs related to meeting service-level standards and ratios in areas such as child care, EMS, fire rescue, transit, Pioneer Ridge and public works.
"Administration has been proactive in forecasting $2 million in corporate-wide vacancy savings in the 2023 annual budget," he added.
The mayor's announcement that he'll propose a hiring freeze at next week's council meeting came two weeks after council approved a blueprint for next year's budget that includes substantial increases both to taxes (a 6.1 per cent tax levy increase, or 5.5 per cent after growth) and user fees (at least five per cent in most cases).
Councillor Mark Bentz. chair of the council committee that oversees the budget process, said the resolution "will require some debate [at] council and input from administration on what this could mean, and how it might work if it were to pass... At least we can have a discussion about it and see if it poses a clear path forward."
One concern, he said, is that a hiring freeze could possibly prevent backfilling if people were to leave the organization.
"I don't think we can do this for all positions...It just would not be a good thing for a corporation not to have certain key positions filled. That being said, there may be some positions that administration feel could be left vacant if council were to be interested in the savings associated with those."
Bentz noted that each percentage of the city's tax levy currently equates to about $2.2 million, "so that would be roughly 22 positions just to get towards one per cent," and that the fewer personnel the city has, the less it can deliver in terms of services.
"I think a more budget-friendly type of approach would be actually paring down the budget and the associated personnel, so that it's not an unknown as to who's not being filled and who's being on hold. There are ways to get at personnel, and it's typically done through the budget process."
He said the city has recently made progress toward finding savings, including through the elimination of seven positions.
"There's a whole host of cuts that were passed...I think we are making headway. The five-and-a-half per cent budget direction, where we're at, there are some people that may not want that high of a budget, but that's the direction that was given by council."
