Thursday, May 27, 2004
You can stick your little pins in that voodoo doll,
I've very sorry, Baby, it doesn't look like me at all
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation and I don't always see eye to eye (what with me being a raging pinko and it being full of fanatically fiscally-libertarian bozos), but it does some good work, most recently in pointing out the pointing out the obscene severance pay collected by Ken Nicol and Debby Carlson. The CTF is correct in noting that the MLA severance plan is three times more generous (relative to salary) than most private sector plans, and is correct to be outraged about this. But the article misses the most obvious question of all: why are employees who leave their positions voluntarily receiving any severance at all? This never happens in the private sector, or indeed in any other portion of the public sector (except when the employer wants the employee gone for some reason, such as corporate restructuring or sub-optimal, but not fireably so, performance).
As ludicrously, MLAs who are defeated in re-election bids are *also* entitled to severance. This, too, is dumb. Severance is normally used to terminate an indefinite employment contract (employment contracts of definite duration must generally be bought out in their entirety in the absence of an alternative agreement by the parties). Employees reaching the end of a fixed contract are not entitled to severance - that's why it's called a fixed contact, Stupid. Elected officials in a parliamentary system are a special case, since the "contract" is neither indefinite (they know that their terms of employment will have to be renewed by the electorate at least once every five years) nor fixed (they have no idea when it will have to be renewed). Since they're not fixed, it *may* be logically coherent to pay defeated MLAs severance equal to the amount of additional salary they would have received had their terms lasted the full five years, but certainly no more.
I don't generally oppose pay raises for parliamentarians - a majority of them could be making more money, especially if calculated on an hourly basis, in the private sector (of course, some of them - *cough* Don Getty - use their time in government to boost their private sector earnings potential, by getting themselves some influence to peddle). But a severance system that rewards MLAs who lose re-election bids or who voluntarily leave public life on the basis of years served is unconsciable.
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I've very sorry, Baby, it doesn't look like me at all
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation and I don't always see eye to eye (what with me being a raging pinko and it being full of fanatically fiscally-libertarian bozos), but it does some good work, most recently in pointing out the pointing out the obscene severance pay collected by Ken Nicol and Debby Carlson. The CTF is correct in noting that the MLA severance plan is three times more generous (relative to salary) than most private sector plans, and is correct to be outraged about this. But the article misses the most obvious question of all: why are employees who leave their positions voluntarily receiving any severance at all? This never happens in the private sector, or indeed in any other portion of the public sector (except when the employer wants the employee gone for some reason, such as corporate restructuring or sub-optimal, but not fireably so, performance).
As ludicrously, MLAs who are defeated in re-election bids are *also* entitled to severance. This, too, is dumb. Severance is normally used to terminate an indefinite employment contract (employment contracts of definite duration must generally be bought out in their entirety in the absence of an alternative agreement by the parties). Employees reaching the end of a fixed contract are not entitled to severance - that's why it's called a fixed contact, Stupid. Elected officials in a parliamentary system are a special case, since the "contract" is neither indefinite (they know that their terms of employment will have to be renewed by the electorate at least once every five years) nor fixed (they have no idea when it will have to be renewed). Since they're not fixed, it *may* be logically coherent to pay defeated MLAs severance equal to the amount of additional salary they would have received had their terms lasted the full five years, but certainly no more.
I don't generally oppose pay raises for parliamentarians - a majority of them could be making more money, especially if calculated on an hourly basis, in the private sector (of course, some of them - *cough* Don Getty - use their time in government to boost their private sector earnings potential, by getting themselves some influence to peddle). But a severance system that rewards MLAs who lose re-election bids or who voluntarily leave public life on the basis of years served is unconsciable.
