Pay raises outrage union rep

By Dan Hilborn
Published May 22, 2004


Officials at the Hospital Employees' Union are expressing outrage this week after learning that some of the top officials in the Fraser Health Authority have received pay hikes of more than 18 per cent over the past two years.

Chris Allnutt, secretary-treasurer of the union that was recently forced to accept a 15 per cent pay cut, said it is unconscionable to give administrators enormous pay hikes while their workers get massive cuts.

"These are huge increases in the face of these same administrators whacking their employees with a 15 per cent rollback," Allnutt said Thursday morning. "It's really shocking.

"The morale of health-care workers is already low, and it will be lower with this hypocrisy," Allnutt said, noting that the pay hikes are in contradiction to recent government statements that the money saved from recent union wage rollbacks would be spent on patient care services.

"The real problem here is that the corporate part is getting the wages," he said. "But the corporate part doesn't take care of patients, the front line health-care workers do."

"It's simply hypocritical," Allnutt said. "This is not going to produce a better health-care system."

But Bob Smith, the chief executive officer of the local health authority, said the pay hikes are totally in keeping with the principles of fair market value.

"First of all, when I look at what I pay people, I have to look at the market I have to attract them from and retain them from," Smith said Thursday morning. "So I work to try and find compensation rates that do that."

Smith said the pay hikes, which boost the region's three chief operating officers' salaries to $190,037 per year, are set "just below the 50th percentile" of the average pay rates for similar positions across Canada.

"I'm not paying the top price comparable to other parts of Canada, I'm already below that," said Smith, who added that the pay hikes were approved by both the Health Employers Association of B.C. and Public Sector Employers Council.

Allnutt said the process doesn't have the appearance of fairness because it has administrators giving other administrators pay raises, while giving their workers pay cuts.

"The HEABC is run by health executives and PSEC is run by health executives and corporate executives. They design the system and they pay themselves accordingly. It's a corporate system," said Allnutt.

Smith did not agree. "I categorically do not accept your continued argument that these are administrators giving administrators pay raises," Smith said. "these are people paid in accordance with an established policy that sets the rate at or below the 50th percentile.

"But is this stressful the way this has rolled out?" Smith asked. "Personally, it's very upsetting, and gives us, as a health organization who wants to serve our population of 1.4 million, a difficult time to move together for what we fundamentally are here for.

"I don't think the arguments and interpretations of disequilibrium really have merit here," said Smith. "I guess you can have pubic policy debate on this all you want. We're very open around here. But I don't think we need to apologize for making sure we have quality administrators in these complex systems. They can go to Ontario tomorrow and increase their salary by 25 per cent."