NAPE DEAL IGNORES THE POINT OF NO RETURN

Pick any public service — education, health care, or the general services — and statistics show that this province employs a far higher number of employees per capita than the Canadian average. Yet, notwithstanding the province’s desperate financial position, it entered into a four-year “no layoff” agreement with NAPE, handcuffing itself from remedy except by attrition — a highly unsuitable and inefficient management tool. 

The Ball Government went one step further. It agreed to pay out of an empty till, this fiscal year, severance which had been negotiated in previous collective agreements — estimated to cost $250 million.  It seems that the Minister of Finance did his very best to support an assertion made in The Finance Minister’s Lucky Rabbit’s Foot that “an election looms and the government has a sale on collective agreements”.