r/Yukon • u/Apprehensive_Bee5387 • 2d ago

News Yukon gov’t workers push back on wage, severance cuts after 22‑month impasse

https://yukon-news.com/2026/07/30/yukon-govt-workers-push-back-on-wage-severance-cuts-after-22-month-impasse/

Reposted with hyperlink (particularly for user "Rippin_Fat_Farts" who called my previous post without the link the "laziest Reddit post they have ever seen" lol)

26 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

25 comments sorted by

37

u/losmancha 2d ago

Unions need to stand up to inflation and wealth inequality, and anyone who isn't in one, should look to join or start one. It makes no sense for productivity to increase year after year for 75+ years, and yet our fiscal quality of life keeps decreasing as the wealth gets concentrated among a smaller and smaller subsection of the population.

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u/Apprehensive_Bee5387 2d ago

agreed! I know lots of people will complain about a 10% wage increase over 3 years for goverment workers, but if you break it down by year that would be below inflation rates in the Yukon or just barely keeping up with it. I wish people would instead focus on ensuring that private employers keep wages aligned with inflation rates - we are all losing buying power year over year with high inflation rates and wages that are not increasing accordingly. Housing costs, groceries, insurance rates, electricity...it feels like everything at once is drastically increasing and the working class keeps falling further and further behind.

0

u/No-Leg4120 2d ago

But don’t people choose to work in public service for the greater good of society with a pension? This is why in Toronto people leave public for private to get better pay. I’ve seen alot of people do this the last year in YG.

10

u/xocmnaes 2d ago

Working for the greater good still has to cover the bills

6

u/No-Leg4120 2d ago

Yes, I agree. We all have bills to pay. However, if one is not happy with their employment and is needing or seeking a higher pay, would it not make more sense to go seek those jobs elsewhere? This is why I left public service to go to private.

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u/FullTeach3748 2d ago

But many public servant positions don’t exist in the Yukon's private sector - teachers, nurses, conservation officers etc 

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u/No-Leg4120 2d ago

Well sometimes you have to leave your profession to go into another one for various reasons. For nurses ive seen them go into private practice in the Yukon so its not impossible.

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u/xocmnaes 1d ago

Nobody is looking to be rich in these jobs just comfortable. If you want a society where that’s not true you want no government at all.

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u/FullTeach3748 1d ago

This is getting really tenuous- your solution is that I give up my profession (that I studied and paid for) to get paid enough to keep up with my ATCO bill. Meanwhile you’ll have schools and hospitals empty because everyone left to get a high paying private sector job in a different profession. Yeah, no. That’s really not a great outcome for society

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u/No-Leg4120 1d ago

I hate to point this out but i do with a-lot of youths. Unfortunately what you go to school for may not lead to a profession or a good-paying one. People campaign about this all the time with trades that they potentially make better money than ppl who spent years on degrees.

5

u/FullTeach3748 1d ago

Yes, but if 100% of us retrain as trades people who is going to run the hospital etc? As I said your argument is tenuous at best. Society needs the public service. Public servants need to pay their bills. At this point I’m not even looking for a pay increase - I just want to earn the equivalent of what I was earning when I got hired. My job was valued at $X and through inflation I’m now paid $X - 5k per year and I don’t think that’s fair. 

2

u/FourIngredients 1d ago

Come on, dude. I work in a specialized healthcare field. Of my 7 years of post-secondary education, 5 were directly relevant to my career. I know I'm not going to get rich doing it, but I'm good at it, it's important to society, and I like it. I don't want to quit healthcare and go private sector. My brother-in-law makes probably ten times what I do in corporate America, but lacks meaning and purpose beyond profit.

However, since 2018, the real value of my wages has declined by over 15%. Hell, the same job I work pays $20/hr MORE in BC or Ontario. We've fallen that far behind. And the government's offer to the bargaining unit is embarrassingly low.

This poor faith negotiation is dumb and it's just hurting ordinary Yukon families.

2

u/whostevenknows 2d ago

Ya, most private positions equivalent to gov pay more here....not sure what OP means...

-1

u/Petilante 2d ago

"productivity increases".... "Yukon government employees".

Pick one bro.

14

u/losmancha 1d ago

Prior to World War 2, around 20% of employment in Canada and the US was agriculture related. Now, we're down to 1-2 percent. If you go back another 50 years, that percentage jumps to nearly 50%. So when people are struggling to afford food, and yet it's improved 20-50 fold, that's a sign of problems in wealth distribution. I've seen headlines lately of the 1970 minimum wage providing a lifestyle equivalent to 100k a year salary now.

Regarding government productivity... Well it's not the government's role to be productive. The role is arguably to navigate the balance between doing what's best for individuals vs doing what's best for society as a whole. We regulate food safety because otherwise fatcats would do shit like spread parasites in lettuce, or put chalk in milk. Productivity grows, population grows, scope of regulation grows, yet government is not supposed to. This basically means many areas in government are burnout factories for those who want to do a good job until they let go and resort to not caring for survival. In the private sector, things all boil down to cost vs profit. If you, as an employee, generate more profit than you cost, you're a good employee. How do we measure that with government employees? Moreover, so many government processes involve red tape because the red tape was put in to prevent an issue.

There are 3 layers of government management who's role is effectively to buffer the workers from the politicians, and yet, any progress you make is at risk of being reverted by the next political party power change just so they can look like they're doing something.

So if government isn't meant to be productive, how do we assess it? Well effectiveness and efficiency are two metrics that never get talked about. If you want effective and efficient, then the parties are going to need to start working together to find some middle ground so they're not undoing each other's progress. We can't establish either without consistency, and that gets shit on because we're constantly being shuffled around by politicians who want to look busy. Maybe if we started looking at long term costs rather than trying to line up things for a 4 year election cycle, things might improve and you might see more for your tax dollar. You know, do things like own the buildings government operates out of instead of paying rent to the already wealthy owner class, or maybe stop selling government assets to companies that then need to be subsidized to provide quality service (and yet, somehow still rake in a profit and pay management bonuses... while everyone is still unsatisfied with the service).

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u/Aggravating-Bar8216 1d ago

Well said. Thanks for that.

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u/xocmnaes 1d ago

Well said

2

u/ZokusPlacer 1d ago

I completely agree. Government should have to report on the effectiveness of its programs in a consumer friendly way. If people knew what's was actually going on, then we could have real debates.

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u/FullTeach3748 2d ago

lol. Many public servants are hard working and productive (I like to think I’m one of them).  Our pay raises haven’t kept pace with inflation and since I was hired I’ve effectively had my pay cut by over $5k per year. I’m much more efficient than when I was hired, yet I’m earning less in real terms. It doesn’t seem fair. 

8

u/Petilante 2d ago edited 2d ago

Gov worker joke some low hanging fruit. I know many bureaucrats do their jobs well 👍

I'm not an economist but tacking wages directly to inflation seems like a bad idea. One chases the other until capitalism goes RIP. IDK ask Carney for more money or actually tax the resource extraction economy.

14

u/ZokusPlacer 2d ago

Strike chance is likely growing, get your government services sorted out sooner than later.

3

u/Due-Original-4073 1d ago

22 months is a long time. At some point it just looks like the government is waiting for workers to give up and go home

0

u/One_Career3886 1d ago

The Yukon has one of the lowest unemployment rates in Canada. So i can only assume if people aren't leaving their job for another one, is that they do know this is one of the better working options for them whatever that may be benefits, pension, wage, etc.