Time Off? Yes,we got that.
The City of Nanaimo Bylaw No.7000 establishes “The terms and conditions of employment for officers and management/excluded employees of the City”.
One condition that makes their work less than onerous is the number of days in the year that a select number of senior management employees can contractually be absent from work, but still receive full pay during their absence. Consider, for example, an employee with 10 years of employment with the City. This is what this individual is entitled to:
1) Thirty (30) vacation days (ie:6 weeks).
2) Eleven (11) statutory holidays.
3) Eighteen (18) days of short term sick leave.
4) Five (5) days extra vacation in lieu of overtime worked.*
These senior employees are entitled to be absent from work for 64 working days during the calendar year.This amounts to 1 day short of 13 weeks,or 25% of the work year.
*The number of senior staff employed by the City who receive this benefit is approximately 45.
Wayne Schulstad
Posts and Comments on Nanaimo Governance 
The City of Revelstoke gives Administrative Personnel a maximum of 26 weeks sick leave at full pay for each occurrence of illness or injury and they get Ten (10)days extra vacation in lieu of overtime worked. The thirty days vacation is standard for most municipalities as are the Eleven statutory Holidays.
Most municipalities including Nanaimo do not pay overtime for Administrative Personnel to attend Public Hearings, Council Meetings or other meetings where their attendance is part of their job.
The extra days off in Nanaimo is equivalent to only 26 hours of overtime, which would not even cover 9 meetings at an average of 3 hours.
Instead of complaining about the Terms and Conditions of Employment for Officers and Management/excluded employees of the City, our City Watchdogs may want to look into the purchase of a Crewcab pickup truck for excess of $104,000 while I can buy one for only $54,000 or the approved purchase and installation of an LED Screen at the Aquatic Centre for over $101,000.
W.Manners.Thanks for your comments.If I could first briefly address the matter of the pick-up truck,the purchase price would of course be directly related to the specifications for the vehicle as listed in the City’s tender documents.I haven’t seen the specs, and since the contract is now awarded the information has been deleted from the City’s web page.
Concerning my post on ‘Time Off’,what I was attempting to show by addressing the matter is the fairness aspect of the overall benefits package provided to public sector employees vis-a-vis those in the private sector.The benefits now available to the former significantly surpass those available to the latter,have for a number of years and the gap continues to widen.I am of the opinion that these regular and routine salary and benefit increases,which typically exceed annual inflation,must be controlled.
The City’s Bylaw 7000 covers the employment conditions for its management employees.It is noted that 18 days are allowed per year for short term sick leave,and if not used,can be accumulated to a maximum of 60 days and paid out to the employee upon retirement.The City of Nanaimo has an accumulated financial obligation for this benefit amounting to millions of dollars,and that of course means for you and me and every other taxpayer in the City.
Thanks again for your comments and we look forward to more in the future.
The city wage benefits are always going to be beyond the public sector because most public sector jobs are NOT union. As long as the employees of the city get union benefits, the non union employees in management will continue to get the type of benefits they get in order to make the positions attractive.
All management positions in the entire world are more attractive than those below management or there would be no managers. Most managers get a monthly salary because the hours are not your normal 8-8.5 hours days or in the case of city employees 7.5 hours a day.
The only solution to reduce wages in the civil employment block is to remove CUPE from the table and that is impossible to do. More and more contracting out is one viable way to save money but it does it on the backs of fair negotiating.
My point was that it is easier to look into things that can be changed easily instead of those that are next to impossible.
As long as the City uses the “Hay system” in calculations of wages and benefits for upper staff and council, we will not be the highest in the province.
You are absolutely right that the City has accumulated financial obligations that amount to millions but we can’t change those, at least not overnight.
Cost overruns on bidding policies can be stopped dead in their tracks by showing council that the bidding prices are out of whack with the prices that the average joe will spend on similar or identical material. By the way, did you see the photocopier budget for this year? YIKES!
Yes,I have seen the photocopier budget.There are several questions/answers posted on the City’s ‘Budget Form’ which is available from the Finance Dept. on the City’s web site and can also be readily accessed from this site by clicking ‘Archives’ and scrolling down.Thanks for your comments.
That link is still on the home page as well Wayne and W. – Bottom of the first column.