Incentive Pay

I suppose it is a product of my upbringing, my fifty years in the workforce, and perhaps just being a little out of touch, but I was surprised to hear that an arbitrator had awarded North Bay Police Services an incentive pay plan in their last contract. Somehow I was not surprised to hear that the arbitrator had absolutely no sympathy for the taxpayers who will have to face increased taxes to pay for this latest incentive.

When I first started working the only incentive I needed to show up at work every day was to get a pay cheque. When you spend a few years cutting pulpwood or operating (not leaning on) a No. 2 Jones round-mouth shovel in construction work, you surely appreciate getting a job where they actually give you a week of paid vacation. Getting on with a big company that provides a clean and safe working environment was an incentive to upgrade my skills and move up in the wage scale.

Imagine the incentive to keep your job when the company offered a pension plan! Now there was not only an incentive to get the weekly pay cheque, but an incentive to work hard to ensure that the company was successful and would be able to provide that pension so many years down the road. The introduction of a 40-hour work week was extraordinary! When a benefit plan that provided partial payment for a hospital plan and life insurance was offered, that was all the incentive we needed to throw the shoulder more firmly into the harness.

Over the years the benefits plans became wholly paid for by the company; drug plans were added; vision plans; long-term disability; vacation credits climbed to getting a whole month off work with pay; you got paid for days when you did not show up at work because you were sick and for taking coffee breaks; the company paid for upgrading your education; safety programs ensured a hazard-free work place; and that pension plan got better and better. What more of an incentive could you ask for? Heck, they would often even give you a gold watch when you retired!

It seems the Police in the Toronto area are inclined look for greener pastures after about ten years of working in a high crime area. They resign their positions to take jobs in smaller towns where the job is not quite so dangerous. They like places such as Sudbury, North Bay and Timmins where the lifestyle is a little less hectic and the criminals not quite so dangerous or numerous. So it happened that the Toronto Police Board had to start an incentive plan to keep these trained officers. They had all the benefits imaginable so the only thing left was to offer a pay increase for years of service, an increase based not on merit but only number of years worked.

Now it is easy to understand that our local police services want to be paid a salary that is comparative with their fellow officers, no matter where they work. And there is no doubt that the criminals are very mobile, showing up in our northern cities in greater frequency, so our officers ought to be paid for the work they do. But how do we justify an incentive to keep an officer from leaving the service in Toronto to one in Sudbury, North Bay or the Soo? Where are the greener pastures for our officers in a province where the OPP serve the smaller municipalities?

If the incentive is there to keep people in a job they do not like, then they ought to leave that job, not be coerced into staying because the money is really good. But the real consequence of awarding this incentive pay is that the service that carries hoses instead of guns also likes to have the same benefits and incentives and we will eventually have to pay the firefighters those incentives as well. It won’t be long until the workers who push pencils and those who operate the No. 2 Jones shovels will get the same incentives.

Perhaps it is not the fact that we are going to have to dig deeper into our pockets to pay our public servants, but that it is called Incentive Pay that bothers me. What will they think of next – Inducement pay? Motivational supplement? Stimulus remuneration? Too bad the Toronto Board just didn’t give the boys and girls in blue a raise. It would have saved us all the cost of hiring that arbitrator. It is just another made-in-southern Ontario solution for which we northerners are paying.

One wonders what would happen if we northerners paid our police and firefighters a Cold Weather Allowance. Would their southern confreres ask for the same pay to keep their total pay package the same? What could an arbitrator do but award a few thousand dollars to each and every officer in Metro? Of course, the Toronto Board would retaliate with a Hot Weather Allowance and the battle would be on to see who could pay their employees the most!

Where will it all end? It is just another bite out of my pension cheque, but at least there is a pension, something that was not in the picture 50 years ago. Now every time I get that little twinge in the small of my back I appreciate the motivation a No. 2 Jones shovel can give you. It was the best incentive I ever had.