TORONTO - Ontario's municipal workers may have escaped the salary freeze edict in the provincial budget but their city hall bosses were given strong signals Friday to follow the Liberal government's lead.
While the controversial move in Thursday's budget will affect more than one million workers it does not apply to the approximately 39,000 municipal government employees across Ontario, including police, firefighters and city staff.
That doesn't mean local councils can't cap those salaries, said Finance Minister Dwight Duncan.
"They're certainly welcome to follow our lead," he told The Canadian Press in an interview. "I wouldn't presume to tell them how to do it, but we think this is a good approach."
Premier Dalton McGuinty echoed Duncan's comments during an unrelated event in Ottawa, and noted the province could have imposed the wage freeze on municipalities but decided to let them make their own decisions.
"I would invite all of them to take a long, hard, close look at what we are doing at the provincial level and to give some serious thought as to whether they should be adopting this approach," said McGuinty.
The province moved to immediately freeze the pay for non-unionized public sector workers and then cap compensation for unionized workers for two years after their existing contracts expire and believes cities could do the same.
"There will be difficult bargaining ahead, but municipalities can certainly pursue a course of action that involves freezing salaries for non-bargained employees, and... for the broader public sector," said Duncan. "We will not be funding increases in overall compensation."
Mayor Mike Bradley of Sarnia said the police and fire departments -- which make up 50 per cent of his city's budget -- have the right to go to arbitration, which makes a wage freeze highly unlikely.
"Unless (the province is) willing to change the arbitration rules -- and I do not believe they have the courage to do so -- police and fire organizations across this province are very strong and very organized," Bradley said in an interview.
"If you want municipalities to freeze wages, then you'd better be willing to give them the ability to do so."
The Association of Municipalities of Ontario, which represents most of the 444 towns and cities in the province, also noted that most police and firefighters' contracts are settled by arbitration, not negotiations.
"If there are specific outcomes that the province has in mind, we would want to sit down with them and learn more about what reforms the province would introduce to make them possible," said AMO spokesman Pat Vanini.
The provincial government will have to enter talks with the Ontario Provincial Police on a new contract that doesn't include money for a salary increase, and local governments can do the same with their police forces, said Duncan.
"We have to negotiate with the OPP," he said. "I think negotiating with your partners is the right approach."
Bradley said municipal governments have been doing their best in contract talks to keep a lid on salary increases, especially since the recession started, and he's worried demands for a wage freeze will lead to protests across Ontario.
"We're going to be setting a very tight fiscal path (during contract negotiations) and we don't need Big Brother to tell us to do that, and I also do not want to destroy our local labour relations," said Bradley.
"You'll end up with a checkerboard Ontario as it relates to labour relations, and labour strife throughout the province -- but it is conveniently timed to occur after the next election."
