Montreal’s main municipal unions are outraged over the city’s executives being paid double performance bonuses.
Published at 1:16 p.m. Updated at 2:19 p.m
Employees and workers said they were “outraged” to learn in La Presse this morning that their bosses had received two bonuses in 2023. Mayor Plante argues that these are simply the amounts that were withdrawn from them in 2020 during the pandemic.
“It is absolutely astonishing to see that executives are given more respect by this government than employees and workers who are directly responsible for providing services to citizens,” union leaders Patrick Dubois and Jean-Pierre Lauzon said in a press release issued midway through day.
The two men reject Valérie Plante’s argument that it is simply a matter of the delayed payment of the 2020 bonus. “But what planet does this government live on? “While leaders telecommuted, it was our members who were on the streets providing services to Montrealers,” the union leaders added. Where is her thanks? »
The two organizations would like to reopen their respective collective agreements so that inflation in recent years is taken into account in salary increases. Montreal has closed the door to that possibility.
The official opposition in the town hall, for its part, criticized the “lame and incoherent” statements of the Plante government.
“The Plante administration complains every week that it doesn’t have enough money to address our metropolis’ diverse problems, but it believes it has the luxury of paying executives a double bonus totaling $6 million Aref Salem complained in a written statement. “While executives have already received three days of vacation to make up for the lack of their bonus in 2020. If that’s not a lack of priorities, I don’t know what is…”
“It was budgeted”
Additionally, Mayor Valérie Plante on Friday defended her government’s decision to pay two bonuses to Montreal city executives in 2023.
PHOTO MARTIN TREMBLAY, LA PRESSE ARCHIVE
Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante
The mayor argued that these were bonuses for 2020 that the city never paid out due to budget constraints.
“The bonuses we are talking about are amounts that were suspended in 2020, during the pandemic. We decided last May to give them to the executives,” she argued in a press conference. “It is important for me to mention that these are not additional amounts as they were budgeted. It’s just that they were suspended in 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, where everyone was asked to make an effort. We also asked the managers. »
“These are not new amounts, they have been budgeted,” she added.
In 2020, the City of Montreal made no mention of a “suspension” of these bonuses. “The administration has decided that the contribution of managers to the budgetary efforts should be made by not paying a performance bonus for 2020,” the city emphasized at the time, according to an article in the newspaper 24 Heures. “We have canceled the bonuses,” added the mayor’s press secretary.
La Presse announced Friday morning that Montreal’s 1,800 municipal executives received an average bonus of $3,150 in May, in addition to their usual performance bonus (an average of $3,700). The second test corresponds to 85% of the first. The amount is 2% to 6% of the annual salary and depends on the employee’s performance.
“It’s not really the bonus of 2020,” Executive Committee President Dominique Ollivier said before the article was published. Managers who have left in the meantime will not receive the bonus and new managers who have not lost anything in 2020 are entitled to it. “I am one of the leaders who tightened their belts and had no way back,” explained Ms. Ollivier, who served as president of the Office de Consultation Publique de Montréal (OCPM) in 2020.
Ms Ollivier explained that it was more of a measure to retain her staff given the labor shortage.