Presently in Canada there are approximately 200 departments, agencies, commissions, crown corporations and councils that create over 500,000 civil servant jobs in Canada. Civil servants are hard working people, but than again who isn’t in today’s modern society. One thing that differs civil servants from the majority of the Canadian workforce is the amount of extra holidays that they get. I suppose civil servants work harder and tire more easily than us regular working folks.
This must explain why they get extra days off. And while the majority of the Canadian workforce will head back to work on Monday, civil servants will get an extra day to sleep in. The really creative government folks I’m certain will head for a 1.5 hr drive to enjoy the extra day off with a shopping trip in Buffalo.
And the rest of us…well we will head back to the grind consisting of another exhausting and maybe stressful workday as our recycling bins don’t get picked up, government phones are answered by voice-mails and oddly enough license and health card renewal lines will be non existent – government offices are closed for the day.
The only bright side for most of us this Monday morning is that the traffic will be lighter. Rather than taking me half-hour to get to work, now it will take me ten minutes. I guess that saves me 20 minutes and technically gives me an extra 20 minutes of sleep.
Even the banks are open on Monday and even the Pope will report to work on Easter Monday, which also happens to be one of the most holiest holidays for Christians. And despite all the holiness, Easter Monday is still not a stat holiday.
In my opinion I think the reason that civil servants get more days off than the rest of the working class…well I don’t have an answer for that, however I know that millions of dollars are lost in labor each time civil servants get the extra day away from work.
Let’s plugin some numbers.
According to Statistics Canada the average hourly rate for a civil servant is $32.78. Nice wage, huh? Anyways….$32.78 works out to $262.78 per day. Remember how many civil servants there are in Canada? Half a million roughly and if we multiply that half a million by the average hourly rate of a civil servant we get over $131 million of lost labor.
Hang on for a second though…..isn’t the Canadian Government looking decrease the post 2008 recession deficit and find innovative ways to manage their spending as introduced in Budget 2012. I guess they can afford to lose $131 million dollars of labor on Easter Monday and another $131 million on Remembrance Day (actually it’s slightly less than that, as Teachers work that day), but I’ll use the KISS method (Keep It Simple Stupid) and compute a total of $262 million of lost labor this year alone for the government.
This concludes my mini rant.
For the regular working class I hope you’re enjoying your long weekend, and if you’re a civil servant in Ontario – Happy shopping in Buffalo.
Happy Easter Everyone!
Eddie
$36 per hour for a civil service job is quite sweet! I’ve always known Canada is a great place to live :)
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Barbara,
Thanks for your comment.
Canada is far from perfect, but certainly is a wonderful country to live in.
Drop by for a visit! Join us at CPFC12 in Toronto.
Yeah I definitely wouldn’t mind that wage and all the extra perks. Not much chance of getting a government job in the website marketing industry though. Well they do love to waste money. So perhaps they do pay people to do that in the various sectors where they have a monopoly.
So what are we supposed to do about this government waste as ordinary citizens? This post is a start in drawing awareness, but how do we actually spur change when on a whole we are generally apathetic? It seems like a broken system with little chance of being fixed.
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Jeremy,
Thanks for your comment.
The system is a little (or maybe a lot) skewed.
Will it ever get fixed? I’d be surprised if it did.
Cheers.
Surprisingly, this actually doesn’t bother me that much. (And I work for myself, so I didn’t even *technically* get Good Friday off — I’ll pay for having taken the day off next week!)
I just kind of look at it as different strokes. You choose to work for the government, you get some perks. You choose to work for Company X, maybe you get different perks. You choose to work for yourself, you lose all typical employee perks, but you get other added benefits.
And honestly, I don’t think getting a few extra days off each year is super unreasonable (but don’t get me started on banked sick days!), so it doesn’t even bother me that my taxes go to paying for some dude in civil service to sleep in.
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Melissa,
Thanks for your comment.
You raise some pretty valid points.
There are benefits from all sides.
I was just comparing the government employees vs the regular working class.
And I thought you’re not working now and going back to teachers college?
How’s all that working out for you?
Keep in touch.
Ah, so you do read my blog, even though you never comment! :)
Teacher’s College is the plan, indeed, but classes don’t start until September, so you better believe I’m still working! I’m freelancing these days, but I’ve been hit with an onslaught of work for the next few weeks, so it’s full-time-plus for me! Not that I’m complaining.
Oh, and I didn’t mean in my first post to make it sound like I was chastising you. I can totally see how it could bug that a bunch of civil servants get Easter Monday off while you (and I!) worked today like a couple of suckers. Was just saying that it’s not something I really think about.
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