Kelowna City Hall

(ROB MUNRO / iNFOnews.ca)

Every year local governments have to publish the number of employees who make more than $75,000 a year.

That number keeps growing. In Kelowna there were 570 out of about 1,000 employees who made more than $75,000 in 2022, an increase of 45 from the previous year.

What those raw numbers don’t show is how individual workers have fared over time and in comparison to the rest of the country.

A look at four of the top bureaucrats in the city show their earnings went up 18-22% over the last four years at a time when the average hourly wage in Canada only went up by 12.5%, according to Statistics Canada.

But there’s more to the story that just numbers.

“Salaries will go up based on the increase in the band and then, if there’s any increases in responsibility or based on time,” Stu Leatherdale, the city’s director of human resources told iNFOnews.ca.

All workers, whether they are in union or management, are on a pay grid, or band. That means, after they put in a year of service, for example, they move up the grid. They will also get annual increases wherever they are on the grid. They also get pay raises if they take on more responsibility.

Doug Gilchrist, for example, started as the city manager in 2018. In his first full year in the job he made roughly $254,000.

As he moved up the grid, by 2022, his earnings went by 20% to $318,482.

Stephen Fleming, the city clerk, saw a 22% increase over the same time period in part, Leatherdale said, because he took on more responsibilities.

Those earnings are not just wages. They include taxable benefits like car allowances that fluctuate by the amount driven. Managers don’t get paid overtime except when they work in the emergency response centre. That overtime is paid by the province.

Overall, management wages went up by 9.58% over the four-year period.

Quite a few city workers, whether they be in management or in the union, are not at the top of their pay grid because there is a turnover of about 100 workers a year, Leatherdale said. That’s about 10% of the workforce each year who start at or near the bottom of the pay grids.

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Union wages only went up by about 9%.

That’s because, throughout that four-year time period, there was a collective agreement in place that didn’t include cost of living increases. Some of the national wage gains in 2022 were due to high inflation pushing up, especially, non-union wages.

The union contract is up at the end of this year. Leatherdale expects the union to come to the bargaining table with major catchup demands.

It’s a slightly different situation for firefighters who only gained by 7.5% over the past four years.

Their contract expired at the end of 2021 so they got no wage increases at all last year. Their wage for 2022 will be based on the average of the wages negotiated for firefighters in the Lower Mainland, Leatherdale said.

Those negotiations are still ongoing. If they conclude this year, Kelowna firefighters will see a major jump in their remuneration on the 2023 report because, not only will they have higher wages but they will likely get retroactive pay for all of 2022 and part of this year.

Total remuneration for city workers was $92.4 million in 2022.

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