Key Points of a Proposed Wage Policy for the Public and Para-Public Sectors

1. Establish the basis of comparison betweencomparable employees in the public and private sectors through the use of multivariate regression applied to a selected number of typical jobs with the following characteristics: recruiting, turn-over, and shortages. Purpose: to be able to distinguish between the part of the public/ private gap linked to personal characteristics and the real public/private gap and to be able to efficiently link public remuneration to the private.

2. Establish a coherent interval structure of remuneration for the public and the para-public sectors based on a system of job evaluation. Purpose: to decentralize salary decision-making and increase employee productivity.

3. Establish comparisons within Québec Province with federal government services, municipalities, and non-profit-making organizations: all of which compete with the provincial government for manpower on the Québec labour market.

4. Makeadjustments to observed data for the private sector, in order to include:

— spillover effect of the public sector on the private in the past;

— employment security;

— differences in productivity between the civil services of Québec and Ontario;

— varying fiscal effect of different types of remuneration.

5. Give regional and local levels a real role in the distribution of the total salary package and the determination of individual salaries.

6. Make the Bureau de la recherche sur la remuneration (Pay Research Bureau) tri-partite of at least assure that application of the proposed method in (1) be under-taken by an autonomous body.

7. Establish a system of signal to measure excess supply and demand, and to orient the fixing of remuneration levels in the public sector according to recruiting needs.

8. Revise salariesannually according to information on individual salaries, obtained through a representative sample (stratified and proportional) and analysed with the aid of multivariate regression. This makes it unnecessary to use explicit indexation to the cost of living and to "collective enrichment" (productivity).

9. Move gradually toward the method of simulated costs to determine the level of fringe benefits.