New Westminster wants to shield city employees from potential bullying by protecting their privacy.
Each year, local governments must report on the remuneration and expenses of employees earning $75,000 or more as part of the annual statement of financial information that’s required by the province’s Financial Information Act. On Monday, council approved a motion to ask the Union of B.C. Municipalities to support amendments to the Financial Information Act that would permit local governments to report salaries and expenses in the SOFI report by job title instead of employee name.
Coun. Patrick Johnstone, who put forward the motion, supports the requirement for cities to list wages of employees making $75,000 or more as it serves a purpose of transparency in how the city spends money.
“I do think it’s important that we as a public organization, do provide that public accounting. However, I think that we also have … policies around respectful workplaces and preventing harassment of our employees,” he said. “I think in the social media age, information like this ends up putting some of our, especially our public face employees, in a situation where perhaps information they’d prefer to have personal about their lives would be exposed to sort of public ridicule.”
Johnstone said the city can state a Planner 2 makes X amount of money and an environmental coordinator makes X, without having to put the names next to those wages.
“We have a lot of people who are not executives, people who work in the planning department, people who work in engineering – $75,000 is not an executive wage anymore,” he said. “When this act was created, and the schedule said $75,000 was the cut-off, it was kind of the cut-off between executive wages and union wages, essentially.”
Johnstone expressed concern that when people Google some employees’ names the first thing that pops up is the list showing what they’re paid.
“I don’t think that creates a respectful workplace,” he said. “I think it creates a situation where we are opening up our employees for harassment.”
Coun. Chuck Puchmayr said he’s not sure the change is necessary but would support it going to the UBCM for debate.
Coun. Mary Trentadue said it’s not as important that citizens know what “Joe Smith” makes as knowing what a manager in the engineering department earns.
“Putting this kind of information out to the public is really challenging to the privacy issues that we face today,” she said. “As a councillor, we all make the same. It’s not something that we are all making different rates. I think we have an onus to the community that they know how much we make. I think staff is different. I think we should do what we can to protect a level of privacy around a particular person’s name attached to their income."
In addition to a list of employee remuneration and expenses, the statement of financial information includes statements about severance agreements, council remuneration and expenses, suppliers of goods and services of $25,000 and more, and audited financial statements.
