Thousands of Alberta government managers could see pay bump Friday as wage freeze ends

Thousands of Alberta government managers and non-unionized workers will receive pay raises Friday — some of them for the first time in six years.

In late December, the United Conservative Party government decided to end a six-year wage freeze for more than 3,700 provincial government employees.

"We've taken a look at the competitiveness of our salary ranges, and we need to remain competitive," Finance Minister Travis Toews said in an interview on Wednesday. "We need to make sure that we can keep and retain and attract competent staff."

The non-unionized employees range from administrative assistants, whose starting pay is just just above minimum wage, to deputy ministers earning up to $287,000 a year. Two thirds of the affected employees are in management positions.

Opted-out workers with "satisfactory performance" will receive up to four per cent salary increases, and managers will get up to three per cent. Union-exempt employees will climb one step on their pay grid.

Toews' press secretary Kassandra Kitz said the government expects the raises to cost about $14 million for the 2022-23 year. She said other government employees' salaries rose while the non-unionized workers' wages stayed the same.

The raises are in addition to salary increases granted to nearly 4,000 non-unionized employees last December, at a cost of $5.3 million.

It comes after oil revenues gushed into provincial coffers, and the legislature approved a balanced budget plan for the year ahead.

Not only could the government afford the move, it needed to take steps to hold on to its workforce, said Bob Barnetson, a professor of labour relations at Athabasa University.

Six years of wage freezes has made government management jobs less attractive compared to other employers, he said.

The freeze has also led to a phenomenon known as "inversion" – where a manager earns less than one of her underlings – and that's bad for morale, Barnetson said.

Losing a large cohort of managers is a problem, he said, and replacing them could be expensive.

The raises could also set a precedent as unionized public sector employees head into bargaining looking for pay bumps, Barnetson said.

Although the government had been seeking wage rollbacks from workers, it hasn't succeeded thus far.