People all across the province are enraged at the latest developments of the Harmonized Sales Tax process, which deal mostly with the severance package that the impacted employees will receive before they move on to the federal government.
I completely agree with them.
However, perhaps we should recap. It’s no secret that the provincial retail sales tax is being combined with GST to create a tax of 13%. Crazy, right? I don’t even pay that much attention to taxes, and I know that that’s a lot of tax. People have had some time to get used to that idea, and I think that it is now accepted, albeit begrudgingly.
The big problem with Ontarians is the money that “laid off” employees will receive as severance. The media took the highest amount that is projected – $45000 – to be the average amount of money that the employees will receive as severance. Yes, they will receive some money for their time with the provincial government, but no, it is not nearly as much as $45000. They will receive a week’s worth of pay for every year they’ve worked. Assuming that the average amount of years that a laid off employee has worked with the provincial government is around 7 years, and the average weekly wage is around $1000, the average employee will receive around $7000 in severance.
Granted, this is a substantial amount of money that will be provided BY tax payers TO tax collectors (who, by the way, are tax payers themselves), but it’s not as much as the media likes to portray.
I understand why it seems unfair that these employees are receiving money to, essentially, move to a new position with the federal government that is guaranteed for 2 years and will ultimately pay more than they made at their provincial government position, but that’s not some new stipulation that the government has decided to put into affect. Leaving out the fact that the employees are going to the federal government, it is part of the agreement from the 1970s that states that all laid off employees will receive a severance package from the provincial government. That can’t be changed over night.
No one will ever be happy with anything that the government does. But come on people. Cut them some slack. Despite the general perception that government employees are lazy and get paid insane amounts of money for a minimal amount of work, that isn’t the case with every single employee. And don’t tell me that there aren’t the same types of workers in the private sector. There are. There always will be those types of workers in ANY company.
Contrary to common belief, the government works really hard to ensure that employees are treated as fairly as possible, and they aren’t out to make Ontarians’ lives miserable.
Oh, and those critical people who judge the government? Yeah, they work IN the government, as well.
Give it a rest, people, and don’t criticize what you don’t know.
Love,
Bella
