Banff politicians have tentatively approved $252,686 to address a gap in wages for certain Town of Banff positions following a market wage review.
At a service review meeting Monday (Nov. 16), councillors approved administration’s request, but no decisions are final until the Town of Banff’s operating budget is finalized in December.
Officials say wage data collected from comparable markets in April 2015 demonstrates that most job grades have fallen behind the 50th percentile in the years since the last market wage review took place in 2012
“The lag has occurred at a pace of approximately one per cent per year,” said Barbara King, the Town’s human resources manager. “The recommended $252,686.00 reflects the cost to bridge this gap.”
Banff’s compensation philosophy targets the 50th percentile, including the value of benefits.
Comparable markets included other municipalities, local publicly funded agencies and other local and non-local private sector businesses where relevant.
The Town of Banff has been using the lower of two options to determine cost of living increases for employees – an inflationary rate or a market-facing formula.
King said the positions that fell below market are somewhat varied across the organization, but most of them are in the operations division, such as labourers, drivers and equipment operators.
“Operations was where a lot of these positions were more actively impacted by Alberta’s economy over the past three years,” she said. “We hadn’t really kept pace in those areas.”
Mayor Karen Sorensen said she supports the move to set aside $252,686.
“We’ve always stated within our financial plan that we will work within the 50th percentile and it’s clear we’ve fallen short,” she said.
“By using CPI every year, which was the lower of the two, we fell behind by about three per cent.”
Councillor Stavros Karlos said he supports the move, too.
“I do believe we do have good relationships with employees here at the Town of Banff,” he said. “We want to ensure the Town of Banff remains a competitive employer and retains high quality employees.”
The Town of Banff will also start using a different formula to adjust wages – an average of the Alberta inflation rate and the Statistics Canada average weekly earnings.
“We do have to change how we are calculating COLA (cost of living allowance) so we don’t find ourselves in this position again down the road,” said Sorensen.
