The City of Edmonton has too many middle managers. That’s one message the head of a city hall union is bringing to a series of round-table meetings organized by Councillor Mike Nickel Thursday and Friday.
Nickel put the call out to unions from both the public and private sector, as well as small and large business operations. He told Global News even a CEO or two will attend as he’ll bring the two sides together so each can better understand where the other is coming from.
“If you don’t talk to your employees, if you don’t talk to the workers — who know your problems best — the people at the grassroots level…” he said, heading into the series of closed-door sessions.
“But also labour has got to hear the story about how difficult it is for business to pay the bills, and how many of them are struggling right now and they can’t take another hit.”
One submission from transit workers is how top-heavy the City of Edmonton corporation has gotten with middle management.
READ MORE: City audit identifies management, security issues with Edmonton’s maintenance and storage yards
“As far as the scope of managers they have now, there’s just too too many of them,” said Mark Tetterington, president of ATU Local 569.
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“I think they can get by with probably 20 per cent less managers at least, easily.”
An example he pointed out is the number of managers overseeing a group of instructors who train fleet managers and mechanics.
“Under our collective agreement, they train different mechanics and fleet people how to do their jobs and stuff in that area. They’ve got nine trainers and four supervisors, so the ratio is a little bit out of whack.”
Tetterington said a whole restructuring of the bureaucracy is needed with an aim at eliminating some portions of middle management.
“We used to be able to get by with two or three levels; now we have four or five levels. And each one, when they want to get something done, they have to report to the one above them. And then that one has to ask someone above them, and ultimately, they have to ask the branch manager.
“There’s just so many levels of management it seems like it takes forever to get things done.”
Nickel said it’s the yin and yang, not of public versus private, but monopoly versus competition. So when the transit union complains as it did during a security review of ETS, Nickel admits Tetterington has a point about private sector security guards sleeping on the job.
“I want to focus on productivity gains,” Nickel said. “I want to talk about better value for our taxes and I want specific ideas on where we can drive those things.
“A real good question that needs to be put in the room, who does it better, the public sector or the private sector?”
“What we need to focus on is who does it best? Let them do their job and how do we get there in the fastest, most efficient manner possible because we’re out of time, and that means we’re out of money.”
Nickel anticipates about 60 to 70 people will attend the sessions. A recap will be provided to city council in the form of a white paper. Nickel said he’s footing the bill, and not the taxpayer, for the face-to-face meetings.
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