Grand River Transit

[danbrotherston]

The issue with firefighters is that every single one works for a public entity; there is no private equivalent of a firefighting service, so there's no way to see what a competitive salary would be. This applies to other specialized positions like police.

Bus drivers, however, can be found working for both public and private entities. It's much easier to see what a competitive salary is and what direction that job market is going in.

I don't really think this is a reasonable way of determining the "competitive salary"...

Private companies aren't operating on the razors edge of bankruptcy corporate profits have only grown in the past decades. Their wages are strongly depressed. Even if you look at unionised positions, it's not great, largely as a result of the weakness of unions I suspect.

Lack or excess of supply of qualified applicants is a reasonable argument for raising or decreasing pay. But have we not heard from GRT for the past year that they cannot hire enough operators?

As for "incentive for keeping costs down"...I really don't think that's true. Politicians are motivated to keep taxes low just as much as a CEO is motivated to increase shareholder profits, and frankly, for exactly the same reason.