“People hate us,” one unusually perceptive federal civil servant told the Ottawa Citizen’s Bruce Deachman from the picket line last week. Any chance of winning the hearts and minds of the general public? “It’s unachievable,” the same source said. He seems to have a firm grasp on reality. They should move him to the prime minister’s communications office.

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William Watson: If federal workers were really hard done by, they’d quit more often Back to video

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That said, “hate” is a little strong, even for this sour age. Most Canadians don’t hate federal public servants. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that “some of my best friends are civil servants” (though a couple of family members were). But, like many of us, I suspect, I’ve had good interactions with tax people, passport people and the like.

Not Amazon-good interactions, mind you. But good enough — even if you do occasionally run across an entitled so-and-so who clearly thinks the full power and privilege of the federal government flows through him and is determined to make you understand that.

The journalist Walter Stewart once wrote a book about Pierre Trudeau in power. He called it “Shrug.” It came out in 1971, three years after Trudeaumania. In the 1972 election, Trudeau got his comeuppance, missing being booted from power by just two seats. He shrugged much less after that.

You do occasionally run across a Canada Post worker whose attitude is: shrug, what’s it to me? This is the classic pose of the monopolist. I always envision airport baggage-handlers, whom in fact we seldom ever see, shrugging a lot. They don’t face competition, either. Your baggage is slow to arrive? Too bad, so sad. Whatcha gonna do about it?

“Hate” is too strong a word for how Canadians feel about all this. “Resentment” would be better. We work hard and pay our taxes — some of us lots of taxes. And though civil servants pay their taxes, too, we suspect many probably don’t work as hard, certainly do receive better compensation and work under union-prescribed, snowflake-ier labour rules. They’re currently seeking bonuses for working past 4 p.m., for goodness’ sake.

Comparing compensation for different jobs is always hard. Apples-to-oranges is a problem but even when you narrow things down, so is McIntosh-to-Granny Smith: no two jobs are exactly alike. But the Fraser Institute gives this impossible task its best shot every year. In its latest report, it finds that on average wages are 31.3 per cent higher in the public sector than the private.

There could be lots of different reasons for that, however. Public-sector workers typically are older, more educated, more experienced, more unionized, more Canadian-born and so on, all characteristics associated with higher wages, other things equal. On the other hand, federal workers are 56 per cent female — or rather (since you’ve got to be careful how you say these things these days), 56 per cent of federal employees are female — a trait usually associated with lower wages.

When the Fraser Institute’s researchers (Milagros Palacios, Nathaniel Li and Ben Eisen) control for all these different factors, they find that public-sector workers make 5.5 per cent more than private-sector workers on average. But of course there’s more to most jobs than simply wages. Unfortunately, we don’t have good evidence on all the components of employees’ compensation packages, neither public nor private.

We do know, however, that public-sector workers: are more likely (by 88.6 per cent to 22.9 per cent) to have a registered pension plan; are more likely (by 90.6 per cent to 39.9 per cent) to have a defined-benefit plan; retire earlier on average (at 62.1 years of age versus 64.5); are less likely (one per cent versus 4.8 per cent in 2018) to lose their jobs; and take more paid sick leave (14.9 days a year versus 5.1 days a year, also in 2018).

There may be other aspects of public-sector work that are more negative. Byzantine procedure may drive you nuts, for instance, or maybe you would prefer to live in a bigger — or smaller — city than Ottawa. But many job attributes that can be measured do seem to favour public servants.

To my mind, the one sure-fire sign of whether people like their jobs or not is whether they quit. In a long university career I heard many people complain. But only rarely did anyone quit. (And why would they? You’re paid to read and write and are essentially your own boss. What could be better?)

By the index of quit rates, federal government jobs are pretty good jobs. The Treasury Board reports that in fiscal year 2020-21 only 0.5 per cent of federal public servants quit — one in 200. That was an unusual year, admittedly. But since the early 2010s, when “the number of departures from the federal public service increased in response to budget reductions, there has been a steady decrease in departures.”

Yes, Virginia, there was a time when the federal government, a previous federal government, needless to say, engaged in budget reductions. But even then quits peaked (in 2015-16) at just one per cent — one in 100.

Canadians don’t hate federal civil servants. We do resent that they don’t seem to understand that they have it pretty good already.

Financial Post