OTTAWA—The federal government is hoping private sector consultants can help sell planned sick leave reforms to public servants.

Ottawa is looking for “disability benefit consultants” to assist the Conservatives’ push for public sector sick leave reforms — an issue that will be front and centre as a number of unions head to the negotiating table this year.

The consultants will be asked to do everything from advising Treasury Board on the design of the new sick leave system to developing “communications products” singing the praises of the new system to employees and union reps.

Treasury Board expects to pay as much as $525,000 over a four-year period for the consultants to help transition the public service to the new system, including interacting “with different stakeholders to explain the benefits of proposed short-term disability plan designs to meet the Government of Canada’s objectives.”

“It’s absolutely absurd,” Chris Aylward, national vice-president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, said Tuesday.

“It sends a very strong signal to us that Treasury Board, this government, has full intentions of actually telling those consultants what to say and how to say it.”

The sick leave system has been in Treasury Board President Tony Clement’s crosshairs for some time. Last June, Clement said that the Conservatives intend to crack down on what they consider high rates of absenteeism among federal bureaucrats.

A briefing note for that announcement claimed the system lacked “effective oversight,” which “at times can lead to some abuses.”

The unions dispute Clement’s claims, and accuse Treasury Board of using rather creative accounting to support a political position. The fact that Clement chose Public Service Week to accuse bureaucrats of begging off work more often than their private sector counterparts also drew the unions’ ire.

Neither side appears willing to budge on the issue as 27 separate bargaining units prepare for negotiations with Treasury Board this year. While Aylward said he’s open to constructive suggestions to improve the system for union members, his union remains adamantly opposed to anything that could be seen as a clawing back of their benefits.

The Conservatives’ push for reform dates back to 2007, when the government flagged rising durations of claims under long-term disability as an issue. In 2009, Treasury Board commissioned the three-year Disability Management Initiative with a mandate to recommend government-wide changes to the system.

“The culmination of this work called for an integrated and modernized approach to managing injury, illness and disability in the (core public service) that improves employee wellness while reducing employer costs due to absence from work,” reads a request for proposals issued Tuesday.

Where the current system is a “fragmented institution-centred collection of services,” the new system aims to be centralized and simple to administer. The new system must also cost less than the current structure, and provide comparable benefits to public sector employees as those enjoyed by their private sector counterparts.

Over the past year, Treasury Board has been commissioning a series of consultants’ reports into the “comparability” issue. Consultants will study a wide range of positions within the public service to determine how they fare compared to similar positions in the private sector.

NDP Treasury Board critic Mathieu Ravignat said the Conservatives have yet to make a clear and compelling case for the seemingly urgent need for reform.

“It’s the onus of the government to clearly demonstrate that there is a problem with the current system, that they’ve evaluated it, and that they’ve consulted those parties that are involved,” Ravignat said. “And we haven’t seen any of that up-front work done. There just seems to be an assumption that it’s a problem and that it needs to be fixed, and that you have to fix it from an external source and you can’t rely on internal evidence.”

Ravignat also noted that unions have said they’re open to reviewing the sick leave management structure with Clement and Treasury Board officials — and that so far, that invitation seems to have been declined.

Aylward said that his organization had not met with Clement since the fall.

“Basically he said, ‘We are coming after your sick leave.’ He all but said that in the meeting,” Aylward said.

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The Star requested an interview with Treasury Board officials concerning the request for proposals Tuesday. None was available.

“Our goal is to put in place a modernized system that is on par with other jurisdictions and the private sector, benefiting public servants and taxpayers,” wrote Kelly James, a spokeswoman for Treasury Board.

Salaries and benefits are the largest single operating expense for the federal government, totalling $43 billion annually.

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