Article content continued

“(The government) need(s) to ensure that you’ve got succession planning,” Benson told the Citizen’s editorial board. “You need to have some overlap and folks need to work together and then the Baby Boomers can leave and leave it in good hands.”

Last year, the Public Service Inter-Union Youth Caucus released a report detailing the reasons young people aren’t joining up. A lot of it’s based on clichés, that millennials want meaningful work and the opportunity to grow and don’t want to be shackled to the same cubicle for 40 years. Probably true, though ’twas ever thus, I suspect; it’s just that other factors – marriage, mortgage, moppets – tend to make such drudgery necessary and millennials are less encumbered than previous generations by those albatrosses.

Also, if you’re looking for work, you’ve got to get paid, but there’s that whole Phoenix debacle.

Then there are the other roadblocks the government has built in: unnecessary bilingual designations; months-long hiring processes that see anyone any good get snapped up elsewhere; and a major lack of flexibility in the workplace. If you make it through the hiring hellscape, the work isn’t usually described as thrilling.

“There should be an opportunity for people to be able to excel and to be able to be innovative in the work that they’re doing,” Benson said.

Well, yeah.

It’s difficult to overstate just how troubling it is when the boss of the largest federal public service union says, bluntly, that if you come work for government, you’re not going to get the chance to excel or be innovative.