No side will get my vote

A place to post your bitch or rant about anything that's not radio related

Re: No side will get my vote

Postby Coolcat » Fri Mar 06, 2015 11:18 pm

arthurdent wrote:..... the fact that TransLink had recently eliminated the Chief Operating Officer's position, freeing up over $300,000 per year. ....


If they can eliminate a suit @ $300K that easily then his position was probably a waste of money and another example of Translink ineptness. Right up there with the Compass card. You have to wonder with all these blatant examples of Translink exorbitance what hasnt leaked out is probably even worse. Time to give the whole lot of them the silver bullet.
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Re: No side will get my vote

Postby arthurdent » Sat Mar 07, 2015 11:57 am

Yep...you can always go out and find someone to do it cheaper. Or in the case of the radio biz, a hard drive. Hands up, how many on this page have been let go in a cost-saving drive and replaced by a junior just-learning who didn't do half the job you did?

To complain about someone's salary without knowing the slightest bit about what they did or contributed to earn it is not the essence of good decision-making. Witness radio's race to the bottom.

As for the $300 K COO position that was eliminated, it was there primarily to re-balance and reorganize operations to make them more efficient - which, if you dig into the details, you'll find they are. Once done, so was the position. That's the way it should work. You might be surprised at what the execs at public companies actually do...I've been there as one of them and most of them have my total respect. The others eventually suffer the same fate as people in any business who wear out or under-perform. Radio types and public sector senior managers are subject to more scrutiny and held to higher accountabilities than most working people -- we're in tough businesses.

As for the CEO making more than the Prime Minister, I'd say that would be because he did a better job at his work than PMH does for Canada, regardless of the tone-deaf move to fire him. It's amazing that we put such a low value on public services. Last year, TransLink's CEO earned only about a third of the guy who was 100th in the top 100 highest paid CEO's in BC. Don't think you're not paying directly or indirectly for all of those 100 folks, whose pay packets topped out at $26 million for the number one guy alone....

Anyone who lets the Astroturf-winning Canadian Taxpayers Federation do their thinking for them is being badly misled on a number of fronts. As a retired guy, I have more than enough time and background to respond to anything this group would like to raise about TransLink's performance. While I'll admit off the top that there are things they've done that have been flat-out goofy at times, show me any business who hasn't had a couple of those in their histories. The poodle on a stick sticks in my craw too, although I found out that TransLink was not directly involved in that decision. Still...tell me what bugs you and I'll get back to you with some info.

Regardless, while the anti-taxers don't care if we choke to death on traffic and bad air, the fact is that for a miserable 35 cents a day for the average family, even half of the transportation improvements being proposed will make a huge difference to your quality of life and your pocketbook. It's a sooner-or-later proposition...one way or another, we will all pay or all benefit or all suffer. TransLink can be fixed (like, hey, I had a cat fixed once), so to say no to get back at them or at the provincial government only plays into the hands of the think tanks and advocates who are really there to make life better for the 1 per-centers. Choose wisely.
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Re: No side will get my vote

Postby PicturesForYourEars » Sat Mar 07, 2015 6:59 pm

They couldn't organize a two car parade.
...LEFT PLACES I SHOULDA STAYED,
STAYED PLACES I SHOULDA LEFT...
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Re: No side will get my vote

Postby Coolcat » Sat Mar 07, 2015 10:29 pm

arthurdent wrote:As for the CEO making more than the Prime Minister, I'd say that would be because he did a better job at his work than PMH does for Canada, regardless of the tone-deaf move to fire him. It's amazing that we put such a low value on public services. Last year, TransLink's CEO earned only about a third of the guy who was 100th in the top 100 highest paid CEO's in BC. Don't think you're not paying directly or indirectly for all of those 100 folks, whose pay packets topped out at $26 million for the number one guy alone.....


Its very noble that you stand up for your ex boss and old friends at Translink but really a comparison to a PM running a country is a bit excessive. Most Vancouverites would shutter at the thought of the country being run by the Translink brain trusts.

Truth of the matter is that when you work at a company like Translink everyone constantly pats each other on the back telling everyone else what a great job they are doing when all it's being compared to is an internal bar of success which is conceivably high internally but is low when compared to successful operations outside the organization; it happens to many companies. On the Compass Card mess the boss would have been canned in any well run company as well, but it just would have happened way sooner. Instead the misfits running Translink did it way too late and now they have egg on their face choosing to pay TWO CEO salaries at once. The worse part is that people are reminded daily of the ineptness of Translink when they walk by the Compass Card equipment sitting gathering dust at the Skytrain stations. (Remember all the arguments from Translink brass saying that the CC was state of the art and tried and tested in the London Subway System? How's that working out for everyone now? I wonder how many boondoggle trips were spent flying to the UK to check it out first hand).

Successful CEOs do make a lot of money but most of those CEOs are in successful companies that make a lot of money with a lot of the renumeration paid to the CEO in stock options, dividends or the like. Translink was never setup to be a company with high paid CEO's as they will never make a penny's profit cant afford to pay or be compared to a large private company. Comparing the Translink CEO to other CEOs in BC is garbage as most of the other CEOs (private companies) are paid based on the company turning a profit and making money and requires different CEO skills. A CEO at Translink just needs to be a good manager focused on how the company is being run properly. For that you dont have to pay CEO wages and a wage comparable to a Mayor is more in line with where it should top off at.
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Re: No side will get my vote

Postby arthurdent » Sun Mar 08, 2015 8:04 am

Well, Cool Cat, there are many different perspectives, yours being one of them. First, I'm with you on CEO pay generally...something has distorted this situation very badly over time and it was interesting to see a move in Switzerland to peg a CEO's salary at no more than six times the pay of a benchmark person in the organization. You're also correct that most public services are not set up to be profit centres, although both BC Hydro and ICBC are being tapped for 'dividends' by the province. So to make turning a profit is at best a questionable criteria for setting executive pay. How it works for most public sector companies is that an outfit like William Mercer does an analysis of similar public and private organizations to see what people doing the same work are getting paid. Then, the Board of Directors or, in some cases, an external body, determines that wages in the company will be no higher than a percentage of the comparator organizations; sometimes it's the median, sometimes up to about 70%.

In TransLink's case, you need fairly competent people to handle an organization with an annual budget of $1.4 billion and a capital program of $2 billion. The reason I've been on here defending my old gang is that I know they have proven themselves extremely competent. Contrary to your perception, TransLink is held up to comparisons and benchmarks both domestically and internationally, and consistently rates among the best. I posted a link to a report with the details a few messages ago.

Even the Compass project, as behind schedule and over budget as it is, is still being better managed than most similar roll-outs in other places. Sydney Australia's program was over budget by about twice the total cost of ours. Toronto's system was over, Ottawa's crashed when it was first launched. At one point, Calgary gave up, ripped out all of the equipment and sent it back to the supplier, although both sides there have decided to have another go at it. This is very tricky technology, and TransLink has not done anything like a good enough job of describing the unique challenges it has had. But here's a similar story: TransLink did a significant upgrade to the bus communication system and, like Compass, set some stringent performance targets that had to be met before the new system would be accepted. It took over two years for this new system to reach performance targets and only then was the supplier paid the final amount. It's the same situation for Compass...the supplier will need to perform before they get the entire contract price.

We have critical decisions to make, and it is simply not good enough to assume the default position so many take -- that public institutions are badly managed and wasteful. It may be a convenient way to rationalize objections to taxes, but it won't do us much good in the long run.
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Re: No side will get my vote

Postby PicturesForYourEars » Sun Mar 08, 2015 10:51 am

They couldn't manage a 2 car parade
...LEFT PLACES I SHOULDA STAYED,
STAYED PLACES I SHOULDA LEFT...
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Re: No side will get my vote

Postby Jim Walters » Sun Mar 08, 2015 3:35 pm

How much is enough for these greedy bastards?

I just noticed on my $200 + BC Hydro bill there is $8.00 regional transit levy. Then of course the so much per litre tax on gas and who knows where else they've got their hands in our pockets.

It might be an idea to start cracking down on the fare evaders. It's a joke. The ones who ride the bus and skytrain for free, probably don't pay a dime in taxes but theyliterally get the free ride.

How about the Transliknk brass who use their "company" cars rather than the system to get to meetings? Many say the have to do that because they can't count on the system to get them where they have to get to on time. That speaks volumes.

Either way, we'll end up paying. When the NO side wins, they'll just add a few more cents to the gas tax, add a percentage to property taxes etc. etc. etc.
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