Two quick waste stories to wrap a busy week in B.C.:

The Province has an infuriating piece today on B.C. Ferries, sucking up ever-growing taxpayer subsidies, handing out $300 gift cards to their union staff:

B.C. Ferries may be hard up for cash, but it’s showering employees with up to $900,000 worth of goodies this summer — to help them play golf, sign up for yoga classes and otherwise get in shape.

The storm-tossed corporation, which this spring hit passengers with a 4.1-per-cent fare hike, confirmed Thursday that it’s offering each of its 3,000 unionized workers a $300 perk to recognize the “excellent safety record achieved in the past fiscal year.”

Here’s an interesting tip from a supporter, which we are working on (if you have details, let me know!):

Here is an example of government waste which takes away valuable resources from students in a school district.

School District No. 8 (Kootenay Lake) has a collective agreement with the CUPE local. In that collective agreement staff are permitted to change their work hours during the July and August from five eight hour days per week to four ten hour days per week.

The request to change shifts is rarely, if ever, denied.

Although it is not specifically mentioned anywhere within the collective agreement as permissible, the school district pays the staff that have voluntarily decided to work the four ten hour day per week shift, ten hours of statutory holiday pay for the two holidays over the summer (July 1st and BC Day). Despite the fact that the B.C. Employment Standards Act only requires a payment of eight hours for each stat holiday for full time workers the district has been paying ten. This applies to at least forty employees and has been going on for well over a decade. This has cost the district in excess of $50,000 over the past decade. Not a bad benefit for CUPE staff, but is it really any good for the students of this school district or the taxpayers of B.C.?