DavidAkin said:
OK -- so here's a couple of questions. If I was to do a news story on these raises, can anyone help me out with the following:
1. Does the CF pay better/worse than our NATO allies? Whose military has the gold-plated compensation package?
Here are the links to the US, UK, and Australian (I know not NATO, but they are included in ABCA) pay rates
http://www.dod.mil/dfas/militarypay/newinformation/WebPayTableVersion2006updated.pdf
http://www.army.mod.uk/servingsoldier/condofserv/mm/index.html
http://www.defence.gov.au/dpe/dpe_site/Pay_Allow_Mar_06.pdf
There difficulty in determining who has the better pay, 1) comparing rank structure, a Coporal in the Canadian Force may be at a different Pay Level than say a Corporal in the US or UK and visa versa. 2) Certain Bonus and Allowances (ie parachutist, overseas, hardship, post living differential etc.) may come into play. While one country may have an allowance to offset the expenses for living in area with a high cost of living (which we do and it's called Post Living Diffirential or PLD for short), another country may not. 3)Taxation and Cost of Living are different not only from country to country, but within country as well. There are probably quite a few other things I missed (Supplementary Health Care, Education etc.) but I think you get the idea that its not that easy comparing pay from country to another
2. Is 2.62 per cent a fair raise?
Happy to entertain all comments here or
to dakin@ctv.ca.
Thanks -- and congratulations!
Again fair raise in comparison to what? To me, first you would need to sort out the regular occupations and the specialist occupations, because the latter of which received an additional raise on top of the 2.62%. Second you would have to look at all the different occupations in the CF and compare them to what thier civillian counterparts/equivalents earn,(and this is if they even have something comparable in the civillian world, some occupations like infantry have no equvialent), while taking in rank and experience as both of these increase your pay. Even still you might still have a wide gap in pay between the CF and the civy world. Example, our Medical Technicians most direct civillian equivalent are Paramedics. By the time a Medical Technician is fully qualified they could be at the Pte 3 or Cpl 1 end of the payscale, which now translates into around 47k-50k without any additional allowances. Civy Side a brand new fully qualified Paramedic can earn anywhere from the high 30k range to just over 60k, as a starting salary, depending on where in the country they are and which service they work for. Third I would look into what the average pay increase has been for both private sector, and public sector employees, union and non-union.
So as you can see if you planned on doing a story, your going to need to do some serious number crunching, if you wish to portray an accurate picture. Know any good accountants?
