BOSSES GET BONUS AFTER ATB'S BIG LOSS

By DAVID BRAY -- Legislature Bureau, October 15, 1997
  Alberta Treasury Branches bosses are poised to get a 10% pay bonus just months after the government-owned bank turned in a record $124-million loss.
 About 800 management staff from accounts managers up should get special cheques by the end of the month, ATB spokesman Darlene Dickinson said yesterday.
 The move doesn't apply to the institution's 3,000 other employees.
 "It's not an increase in salary," Dickinson said of the payouts, which were announced to staff late Friday. "It's a one-time payment."
 The cash payouts are expected to cost the taxpayer-owned institution about $3.5 million, Dickinson added.
 ATB managers make an average of about $46,480 a year.
 New pay scales for all staff are due to take effect April 1, Dickinson said.
 "It is our intention to cover everybody but we're not able to do it for all employees at this time," she said.
 "We have to negotiate with the union to do that."
 Dickinson said management staff haven't had a pay hike since 1991.
 Unionized workers have received regular pay raises and merit increases through contract negotiations, she added.
 The pay bonuses come just four months after the ATB announced a $124.3-million net operating loss for 1996-97, its largest ever swath of red ink.
 The losses were partly due to a review of an estimated $200 million in bad loans, including high-profile deals with Alberta sports entrepreneurs Peter Pocklington and Larry Ryckman.
 Dickinson conceded the managerial payouts don't look good in the wake of the loan losses, but said they're needed to bring ATB salaries in line with the rest of the banking industry.
 Provincial legislation passed this year requires the ATB to operate on the same basis as commercial banks.
 "We recognize that salaries for our employees are not up to industry standards," Dickinson said.
 "We have to keep our best people and to do that we have to pay them competitively."
 Liberal treasury critic Gene Zwozdesky called the timing of the pay move "unfortunate" so soon after posting the losses.
 "I'm surprised they'd be offering this pay raise to managers when Albertans are expecting them to make an attempt at paying off their debt," he said.
 The Edmonton-Mill Creek MLA said he'd prefer some sort of performance-based incentive program rather than outright pay raises.

6:31 AM 15-Oct-97, URL=http://www.canoe.com/EdmontonNews/18_n1.html