No wage rollback for health CEO in proposal
Last Updated: Monday, October 26, 2009 | 5:27 PM MT
CBC News
Alberta Health Services CEO and president Stephen Duckett stands to earn a $144,000 bonus on top of his $575,000 salary this year. (CBC)The CEO of Alberta Health Services will not be asked to take a pay cut even though board chair Ken Hughes is going recommend wage rollbacks for himself and 14 other board members at a meeting in Red Deer this week, it was revealed Monday.
If the recommendation is approved, the annual salary for board members would drop from $60,000 to around $40,000 a year.
The rollback would not apply to AHS president and CEO Stephen Duckett. Duckett — who was recruited from Australia to head Alberta Health Services last spring — will still earn $575,000 a year. He could earn a bonus of $144,000 if he meets all of his goals.
On Monday, Health Minister Ron Liepert said he wasn't in favour of cutting Duckett's salary.
"When we hired Dr. Duckett to deliver health care provincewide, his salary was — my recollection is — somewhere in the range of one half of what the previous CEOs of each of [the] Calgary and Capital [Regions] were making and so I'm certainly am not suggesting that."
Alberta Health Services is grappling with a $1.3 billion deficit. In recent months, the board has announced cost-cutting measures including the closure of hundreds of hospital beds and a voluntary early retirement program for eligible health-care workers.
Nearly two weeks ago, Premier Ed Stelmach announced he was freezing the salaries of 6,500 senior government bureaucrats. He also asked public-sector workers to consider wage freezes for two years in order to help weather the current economic crisis that is partly to blame for Alberta's $6.9 billion deficit.
Alberta NDP Leader Brian Mason said the province always expects those sacrifices from lower-paid, front-line workers in tougher times.
"The higher up you are in the hierarchy, the more they look after you. The lower down you are, the more you're expected to bear the brunt," he said.
The day after his televised address on Oct. 14, Stelmach announced cuts to the salary top-ups that he and members of his cabinet receive.
However, critics said the actual cut to Stelmach's compensation was 5.4 per cent, and 3.2 per cent for cabinet members, which paled in comparison to the 30 per cent raises they voted themselves in 2008.
