Extra pay period in 2014 leads to fewer George Brown employees on Sunshine List in 2015
A total of 372 George Brown College (GBC) employees were paid more than $100,000 in 2015 according to the province’s annual Sunshine List, that’s 48 less people than in 2014.
Ontario’s Public Sector Salary Disclosure list, better known as the Sunshine List, shows the names, positions, salaries and total taxable benefits of public sector employees paid $100,000 or more in a calendar year.
“There are fewer people on the list this year because there was one more pay (period) in the (2014) pay cycle,” said Leslie Quinlan who is the vice-president of human resources and organizational development at GBC. “Last year they had 27 pay periods instead of 26. So that drove a few more people onto the list that would not normally be there because of the extra pay.”
Quinlan said that other colleges have different cycles and frequency of pay periods and that is why it only affected George Brown and not the college sector as a whole. She said that some of those colleges will go through that 27 pay-period cycle this year.
GBC paid a total of $41.6 million to 372 people making over $100,000 in 2015, down $6 million from 2014.
According to audited financial statements, GBC paid $195 million in salary and benefits in the 2014-15 fiscal year up 5.4 per cent from $185 million in 2013-14. Salary and benefits represent 62 per cent of the totals cost of the running the college.
According to GBC’s most recent annual report there are a total of 1,339 full time and 2,644 part-time staff working at the college. Using those numbers, just nine per cent of employees at the college are on the Sunshine List.
“If you look at our school relative to some of the other schools we don’t have as many people on the list,” said Quinlan.
George Brown ranked third in the college sector, with only Seneca and Humber colleges having more people on the list this year. GBC has 7.6 per cent of the 4,910 people in the college sector who are on the list.
“I understand that we always do have to pay competitively. So as long as we stay in the ballpark with other colleges that are similar, I think that’s the important thing; that we are matching the industry and getting top quality employees with the salaries that we are paying,” said Quinlan.
Tom Tomassi, the president of the Ontario Union of Public Employees Local 556 which represents faculty at GBC, said overtime hours also have a role to play in some of the salaries that have surpassed $100,000.
“The Sunshine List effectively shows how much you earn, but it doesn’t necessarily tell you how you earn that money. That is the skewed issue of the Sunshine List. An individual may very well have put in 200 hours of overtime and that puts them over the threshold,” said Tomassi.
Data analysis by Mick Sweetman
