Susan Anton Blames City of Vancouver Workers for 60 Million Dollar Deficit

Hi, I don’t usually write posts about “current events” but after hearing Councillor Susan Anton on the radio this morning I’ve decided to make an exception.

The City of Vancouver has a 60 million dollar budget overrun and when asked how this could have happened Susan Anton’s first response was to blame the unionized workers at the City of Vancouver.

Doesn’t Ms. Anton know that she is in a leadership position? Give me a break.

Yesterday I wrote about the importance of treating employees with fairness, compassion and respect.

This morning, on the drive into work, I heard Susan Anton being interviewed on the radio. She told reporters that the reason that the City of Vancouver has a huge budget overrun is because the unionized city workers received a big pay raise in 2007.

The first thing that she came up with was blaming the workers.

Which leads me to ask the question, “Why was Susan Anton so quick to blame the front-line workers this morning?” Seems like a good way to deflect blame from Council and the organization’s upper management.

…not very helpful and in the long run…off the cuff comments like this from someone in Susan’s positon can be very harmful to the organization’s culture.

In the long run this kind of thoughtless attack on workers will end up costing the City of Vancouver even more money.

Susan…here’s some thoughts about leadership…

Transcendent Leadership  is the sum of the following:

•  Leadership of Others
• Leadership of the Organization
• Leadership of Community &
• Leadership of Self

If you plan on a career in politics, or anywhere else for that matter, you might want to focus on the latter.

Cheers,

Lesley