NLPSPA President Sharron Callahan Presentation to Pensioners - PDF document

NLPSPA President Sharron Callahan Presentation to Pensioners’ Meetings March 23 - May 17, 2011 INTRODUCTION: Thank you very much for joining in this meeting this evening. The turnout has been tremendous and it is obvious by this huge attendance that you all are equally concerned about your pensions as are the member organizations of the Public Sector Pensioners’ and Retirees Coalition. Many forces have stood in our way to getting what is justly and rightly ours and after today/tonight it is our hope that you will understand the issues better and realize that each of you can play a significant role in this struggle to achieve that increase that has been denied us for 22 years. HISTORY: Over the years, member associations of the Pensioners’ Coalition (NLPSPA, NAPE Retirees, RTANL, SJRFFA, RNCVA, Correctional Officers, and MUNPA) and those who went before the time of the establishment of the Coalition struggled on various fronts to promote your concerns about the inadequacies of the public sector pension plan. Much of that focus has been on failures by past Governments to meet their obligations to their former employees, today’s pensioners. When you were employed, you placed your faith in a contractual arrangement that would see you receive a pension benefit equal to your years of service x 2% based on your best 5 years of service. So, what is it that Government did to breach its employment relationship with its former workers? • Even though the Public Service (Pensions) Act came into effect in 1968, all pension contributions were paid into and mixed with other revenue in the province’s Consolidated Revenue Fund. While we expected our pension deposits to be safeguarded, our pension funds instead paid for the development of our province. • From 1968 until 1981 when a distinct pension fund was established, Government did not match workers’ contributions. This resulted in the pension fund being saddled with substantial liabilities and underfunding. These realities continue to haunt us and the Government continues to use them as an excuse not to improve our current pensions. • From 1991 to 1994, Government took a holiday from making the employer’s contributions to the pension plan, thus adding further to the pension fund’s liabilities.

NLPSPA President Sharron Callahan Presentation to Pensioners’ Meetings March 23 - May 17, 2011 • Many of you will also recall the periods of wage freezes and wage roll- backs, all of which negatively impacted the expected benefits of those who would have used those years for purposes of pension calculation. We have repeatedly heard from Government that we did not pay into an indexed pension plan. Despite this position, facts exist to demonstrate the contrary: • Until the infamous year of 1989 (as Theodore Roosevelt coined “a date that will go down in infamy”), Government recognized that the contract with its workers included indexing and regularly enacted legislation ( Increase of Pensions Acts of 1980 to 1989) to compensate for the rise of inflation. Unfortunately, since the unilateral discontinuation in 1989, pensioners have seen the value of their pensions diminish at a rate where that dollar is now worth less than 50 per cent of the value at the time of their retirement. • Government’s recognition that it owed its former workers indexing enhancements led to a partial cost of living index in 2002. However, this is capped at 1.2 per cent of the consumer price index, making our pension plan the one with the worst indexing benefit in Canada. • So, despite Government’s statements, the precedence has been set, increases have been given in the past, and in these days of plenty, we have every right to claim our due and expect an increase now. ACTIONS TO DATE: So, what has been happening, on your behalf, to remedy this situation? 1) FORMATION OF COALITION Over the years, various retired public service membership associations have struggled on various fronts to promote the pension concerns of their membership to Government. While we owe these past leaders a debt for keeping our struggle alive, it has been in the past three (3) years that new initiatives began to take place. In 2008, the now Public Sector Pensioners’ Coalition was formed and as each day and month goes on, our memberships are growing stronger and more vocal than ever before. From this formation, the Coalition undertook to engage with Government to remedy the stalemate of 1989. We met many times, all meetings looking more promising that the one before. At one time, when Minister Kennedy was briefly Minister of Finance we were actually talking money and every one engaged in the discussion process was very optimistic. We don’t really know what happened at that point (Ralph will tell you what he has heard), and while

NLPSPA President Sharron Callahan Presentation to Pensioners’ Meetings March 23 - May 17, 2011 certain actions to benefit the politicians were taking place behind the scenes at the same time, our hopes for remediation were immediately dashed by the departure of Minister Kennedy, only to be replaced by our arch-nemesis, Minister Marshall. 2) “FISH OR CUT BAIT”: Finally in September of 2009, Bob Langdon, the then President of NLPSPA, coined his famous phrase “its time to fish or cut bait” in a press conference called to express our public disgust at the MHA’s compensation package announced just days prior to the annual Convention. At that time, your representative associations took a deliberate strategy to no longer go to “nice” meetings with Government. Since then, Government has continually ignored our issues, have not responded to requests, and have even taken to publicly speaking out against public sector pensioners as if we are a blight on our great Province. 3) MHA COMPENSATION PACKAGE: Following the announcement in September of 2009 of the MHA’s compensation package (and just wait until Ralph shares some information about that with you), your associations immediately undertook an active role in overturning that plan. We immediately prepared a brief and presented it at the province wide hearings. In that public presentation we focused on the argument that regardless of whether Government continued its “rich” compensation package for MHA’s, the discrepancies and the gap that currently existed between the benefits for MHA’s and public sector pensioners was nothing short of abhorrent and that whatever decision Government took, it would be born on the backs of pensioners (and other citizens of the Province. MHA’s should be expected to be compensated fairly for their work, but not to a level that is elitist and immoral to those whom they serve. At these hearings we were heard, we were instrumental in halting this increase, and this encouraged us to publicly continue our attempts at redress of our issues. 4) BYE-ELECTIONS: During 2009 and 2010, we took deliberate actions during the by-elections in Terra Nova, CBE/Bell Island, and most recently in Humber West, by directly writing each member in the electoral district, distributing our Fact Sheet, and running ads in local papers and doing interviews