Janet Ecker has been getting bad advice.
Ontario’s Minister of Finance has tabled changes to the Pension Benefits Act (PBA) that could hurt hundreds of thousands of Ontario workers with pension plans.
Current pension case law gives employees strong claims over any and all pension surpluses. Bill 198, introduced Oct. 30, would severely weaken those claims in favour of employers. Bill 198 would:
· take the final authority for protecting members’ plan surpluses away from the courts and give it to the Superintendent of Pensions, a Finance Ministry Employee;
· let Cabinet - and the lobbyists who influence it - set the rules that would allow employers to take pension plan surpluses;
· allow employers to withdraw pension surpluses, exposing the plan to the risk of underfunding; and
· allow employers to withdraw pension surpluses without employee consent.
The planned changes to the PBA do not affect pension plans that spell out that employees own any surplus or some part of it, e.g., the OPSEU Pension Trust, the CAAT Pension Plan, and the Canadian Blood Services pension plan. The Hospitals of Ontario Pension Plan (HOOPP) also says it is not affected by the changes. Workers with
their pensions in other plans may not be so fortunate.
Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) president Wayne Samuelson has led a strong campaign against the pension changes in Bill 198.
Samuelson is urging all workers with pension plans, union or non-union, to tell Janet Ecker to leave the pension system alone. “Too many employers are caught up in a feeding frenzy of greed,” Samuelson wrote in today’s Toronto Star. “Fortunately, employees know that the money belongs to them.”
Contact:
Janet Ecker, Minister of Finance
Frost Building South, 7th Floor,
7 Queen’s Park Crescent
Toronto, Ontario M7A 1Y7
Telephone: (416) 325-0400
Fax (416) 325-0374
E-mail: janet_ecker@ontla.ola.org
The OPSEU Executive Board has taken precautions to defend the OPSEU Pension Trust from a potentially disastrous change to Ontario pension law.
In October, the union learned of a proposed law that would allow some pension plans to drain assets from other pension plans. Specifically, when a worker was divested from one employer to another, the pension plan at the new employer would be able to take assets connected to that worker - including any surplus - out of the
pension plan at the old employer.
Since many workers in Ontario are divested out of the Ontario Public Service - and the OPSEU Pension Trust - this could amount to $1 billion in lost assets for the OPT.
The feared change did not appear when Bill 198 was tabled Oct. 30. The union is still waiting for confirmation that it has been shelved for good. Ask Janet Ecker about her plans for this, too.
Original authorized for distribution: Leah Casselman, OPSEU President
OPSEU ActionFax is an electronic publication of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union. Original authorized for distribution by Leah Casselman, president.
