Page Eight

The Retirees' Newsletter

The Retirees's Association ( Faculty, Librarian, Administrator), University of Windsor, Windsor, Ont. Canada

Vol IX , No. 3, June 1999

Association News

(continued from page seven) disadvantageous to the retirees. Those failures have driven home the point both to pensioners and many concerned active faculty, that there must be formalized retiree representation on the Contract Committee itself. Past and informal input from retiree appointees and representatives on the WUFA Pension and Benefits Committee is simply inadequate and outdated.

4. Resource background and consulting presence during negotiating sessions on all and only those issues pertaining to pensioners, The Pension Plan and pension benefits.

Rationale: It seems evident to us that retirees, with focused awareness and experience in the pros and cons of pension policy, need to be consulted on these matters. It will also serve as another safety feature to monitor and protect retirees' rights.

C: WINDSOR ON THE CUSP

There are a few precedents to which we can point to backup our demands. For example, Queen's University has only the one, centralized, university-wide pension body, which determines all policy and practices. Two retirees sit on that Committee as voting members. (The Queen's Plan, incidentally, happens to be one of the most successfully operated university pension plans in the nation.)

At University of Toronto, retirees sit on the Executive (1), the Council (2), and on various standing committees; and retirees can attend and vote at general meetings. At Lakehead University, two retirees sit on the Pension Committee. Carleton has one retiree on the Executive.

The Canadian Auto Workers Constitution (Art. 49) provides for retiree membership "with voice and vote" on local-union Executive committees; and for retiree representatives to CAW conventions "with voice and vote."

Precedents and their relative paucity notwithstanding, however, three points stand out:

First, we believe that the retirees' case for the above proposals stands soundly on its merits. We know that logic and justice are on our side.

Second, members of this Faculty Association have admitted to us that they are both grieved and embarrassed by the failures of the last two Agreements to safeguard the surplus rights and claims of the retirees, and that they don't wish to see this ever happen again. The soundest guarantee against this ever happening again is to implement the above proposals--which simply give us a voice.

Third, WURA is really on the cusp in initiating these overtures to the Faculty Association; and other retiree associations across the country are beginning to lobby as we have. CAUT is following these developments with interest. This Faculty Association, in turn, has the opportunity to be on the cutting edge in implementing improved relations with its retirees. In a sense, you will be converting an inevitability into a virtue. We all know that, over the next decade, as the numbers of retirees swell ---including former faculty-association activists and leaders---structural improvements in association retirees relationships are unavoidable. Retirees will simply not settle for passive or even merely advisory status. Wise leaders and their executives will want to attend to this homework now!

If you don't respond positively to these proposals, we and yet-to-be-retirees will look back to you as the Executive who fumbled the torch.

Respectfully submitted, Stan Cunningham, President

Ontario sites for pension Legislation

Thanks to our fellow retiree Gary Champ who has provided a list of sites dealing with pension legislation, that is of great interest to us.

(Electronic edition editor's note: The links below were reproduced as given. Some of them are no longer operational.)

Standard Life

Canadian Law Research Site

Federal Publications Site

Benefits Canada - Pensions

Time for a Refund

Government grabs pension fund surplus

Nova Scotia legislative discussion on Pension Surplus ownership