Last week I had the distinct honour to be the keynote speaker at the Newfoundland and Labrador Public Sector Pensioners' Association convention.
First let me congratulate the organizers of this years event - whose hard work was evident by the quadrupling of attendance.
"Our Power to Influence Change" was my topic - and there was no doubt the hundreds of people in the room did and do have that power. Almost half the voting public is over the age of 50 and tens of thousands of them have done without the indexing of their pensions.
In front of me were the people who built the infrastructure of this province - the roads - the schools - the hospitals - and the sports complexes - with pensions they paid but that were placed in general revenues. Although this practice has been stopped since Peckford - the monies that were not invested and assigned to pensions did a couple of things. First it contributed to the unfunded pension liability and removed the ability for that money contributed by the workers to gain value. As a result we have people who have been retired from our public service for up to 30 years receiving pensions which have not kept up with inflation.
The time has come for this issue be addressed. My point was - that the numbers of people affected could if they wanted force government's hand.
I have been researching this problem since the late 1980's and have read each and every Auditor Generals report - yes even before the document was popular.
I read the blue - red - and orange books and only one promised to deal with this indexing - the NDP.
Liberal Promise:
A Liberal Government will enter into negotiations with public sector unions and its pensioners to explore options to increase public service pension benefits to reflect increases to the cost of living.
Retired public service pensioners have been left out by successive governments. While the cost of living continues to increase, many of our public service pensioners remain on a salary schedule that is outdated and does not reflect inflation. What may have been considered a fair pension salary twenty years ago is now below the poverty line. This is certainly not respectful to people who spent their lives working for the public of Newfoundland and Labrador, and this must be addressed.
Well first of all the Liberals have only now woken up to this problem - and even now after being in government for almost 15 years - do not understand - that there are issues between the pensioners and the unions. They did not resolve this while in office - even from the simple point of having a member of the pensioners association sit at the bargaining table. I'm not sure if they understand that indexing today - is perhaps not what the unions might recommend - but is what these retired people need.
Today comes the News Release that a Liberal government would index pensions to the full cost of living. Interesting - and very different from their promise in the red book. Although the two paragraphs in the Red Plan are included in the News Release - the News Release now ignores what the unions might want to do.
The truth is - the convention was a success - and the message from the pensioners was clear - "index" now. This was not the position of a union rep at the conference. The media - except VOCM covered the events - and interviewed people involved. It became clear to the Liberals - in hindsight - that public pensioners might be a good source of votes and hence the "indexing" announcement. What the pensioners have to examine is this: If the Libs say they will negotiate with the public sector unions on this issue while at the same time state they will index pensions unilaterally - can and will they live up to this promise and if they will - put a date on it. The first budget or will it be when the unions think there has been enough growth in the pension fund to index - that might be a term or two away.
You have seen the light Gerry - but you do not understand the complexities of the two groups.
On the other hand the NDP state right in the Orange Book:
Indexing public service pensions to the cost of living; provision of lump-sum compensation for lost income due to previous lack of indexing.
In either case this is great news for public sector pensioners - now hold them to it.
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