CUPE 709

GREAT NEWS!

The Local’s Executive has signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with the City of Calgary.

A ratification vote will take place at the CUPE 37 Union Hall, 5112 – 3rd Street S.E. on Wednesday, July 6th, 2022 at 6:00 p.m. Voting must be in-person for ratification.

There are two (2) Notice of Motions that require approval from the general membership. One Notice of Motion deals with affiliation to CUPE Alberta and to Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL). The other Notion of Motion is regarding the additional duties of a privacy officer to the Recording Secretary position.

The Local has 3 annual Parks Canada Discovery Passes for use by our members on a one (1) week basis. Please come to the office Monday – Thursday to sign out a pass.

Since the election of the United Conservative Party led by Jason Kenney there has been a severe erosion of the retirement security of members of the Local Authorities Pension Plan. The UCP government, both through legislation and ministerial order, has attacked the independence of LAPP and severely limited the ability of its Sponsor and Corporate Boards to effectively govern the plan in the best interests of its members. In spite of these challenges the Boards have worked very hard on a number of issues and continue to safeguard the Plan and have been able to maintain it as the strongest public pension plan in the country.

The attacks on the independence LAPP by the UCP began in the fall of 2019 and were contained in two pieces of the legislation, the Budget Implementation Bill and Bill 22, an omnibus spending bill. Within these two pieces of legislation were contained the removal of the Plan’s ability to select the investment manager of its choice, the administrative services of its choice, the auditor of its choice, the ability to set compensation for its employees, and also the ability of its constituent organizations, CUPE and other public sector Unions, to select their representatives to the Corporate Board, the fiduciary board of the Plan. The UCP government extended its reach into the Plan further this January by issuing a ministerial order imposing the terms of how the relationship between LAPP and the Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCO), the investment manager imposed on the Plan in perpetuity by legislation, will be managed. The terms of the ministerial order are incredibly favourable to AIMCO and allow it to in effect ignore the directives of LAPP.

The stated rationale for these policies from the UCP government is that they will increase efficiency and reduce cost is completely untrue. There will be no cost savings and the extra layers of bureaucracy added by their legislation will slow down decision making and make the plans beholden to a government that has little understanding of investment policy and a stated antipathy towards Defined Benefit Pensions Plans, in spite of the overwhelming evidence showing them to be the soundest and most secure retirement model available.

It is our sincere belief that Kenney and the UCP have undertaken this policy reversal to gain access to the assets of LAPP and the other public sector pension plans to make risky and unnecessary investments in the energy sector in Alberta to try to stimulate that sector of the economy at the expense of the Plan members in the short term and all Albertans in the long term by ignoring economic diversity.

All these attacks have led our Union to the conclusion that we must fight Kenney and the UCP with all our available resources to regain the independence of LAPP. The first step in this is a legal challenge to Bill 32, which will be launched soon in conjunction with HSAA, UNA, the AFL and other public sector unions in Alberta. We will also work as hard as possible to educate our members and Albertans that the solution to this and so many other problems in Alberta can only be solved by electing an NDP majority government in 2023.

While there have been major challenges with our pension plan our independent boards have done very good work and we would like to end our report on a positive note by highlighting two decisions made by the governing Boards which protected and strengthened LAPP. The first of these was the decision in late 2019 to purchase downside protections through the derivatives market. This decision, basically short-term insurance against market losses, maintained the value of LAPP through the market instability of 2020 and the economic shocks of the COVID-19 Global Pandemic. These protections ensured that the value of LAPP was maintained and kept our Plan in surplus and our retirements secure.

The Boards also examined the Pensions Plan design and decided to amend how pensions were delivered to members in retirement. It was identified that there was confusion on the part of many members on how LAPP pensions were coordinated with CPP, which had led to a significant number of retirees not having the payments they expected throughout their retirement period. These misunderstandings had led to some hardship and may become the subject of legal action. With this in mind the governing boards of LAPP decided to amend the plan and eliminate the coordination of payments with CPP thus ensuring that all members understand their benefits throughout their retirement.

LAPP, almost alone among public sector pensions plans in Canada, has maintained its value in very difficult times. This strength and stability have been maintained in spite of a government that is dedicated to undermining the plan. All of us in CUPE Alberta will need to work as hard as we can to keep our plan strong and our retirements secure.