2/3 Joel Harden: Transcending Neoliberalism, One Story at a Time
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2/3 Joel Harden: Transcending Neoliberalism, One Story at a Time
- 1. Transcending neoliberalism, one story at a time Lessons from the CLC’s “Retirement Security for Everyone” Campaign March 24, 2009 Joel Harden, Past Registrar, Labour College of Canada
- 3. Our pension system: Great for CEOs, flawed for workers E.g. Don Stewart, CEO, Sun Life Pension: $1.424 mil./yr + Meanwhile, new Sun Life workers get RRSPs... Is this fair? Avg CEO pension: $930,000/yr (acc. to Globe and Mail: 2007)
Editor's Notes
- Greenspan has since eaten his words, but that’s cold comfort to us. Bankers and finance companies used limited regulations to create defective investment products to enrich themselves and build massive bubbles of speculative wealth. When these bubbles popped, our RRSPs and pension investments popped with them. Over $4 trillion in pension assets was lost worldwide – that’s three times the size of Canada’s economy last year. RRSPs were torched and more secure pensions were put in jeopardy. Since then, oOur pensions are being asked to pay for a mess we had no role in causing. Employers want to renege on pension promises, and RRSP holders are delaying retirement plans.
- Our pension system works very well for a select few. Don Stewart, CEO of Sun Life, is an excellent example of this. He’s was appointed Chair of a Federal Task Force on Financial Literacy in 2010. That Task Force criss-crossed the land holding public hearings. According to them, Canadians will be better off if they are more “literate” about what retirement products to buy from finance companies. The fact that most people can’t afford the hefty fees and products these companies sell doesn’t seem to be a concern. One thing is clear though. Mr. Stewart is very financially literate. [CLICK ON FIRST BULLET]. He is literate enough to negotiate a pension for himself that today is worth $1.4 million dollar per year if he were to retire now. In fact it’s so rich Sun Life can’t stuff any more money into it – so they’ve created an RRSP to top it up. Meanwhile, in 2009, Sun Life closed its Defined Benefit pension plan to any new employees. This was done on the grounds of making Sun Lfe more “competitive”. Mr Stewart’s pension, by the way, is above the average CEO pension for the richest Canadian 100 employers. That’s what you get I suppose for making the company more “competitive”.
- Now meet Loretta. Loretta works at a Pulp and Paper company in Nakawic, New Bruswick. Her employerdelcared bankruptcy in 2004 after underfunding the pension plan over 5 years. As a result, Loretta’s pension went from 92% funded to 48% funded. When the employer emerged from bankruptcy protection, workers realized how much they lost in pension given our unfair bankruptcy rules. For Loretta, it meant $400 in pension after 16 years of service. Not $400 a month, or $400 a year, but a one-time payout of $400.
- [CLICK FOR FIRST PICTURE] Meet Gail, she’s 63. She used to work as a cook in a unionized retirement home at $17 an hour. But when the home closed down four years ago, Gail couldn’t find work. She sold her house, her assets, anything that wasn’t tied down. She went from earning a decent wage to going on EI, and later welfare. She now uses food banks, lives in a tiny apartment, and lives on an after-rent budget of less than $300 a month.
- Now meet Colin. His Mom is one of 103 (largely women) workers at a unionized group home just West of Ottawa. These brave folks went on strike for 10 weeks to get a decent pension (which ultimately didn’t happen). The employer even hired scabs to oppose this attempt at pension justice. So much for our voluntary pension system. Colin’s picket sign says it all: “I shouldn’t be Mom’s Pension Plan.”