Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Rolling In The Dough!

My CPP and OAP (Canada Pension Plan & Old Age Pension) were both deposited last night and I see I have gotten a raise of $4 per month! Thanks Canada, if this keeps up we might actually start bringing in more than we are spending some day! Just kidding! We live a pretty good lifestyle and could cut back quite a bit if we had to. We just don't want to. That $4 will buy a nice bag of peanuts every month ;)

My Union Pension is fully funded but not officially indexed. Every year the Trustees and actuaries look at the fund and decide if we can afford to get a raise. The last raise was over a year ago so it is time to put a little pressure on them. When I was involved in the Pension Plan back in the 80's we were told if we could only get the fund up to a billion $ we would be on easy street. At that time it was a "pie in the sky" dream. It is now at three billion $ and growing every month even though there are more members retired than there are working. We did some good planning back in those days and made some good investments and are now reaping the rewards! My hat is off once again to my friend and former Union President Bob Donnelly for successfully fighting to get control of our Pension Plan away from the company's greedy little hands.

Those efforts led to a three or four month strike in the winter of 1969 but we came out of it with a much better contract and our Pension Plan. Momentary pain for long term gain. Thanks again, Bob!

7 comments:

  1. You were fortunate to protect the pension fund. In many cases corporations raid the funds. Most recently is Hostess Foods, who filed for bankruptcy the second time, only after "borrowing" from the union pension fund in an attempt to stay afloat. The company went under anyway, gave the execs huge bonuses and took the $50 million pension fund down with them.

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  2. Of course all company pension plans should be protected. Makes absolutely no sense that they are not.

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    1. Kevin, we both know Canadian companies use Pension Funds as slush funds. There is little protection under the law as long as plans have sufficient cash reserves to fund current liabilities and as we all know, Pension funding is all about future liabilities.

      The Alberta side of Telus recently raided the Alberta employees pension fund which does not have the same protection we have in BC. They once went whining to the federal government asking to stop paying into the BC fund after it became fully funded. They were turned down because of contractual obligations we had negotiated.

      We also know the "Conservatives" or "Liberals" will do nothing to rectify this situation.

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  3. Hey....yeah to the raise. A bag of peanuts, eh? That at least keeps the protein up in your veins.

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    1. Yup... toss a few peanuts through the bars. Keep the animals happy!

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  4. Love that big raise we got , thanks Canada. No company pension here thou.

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  5. Congrats on the raise. I always tell people that I manage our money because no one cares about it as much as I do! Obviously that works for union pensions too.

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