I am an HR Compensation Advisor and I want you to read carefully the entire message to get a full scope of your benefits and what's going on with your PSAC union. Please feel free to forward this message on to other PSAC members.
Thank you!
This email is to inform you of what the tentative agreement means for you; what you will gain and what you will lose. The intention of the enclosed information is to enable you to make an informed decision in the upcoming vote. It seems that on the PSAC website, they only show you half the story. You are shown what you will gain in the short term, but not how much you will lose in the long term...which is more important for many of us.
Severance pay (lump sum benefit) is the main topic and unfortunately many employees do not understand fully what this means for them. To break it down, severance pay is broken up into these main sections into the collective agreement: 1) Layoff, 2) Resignation, 3) Retirement, 4) Death
* Retirement and resignation are the ones to be removed in the tentative agreement.
Retirement:
Current Agreement: For retirement severance pay, you will receive 1 week's pay for each year you have worked on the day you retire. You even get partial years prorated.
Tentative Agreement: You will receive retirement severance pay now for the years you have worked up to June 2011. There will be NO severance pay going forward up to retirement.
Example: Take one week of your gross pay (for example I will use $1000). You have worked for 5 full years and have 25 years to go until retirement. In all, you will work 30 years total.
- Under the Current Agreement you will get $30,000 the day you retire and nothing now.
- Under the Tentative Agreement you will get $5,000 now and nothing when you retire. This means you would be taking $5,000 now for the 5 years you have worked up until now, giving up $25,000 for your retirement.
Resignation:
Current Agreement: If you resign from work and have worked 10 or more full years you will receive half a week's pay for each year you have worked on your last day.
Tentative Agreement: If you resign, you will receive one week's pay in June 2011 for each year worked even if you have worked under 10 years. If you resign after June 2011 you will receive NOTHING regardless of how many years you worked.
Why did our negotiators give up all this money?
Here is their answer: "The bargaining teams fought hard to ensure that the trade-off for severance was fair. The increased wages in the first and third year of the agreements will accumulate as pensionable earnings and employees will enjoy the benefits of that when they retire. "Wages are increasing by 1.75, 1.5, and 2.0%. Do the math with your wages. For the PM-01s at the top level, you will receive an annual salary increase of $2766 by June 2014. Even if this is compounded over upcoming years, for most of us this will not even compare to the tens of thousands we are losing, no matter what your income is. The math is yours to do. If you don't know how, ask someone!! There is too much money involved to just leave it in someone else's hands!
Also, keep in mind CRA just reached a two-year tentative agreement with 1.5, 1.5%. They made NO CONCESSIONS! Why should we? It is possible that they take advantage of us knowing the PA group is notorious for voting yes for the first agreement that comes our way every time. To see what other things are possible it is important that you take a look at CRA's agreement at http://psac.com/documents/bargaining/cra_ratkit_oct2010-e.pdf.
Through your vote, you will get to decide if our tentative agreement is indeed fair.
Pros for the tentative agreement:
- immediate funds for those in need of money right now
- pro only for those resigning soon and have less than 10 working years, they will receive a severance of one week's pay for each year worked up until June 2011
- trading in a potentially MAJOR lump sum at retirement for a comparably small lump sum right now
All of these articles in our current collective agreement are there for a reason. Members in the past have struggled at great lengths to get these items in the agreement to make our lives better. It is up to you to decide if you will let them be taken away in the upcoming vote. Not only will this affect our lives greatly, but this will also have an effect on the next generation of employees as they will have less than what we had. Once these items are gone, there may be no way to get them back. Afterwards, we will address what, to our pension??