Retiree Chairperson’s Report– September 20th, 2017

The summer has gone fast. Since our last membership meeting, the Executive Board have had three meetings. These were in July, August and September. I attended the United Senior Citizens of Ontario Convention held in Cobourg, Ontario. This organization is by no means labour friendly. There were three important resolutions dealt with at the convention. Two resolutions were about defined benefits pension plans relative to targeted benefit pension plans. These came from Unifor Local 444. There was also a resolution on the vesting of benefits packages to the Ontario Government for legislation. It came from Unifor Local 222. It was opposed by the convention’s resolutions committee. The Executive Board, including myself, are going to make a decision regarding the level of support we should give this organization in future and will bring our position to you concerning any change for you to vote on.

I was in Port Elgin for our National Retired Workers Conference. To go from U.S.C.O Convention in Cobourg to our house of labour is like going home. The new National Retired Workers Chairperson Les Macdonald is doing a great job. So are our National Service representatives Director Barb Dolan and Dean Lindsay. There were forty-seven resolutions at the conference. All of them were good addressing labour /retiree problems. Every one of them was debated by delegates to the convention.

In March of this year, we passed and sent a letter to Jerry Dias concerning the five retired National representatives involved in the administration of the Health Care Trust after they had retired. There was a large cost to the Health Care Trust having them be there instead of active members of National staff. Jenny Ahn, an Administrative Assistant to the Secretary Treasurer, said that Jerry Dias has removed four of them and replaced them with National representatives who are not retired. Jenny also told me that Jerry Dias is replacing the last one soon and it maybe her who takes his place. I told her to thank Jerry Dias and Bob Orr for fixing the problem.

Fred Dougan