To the Editor:
A few years ago the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, now Viterra, was in deep financial trouble, and its employee's Defined Benefit pension plan was in a deficit position like many other DB plans in Canada.
The company's solution on the pension issue was to wind up the DB plan and replace it with a Defined Contribution plan. According to press reports issued by the Grain Services Union, all retirees were fully protected, in that the employer, as all plan sponsors should, assumed the deficit and all retirees retained their full earned and promised pension benefits.
The Saskatchewan Government Employees Union [SGEU] is currently in a similar situation with its employee's pension plan.
However, unlike Viterra, the SGEU has no deficit. In fact they have a legislatively guaranteed cash flow, set at whatever rate they decide, as Union Dues. They are not in danger of closing their doors in the foreseeable future.
It is a sad commentary on the SGEU as a trade union that as an employer with no down-side risk to its cash flow it can't step up and do the right trade union thing and protect its retired employees. Like wise, it seems that the Grain Services Union has much more trade union jam than the SGEU staff local CEP 481.
The SGEU membership deserves better leadership.
Tim Davies, Manitou Beach, SK.
