Presented by Barbara Byers on Wednesday, 7 October 2009

Merci Len. Thank You. Bonjour tout le monde!

Sisters and Brothers, it is my honour to bring you greetings of solidarity from the Officers, the staff and the 3.2 million members of the Canadian Labour Congress.

The Congress of Union Retirees of Canada and your members play an important role in the Canadian Labour Congress. I thank you for your solidarity and your support.

Consoeurs et confrères, j’ai l’honneur de vous transmettre les salutations de solidarité des dirigeants et dirigeantes, du personnel et des 3,2 millions de membres du Congrès du travail du Canada.

L’association des syndicalistes à la retraite du Canada et ses membres jouent un rôle important au sein du Congrès du travail du Canada. Je vous remercie de votre solidarité et de votre appui.

I want to cover three items in my remarks.

First, a short reflection on the important information and important challenge that was given to us last night from every member of the panel on pensions and retirement security.

Second, an overview of the effects of the economic and employment crisis. Be forewarned – this will not be a pretty story.

Third, the importance of retirees and retirees organizations.

So, let’s begin with a reflection on last evening.

First, congratulations to the organizers for the session. The panelists covered a lot of ground in a short period of time; which can be difficult to do with a complex issue like pensions.

I think the balance of the panelists messages and the panelists themselves was important. Bob, a retiree with a long history on pension policy; someone we have relied on for many years. Cara, a woman bringing a lot of experience and ideas and passion for pensions. Joel, a young researcher intent on organizing for better pensions for all. And Danny, a great campaigner who is also looking at the pensions issue from the lens of someone who is hoping to retire in the next 4 years (or so he reminds me regularly!).

We were thrown a huge challenge. Take on the issue of decent pensions for all as if we were taking on the challenge of medicare for all. Not an easy task when you consider the attack on pensions from governments and the corporate class. However, one that we must take up together. For as long as pensions are seen as something that only a ‘privileged’ few can have and that most are excluded from we will always be scrambling to save the pensions we negotiate from employer clawbacks.

This will require education of our members and our allies in the community.

Sometimes our previous success at negotiating benefits for our members has hindered our ability to create support for the demand for benefits for all. I was listening last night and thinking of the similarities between the fight for retirement security for all and health security for all. It reminded me of how difficult it has been to keep the fire going on the need for a national pharmacare program when the response in the past from our members was lukewarm from those who had negotiated extended health coverage. That discussion is different now when some of those members have lost their jobs and lost their extended health coverage and are staring at the choice between buying their prescription medication or buying groceries, or sometimes paying their rent or mortgage.

Similarly, the discussion on pensions was different with our members a few years ago. Many had bought the line of being ‘in charge’ of their retirement savings and were not supportive of defined benefit plans. They thought they could ‘get rich’ with defined contribution plans or RRSPs. Now the discussion is different. People have lost huge amounts in defined contribution plans and in RRSP’s and their retirement plans and retirement security have a much different look into the future.

I know a bit about this personally. For the 14 years I was President of the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour we did not have a pension plan; we had RRSPs. It was a decision made by the staff union many years before I arrived on the scene.

I am not one of those who reads the stock details in the newspaper or on line. I have a good working relationship with the people who do my investing and trust in them. I always told them “I don’t want to eat dog food as a retiree; and I’m not wanting to eat a high grade of cat food. If you don’t take care of my money well my response is simple. I will be returning to Regina when this ‘gig’ is up and I know where you live. Not that I would do anything awful, however if I end up being a ‘bin diver’ as a retiree I will make sure that my earliest visits are made loudly in the bins outside your house!”

Well in the past year it hasn’t seemed quite as funny as I have watched the balance of my statements plummet. I finally told one of my investors that soon we would be able to help the environment because he could stop sending me statements as there would be no more money left in the RRSP!

These discussions and actions we need to take to create change for pensions also require us to change. A few weeks ago during the CLC Women’s Committee meeting we had a presentation from Darcy Beggs, CUPE, on the work she has done on the question of women and pensions. Not surprisingly Darcy’s work revealed that pensions are still being administered with a 1950’s lens; two parent family, man works full-time outside the home and woman works full-time inside the home (or maybe she is one of the ‘revolutionaries’ who work part-time outside the home!). Well, that is not our lives anymore; if it every was. Darcy provided us with a checklist on equality and pensions; and a challenge to change our pension plans and our pension administration to recognize the needs of women and equality seeking groups. We cannot create change for the future that will continue to leave older women and others from equality seeking groups more likely to live in poverty.

So, our challenge from last night is to get out there – wherever, whenever and however we can – and keep on organizing for change in an active and inclusive way. When we were organizing against privatization in Saskatchewan we used to say that ‘No act is too small or insignificant. Every way that we can contribute is important. Everyone has something to contribute’. We have to build on the words of Woodsworth “What we desire for ourselves, we wish for all” and make that “What we desire for ourselves we will achieve for all”.

Can we turn now for a few moments to the employment and economic crisis. I am saying ‘employment and economic crisis’ for a very strategic reason. Words have meaning and impact and remind us what is at stake and who is at risk.

Too many people view the current situation as an ‘economic crisis’ and say that as soon as the economy recovers all will go back as it was.

We know that is not true. While the economy may recover over time we know that the jobs recovery will be slower, will lag behind and will have profound change in the future.

Last summer the Governor of the Bank of Canada declared the recession in Canada was over.

Well, the recession sure isn’t over for the thousands of workers who lost their jobs and those still losing their jobs. The recession isn’t over for those workers who can’t access unemployment insurance; or if they can, they find the benefits are too low and not long enough. The recession isn’t over for the workers who came out to community discussions about Communities in Crisis which were organized by the CLC’s Social and Economic Policy Department this past summer.

Since the start of the recession in Canada, over 500,000 wage earners lost their jobs, with 400,000 of those workers losing full-time, decent-paying jobs.

The recession also has a female face that is not often seen. Before the major job cuts women held about 30% of the jobs in manufacturing. Numerically, we did not lose as many jobs. However, research done by Laurell Ritchie, of the Canadian Auto Workers shows that on a percentage basis women have lost more jobs. The gains of employment equity over the past twenty years are being wiped out by the effects of corporate greed.

We all know that workers didn’t cause this crisis.

Big business did – with their greed, their recklessness, their stupidity, and yes, their criminal activity.

They are taking advantage of the crisis they created to attack workers’ wages, to attack our pensions, to attack our benefits, and to attack our quality of life.

And they have willing partners with the Harper government.

This government sent autoworkers to the table with General Motors with orders to cut wages and benefits in order to get loan guarantees not once, but twice!

Workers, women, recent immigrants to Canada, people of colour, Aboriginal people, gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgendered people, people with disabilities – it doesn’t matter – the Conservative government has attacked them all.

This government attacked women workers in the federal public service by destroying pay equity and telling their unions they were forbidden by law to help women members fight wage inequality in our courts and human rights tribunal.

This government removed the word “equality” from the mandate of its own department responsible for the advancement of women’s equality in Canada!

This government “reassigned” the minister in charge of tourism because she actually gave money destined to support festivals and artists to one of Canada’s biggest tourist attractions – the Toronto Pride festival.

It’s unbelievable that in 2009 we must defend not only workers’ rights, but also human rights, from attack by this right-wing government who simply wants to turn the clock back on progress and put women and other equality seeking groups ‘in their place’.

We should remember that the attack on women’s rights and the attack on equality rights is an attack on workers’ rights.

And we need to remember that the attack on unionized workers during this employment and economic crisis is not just an attack today. The government and the corporate class have the long term objective to weaken our voice and our influence with our own members and in our communities. If they can silence us they will have removed the first and the last lines of defence that many of our members and our community allies have.

We need to remember that when unionization rates drop, income inequality grows. And that inequality lasts for a life time when you consider the discussion on pensions last night.

We need to call the corporate class on their greed. We need to tell people that while honest and hard-working women and men are being told to take pay cuts, to take pension reductions, to take benefit cuts, to take unpaid holidays, to take fewer hours of work, to forget about every collecting UI from the fund that they paid into and which had a $57 billion surplus which has been stolen by successive governments, our corporate class has done pretty well. You don’t see them agonizing if they can make a mortgage payment, or delaying their retirement plans, or telling their kids that they can’t help them financially to go to post-secondary education.

Nope. They continue to do pretty well as we heard last night in the example of Nortel.

If you want further proof you should check out the website for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives www.growinggap.ca.

For the last 24 years of what is supposed to be the greatest economic prosperity since the 1950s, middle income Canadians saw their earnings stay flat, while the richest Canadians reaped most of the benefits of economic growth during that period.

Just to pique your interest, consider these facts from the CCPA study...

By 9:04 AM on January 2, 2009 each of the top 100 CEOs in Canada made more than the average worker does in an entire year. They had each made the average wage of a minimum wage earner the day before; probably before the bubbles quit on their New Year’s champagne.

We should ask CCPA to calculate next year when they had made an amount equal to the average retiree’s income!

Average CEO pay for the top 100 was up 22% from its $8.5 million average in 2006.

In contrast, average Canadian earnings rose by only 3.2% -- the best increase in the past five years, but a small fraction of the CEOs’ pay hike and barely keeping up with inflation.

To quote Hugh Mackenzie of CCPA “Compared with ordinary Canadians, whose wages have been stagnant for 30 years, Canada’s economic downturn promises to hit the masses far harder than the best paid 100 CEOs. They have enjoyed a decade of record pay hikes and will land on a softer cushion if they stumble from their lofty heights in the New Year.”

Which brings me to my final point. The importance of retirees and retirees organizations.

The solution to this economic crisis and the solution to runaway corporate greed is where it has always been; right here, right in this room.

We have to take back our countries from the bankers, the corporate CEOs, the hedge-fund managers, the privitizers and privateers, and the lobbyists in Ottawa who have led us to the brink of disaster.

Our unions and our movement must also win political power – we must elect politicians who support labour, who will listen to the needs of working people – not corporate elites – and who will take action on our behalf despite the strong opposition of business interests.Nos syndicats et notre mouvement doivent également gagner du pouvoir politique – nous devons élire des hommes et femmes politiques qui appuient le mouvement, qui seront attentifs aux besoins des travailleurs et travailleuses plutôt qu’à ceux des élites politiques et qui agiront en notre nom malgré la forte opposition des intérêts du milieu des affaires.

We have to put the citizens back in charge.

CURC is vital to all of our work. And you do a phenomenal job as we all struggle during this crisis with decreasing resources and increasing demands.

I am very proud to be a member of CURC and I take every opportunity to encourage my comrades who are still working and who are over 50 years of age to join CURC – to get informed and get ‘in training’ for the work that still lies ahead of us when we move away from the paid workforce.

Many years ago I had the privilege, as President of the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour, to tour parts of my province with Larry Wagg. I would like to pay tribute to him because of all he has done and because I am sure that during those many hours traveling Saskatchewan highways we took in not only the beauty of being able to see ‘forever’ but we had rich discussions about the power and the possibility of strong retiree organizations. If I didn’t know the importance of support for active retiree organizations before that road trip I certainly knew it by the end of our tour!

We need each and every one of you and your unions and labour councils and federations of labour to be active in any way you can. We need you in our meetings with politicians at the federal, provincial and municipal levels.

And not just on pensions.

We need you there for meetings on unemployment insurance because you see the devastation on your previous co-workers and your communities. You may know people who are affected by UI. It may be a friend, a neighbour or a member of your family.

We need you there when we are lobbying for childcare because it is your grandchildren and great grandchildren that need a national, not-for-profit, quality system of early learning and childcare. I know many grandparents who tell me that, while they love their grandchildren and love sleep-overs and other visits, they did not see their retirement life as being the childcare provider for their grandchildren.

This it is not about being ‘greedy’ of their time. They are concerned that their grandchildren get the best early learning experience possible from qualified childcare workers.

We need you there when we are organizing for change in every community.

We need you organizing in your communities and organizing nationally. Just like other parts of our movement we have to be strong and active locally and nationally. This can’t be a competition between who gets the resources – our unions, our locals or CURC. We need to work together to make sure that every part is strong and supports each other.

I honour you for your lives of dedication to the struggle for dignity, justice and equality for all. I thank you for continuing that work in any way you can.

Together we are stronger! Solidarity Forever!

Thank you for listening and have a great convention! Merci beaucoup!