CUPE Ontario would like to draw your attention to the OMERS Member Engagement Survey that OMERS emailed out last week.
CUPE Ontario has some serious concerns with the survey design, such as overly restrictive response options, which we will be communicating to OMERS. We are also troubled that some of the questions appear to address pension plan design rather than administrative concerns and members’ experiences.
In our view, the OMERS Sponsors Corporation—where unions and employers collectively make decisions about the OMERS plan design—is the proper forum to discuss plan design (i.e. benefit and contribution) issues.
We are also aware that OMERS and/or employers may try to use the data gathered from this flawed survey to justify their ongoing push for cuts to your pension. It was only last year that we defeated yet another effort to remove guaranteed indexation (i.e. cost-of-living increases) from OMERS pensions. We expect these efforts to continue and we will continue to fight for our members’ best interests.
Despite these concerns, we are urging CUPE-represented OMERS members to complete this survey and to voice their opinions.
We would draw your attention to the “Two things I like most about my OMERS pension” question (towards the end of the survey). One potential answer to this question is “My OMERS pension protects me against cost-of-living increases.”
There are also open-ended sections where members can tell OMERS what they have told CUPE for years: the secure, defined benefit nature of OMERS and the fact that the plan is fully protected from inflation with guaranteed cost-of-living increases are incredibly important to hard-working CUPE members.
You can take the survey by following this link.
