Take action to protect your pension
Over the last two years, some members of the OMERS Sponsors Corporation (SC) Board have attempted to remove the guaranteed indexing of your pension. So far, CUPE Ontario, allies, and plan members have been able to defeat these attempts.
Unfortunately, there is a good chance that this year another attempt to remove your pension’s guaranteed indexing will be made.
Let’s be clear. The OMERS plan is doing well and when you retire you deserve to have a pension that keeps up with inflation.
Please take a moment and send this email to OMERS CEO Michael Rolland and other members of the SC board.
Let them know you want pension indexing preserved.
Dear Michael Rolland, CEO OMERS Sponsors Corporation:
I’m writing to you as a proud member of the OMERS pension plan. I rely on my pension and its benefits for my retirement. That includes guaranteed indexing against inflation.
I know there’ve been proposals to end guaranteed indexing, including a vote that failed last year. Repeated attempts to remove this important benefit are stressful for plan members. I’m asking that OMERS leaves guaranteed indexing in place because without it, the value of my pension, my retirement income, will suffer.
The plan is performing well. Plan members also need to do well.
There should be no attempt to make any damaging changes to guaranteed indexing this coming year.
Cuts to benefits is not in our best interests and will hurt my future pension. OMERS must protect our pensions and abandon all attempts to remove guaranteed indexing.
As an OMERS plan member, I will work together with other plan members, to protect our pension benefits against any attempts to weaken them.
Sincerely,
Your Name
Your Email
Copied to all sponsor representatives
Important OMERS Update
In October, CUPE Ontario was made aware of a series of proposed by-law amendments being considered by the OMERS Sponsors Corporation (SC) Board. These changes, which included dramatic changes to the governance of OMERS, were voted only a few weeks later, on November 14th. These By-Law changes all required a simple majority to pass.
Working with allies, CUPE Ontario launched a campaign to protect members’ rights in the governance of their pension plan. In a few short weeks, OMERS plan members were able to successfully push back several of the changes. Unfortunately, many other changes were adopted. Some of those changes were not officially communicated to Sponsors – like CUPE Ontario – in the limited documents provided by OMERS. Despite repeated requests, CUPE Ontario, was never provided a formal copy of the proposed, tracked, By-law changes by OMERS.
