Public Service Alliance of Canada BC

source: Vancouver Sun, Feb 23

Re: Government pensions fair game, Feb. 18

In her column, Barbara Yaffe is critical of the federal public service pension plan and the level of employee contributions to it.

Federal public sector workers make significant contributions to their pensions in the form of deferred wages. By 2013, these contributions will make up about 40 per cent of the total cost of providing pension benefits. The real pension crisis in Canada is that most workers and pensioners are covered by inadequate defined-contribution pension plans or no workplace pension plan at all. In a defined-contribution plan, pension benefits are dependent on a number of things, such as the performance of markets and interest rates at retirement. All of the risk is put on the workers.

Defined-benefit plans collectivize risk and resources and ensure a decent, stable retirement income for seniors.

Our union believes defined-benefit pension plans in Canada should be supported by governments. We are also calling for significant improvements to public pensions in Canada: CPP benefits should be doubled by gradually increasing employer and employee contributions by three per cent and the Guaranteed Income Supplement of Old Age Security should be immediately increased by 15 per cent.

We can have a society in which no retired person is living in poverty through achievable, forward-thinking pension policies.

Kay Sinclair – B.C. Regional Executive Vice-President, Public Service Alliance of Canada

source: The Telegram (St. John’s), Wednesday, October 14, 2009, p. A6

Those in the business of sounding warnings and being alert to danger are looking very carefully at a statement issued on Sept. 30 by Gail Shea, the federal minister responsible for the Canadian Coast Guard, putting the brakes on the controversial plan to de-staff lighthouses in British Columbia and Newfoundland and Labrador. The minister has ordered a review and while the review is going on, no staff will be removed from light stations. The Public Service Alliance of Canada represents the lightkeepers and while we are glad the plan has been put on hold, we feel no great sense of relief, for several reasons.

It is obvious Gail Shea’s office was deluged with complaints – the minister described it as “concerns raised by a variety of stakeholders” – and the government doesn’t want the bad publicity. But instead of saying the plan to remove staff from all lighthouses is a poor one and will be scrapped, she wants more information about what she calls “the additional services provided by lighthouse staff.” After the review, if it is shown that staff (human beings) are necessary to deliver services, Minister Shea says “this option will receive full consideration.”

We are worried that the so-called review is nothing more than a delaying tactic and, after it is done, lightkeepers will be reassigned as was planned all along. The automated lights will be on, but nobody will be home.

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When food industry giants like Kellogg want to ensure that American consumers are being protected from contaminated products, they rely on private inspectors like Eugene A. Hatfield. So last spring Mr. Hatfield headed to the Peanut Corporation of America plant in southwest Georgia to make sure its chopped nuts, paste and peanut butter were safe to use in things as diverse as granola bars and ice cream.

The peanut company, though, knew in advance that Mr. Hatfield was coming. He had less than a day to check the entire plant, which processed several million pounds of peanuts a month.

Mr. Hatfield, 66, an expert in fresh produce, was not aware that peanuts were readily susceptible to salmonella — which he was not required to test for anyway. And while Mr. Hatfield was inspecting the plant to reassure Kellogg and other food companies of its suitability as a supplier, the Peanut Corporation was paying for his efforts.

“The overall food safety level of this facility was considered to be: SUPERIOR,” he concluded in his March 27, 2008, report for his employer, the American Institute of Baking, which performs audits for major food companies. A copy of the audit was obtained by The New York Times.

Federal investigators later discovered that the dilapidated plant was ravaged by salmonella and had been shipping tainted peanuts and paste for at least nine months. But they were too late to prevent what has become one of the nation’s worst known outbreaks of food-borne disease in recent years, in which nine are believed to have died and an estimated 22,500 were sickened.

Read the rest at nytimes.com and help make sure this doesn’t happen in Canada – visit foodsafetyfirst.ca

Airport bird-control officers unionize, employer loses work contract

Vancouver International Airport declined to renew a long-standing contract to keep birds off its runways shortly after employees joined a union, and instead awarded the new contract to a non-union company without going to public tender.

• visit www.keepyvrsafe.com for more info

Airport representative Rebecca Catley said Thursday the bird-control contract went to Airport Wildlife Management International without public tender due to a “short time-line” to find a replacement after the airport decided not to renew its annual contract with Commissionaires B.C.

The airport says it chose not to accept the commissionaires’ request last October for a 29-per-cent cost increase shortly after about a dozen wildlife control officers joined the Union of Canadian Transportation Employees.

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Ken Georgetti, President of the Canadian Labour Congress, says that the federal budget doesn’t go far enough to stimulate the economy or to put money into the pockets of Canadians who are innocent victims of the economic recession.

“We have called repeatedly on the government to fix the Employment Insurance program so that laid-off workers have adequate benefits to support themselves and their families while they search for new jobs,” Georgetti said following the release of the budget on January 27. “Sixty percent of the unemployed weren’t getting benefits prior to this budget, and they won’t get benefits now.”

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source: Canwest News Service, Tuesday, September 02, 2008

OTTAWA – As the federal government launches into a strategic review of Canada Post, a new poll shows 69 per cent of Canadians oppose allowing private companies to deliver letters in Canada.

Email your MP! Demand public consultations on the future of Canada Post.

The Ipsos Reid poll, commissioned by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, showed 46 per cent of respondents strongly oppose and 23 per cent somewhat oppose private company letter delivery.

At the other end of the spectrum, nine per cent strongly support and 18 per cent somewhat support private-sector competition to the Crown corporation.

“The public is overwhelmingly against postal deregulation and supports a strong universal public postal system,” said Denis Lemelin, the union’s national president.

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