Tuesday, January 4, 2011

U.S. Steel workers boosted by picket line visit

U.S. Steel workers have been given a $10,000 morale boost.

The national and Ontario presidents of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, who visited the picket line Tuesday to express support for the worker’s pension fight, brought a generous cheque for the strike fund as well as their encouraging words.

“We want you to know that you’re not alone in your struggle to defend pensions and indexing,” national president Paul Moist told about 50 people at the Wilcox Street picket line. “This company should return to the bargaining table and take its concession demands off the table.”

About 900 Hamilton workers were locked out of the former Stelco plant Nov. 7 by their American employer after refusing to accept company demands for radical changes in their pension plans, including the loss of indexing for about 9,000 area retirees.

In an interview, Moist said if private sector employers win the fight to eliminate indexing and defined benefit pension plans, public sector workers will soon face the same fight.

“This pension fight is not confined to the private sector. If private sector employers win this, then it’s only a stone’s throw to the public sector,” he said. “This is a fight for the entire labour movement, not just the Steelworkers.”

That theme will play large on Jan. 29 when workers stage a day of action against the company at city hall.

U.S. Steel locked out the Hamilton workers, members of Local 1005 of the United Steelworkers, after they rejected company demands to close the existing defined benefit pension plan to new hires. New employees would be directed instead to a defined contribution savings plan.

Defined benefit plans pay a fixed pension per month, often calculated by multiplying a percentage of average pay by years of service. Defined contribution schemes mimic registered retirement savings plans by paying according to how much has been saved over the years and what that pool has earned.

Employers dislike defined benefit plans because provincial law requires that those plans hold enough money to pay current and future obligations if the employer goes out of business. If the plan is underfunded, the employer must make up the shortfall within five years.

As a result of contribution holidays Stelco awarded itself, along with years of bad stock market returns, the former Stelco plans are about $1.2 billion short of that goal.

U.S. Steel has also demanded an end to pension indexing for retirees. Since 1990, Stelco retirees get increases of up to 3 per cent in their pensions based on a formula that balances cost of living increases with the performance of the markets. Last year, that produced an increase of just under 1 per cent, or $10 per $1,000 of pension.

While the annual increases are small, over time they help slow the eroding effect of inflation on retirement income. According to the union, indexing means a worker who retired in 1990 with a pension of $1,000 a month is now getting more than $1,300.

Moist and CUPE Ontario president Fred Hahn also flogged the federal government for allowing U.S. Steel to buy Stelco in 2007. That deal, they said, is an example of how the Investment Canada Act fails to protect Canadian workers.

“Clearly the Investment Canada Act doesn’t seem to be working for Canadians,” Moist said. “Corporations are coming here and breaking promise after promise.”

When U.S. Steel got federal approval to buy Stelco, the company promised to maintain production and employment levels for three years. Within one year, however, the entire Canadian operation had been shuttered and U.S. Steel was serving Canadian customers from its American mills. The federal government has launched a lawsuit over those broken commitments and is seeking penalties now totalling about $15 million.

Hahn accused the government of betraying workers by not taking a stronger position against the company.

“Why isn’t the Ministry of Labour telling this company to get back to the bargaining table?” he asked. “Politicians are failing the people who elected them.”

Hamilton Mayor Bob Bratina was also on the picket line yesterday, telling workers “If U.S. Steel is not interested in operating this plant, then we should get someone who is.”

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