Email to AESES-UM Members – UM Pension Plan Change
November 14, 2023
To: All AESES-UM Members
By now, you should have received an email from the University advising of an upcoming change to the UM Pension Plan (1993), if you did not see it in your email Friday, check your Junk Mail folder. The email laid out the reason why this necessary change is required and advised employees that there will be no diminishment of their pension entitlement. AESES has been directly involved in the discussions and wants to assure our members that this is indeed the case.
In 2019, the University notified AESES and the other union and retiree stakeholders at the UM Staff Benefits Committee that it was necessary to make changes to the “1993 Pension Plan” to ensure it remained compliant with Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) rules, and to ensure that retirement annuities could continue to be funded on a long-term basis. This “1993 Pension Plan” is the one that all current members participate in, even if you were just hired. After several special meetings of the Staff Benefits Committee in 2019 and 2020, AESES partnered with UMFA. Together we retained our own external legal and actuarial professionals to ensure the CRA required changes were necessary and implemented properly. While we recognized to come into compliance with CRA rules that changes were necessary, we wanted to ensure the preservation of our members’ existing pension benefits. The counsel we retained engaged with the University’s pension plan administrators and not only protected our interests but was integral to devising a solution that maintained the flexibility and benefits of our pension with guarantees members would see no diminishment of benefit.
Following our recent Staff Benefits Committee meeting on Monday, November 6, the committee has now recommended that the proposed changes we helped craft be accepted and they have now been referred to the Board of Governors for approval. The plan amendments are expected to be implemented in 2024.
The University has provided contact information for the Pension Office should you have any questions about the plan change. However, if you would like to speak with someone from the AESES Business Office regarding this, contact our Labour Relations Officer, Lorne Hilton (lhilton@aeses.ca), who has been central to this process.
Thank you,
Chris McCann
AESES President