REGINA – Unions representing workers enrolled in the Regina Civic Employees pension plan are filing a grievance against the City of Regina.
The two sides have been struggling to come to terms on a solution to the city’s underfunded pension program.
“The trouble the pension plan is facing now goes back to this City Council’s refusal to make the required contributions to the plan in 2011,” said Kirby Benning, Chair of the Pension and Benefits Committee. “They have not been in compliance with the Act, and now it is workers and retirees that are facing the consequences.”
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In 2011, employee groups asked the Superintendent of Pensions to intervene and to force the city to comply with the rules, but the Superintendent instead recommended a negotiated outcome. Earlier this year, following numerous delays in talks, the Superintendent warned that the pension plan could be cancelled.
Union representatives for city employees have now resubmitted their previous grievances to the province.
“Working together with the City to implement the negotiated deal is our preferred method of resolving this deadlock, but we are committed to using every tool we have at our disposal to pressure the City to honour our deal,” Benning said. “We are now moving forward with using our collective agreements as a tool and filing grievances.”
“We strongly believe in a negotiated solution, and we have an obligation to protect pensions and taxpayers,” City Manager Glen Davies said in a news release. “Time is now critical that productive input is made to ensure that changes to the plan will make it sustainable and affordable for the future,”
According to the unions representing city employees no further meeting dates have been set.
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