TEAM MEMO
To: TEAM-IFPTE Local 161 Members
From: TEAM Office
Date: August 3, 2017
Re: New and Noteworthy
- United Way of Winnipeg: Charlotte Cameron, Labour Director of the United Way, asked that we pass along her thanks to the TEAM membership for the generous donation of over $2,000, raised at the TEAM Take-a-Break events in June.
- Working in Wireless? We are hearing of concerns about the prospect of work being moved to Bell Mobility. If your work relates to the Wireless line-of-business, please click here and let us know (include your job title and/or job function) so we can asses the potential impact on TEAM and Manitoba, and open a dialogue with the Company.
- TEAM Member’s Grandchild wins IFPTE Scholarship: Haley J. Henwood, the grandchild of TEAM member Gord Tereck, was one of four winners of this year’s IFPTE Dominick D. Critelli, Jr. scholarship program. Haley will receive $2,500 USD towards her University education. The program is run by IFPTE head office in Washington DC. You can read Haley’s winning essay here, under the heading “Canadian Sector”.
- TEAM Moving to Telus? We were surprised to learn this week that our cellphone service had been transferred to Telus. TEAM has always been a strong supporter of the products and services provided by our members - we will be continuing our service with Bell MTS. The TEAM office also uses BCE MTS for landline (Centrex) and internet service.
- Board Meetings: The latest minutes and reports have been posted. Some excerpts from the reports:
- Net Credited Service Date: The Company has now halted revising NCS dates. The issue arises from Article 7.06, wherein the NCS date for employees in the TEAM bargaining unit is the same as the original date of engagement (less any deductible absences), and the Company’s decade old practice of revising the NCS date of existing employees coming into TEAM’s bargaining unit. TEAM will file a Policy Grievance.
- Personnel Records: In response to TEAM raising the issue of disciplinary letters being left in employees’ files for many years beyond when they should have been removed and destroyed, the Company has implemented a process for identifying and removing all letters of a disciplinary nature per Article 15.07, which is after two years, provided there has been no further disciplinary letters placed on file.
- DC Pension Plan: Although BCE has its own Defined Contribution Pension Plan (“DC Plan”), we do not expect that members of the current DC Plan, managed by Great West Life, will be moved over to the BCE DC Plan any time soon. The BCE DC Plan has contribution match levels more in-line with industry norms than the current DC Plan, and as such, a move to the BCE DC Plan could become linked to salary negotiations towards the end of 2018 and into early 2019.
- DB Pension Plan Statement: The annual pension statement sent to DB Plan members in June caused a few members to question the health of the Plan, as the statement came with an extra page that explained how, under certain circumstances, their pension could be less than forecast. The information on this extra page has been on the back of the DB Plan statements for at least the past 10 years.
The concern about the Plan’s health stems from the sentence: “If the Plan had terminated immediately and the company was unable to fully fund the deficit on termination then benefits would be reduced by 8.9%.” This sentence summarizes the conclusion of a hypothetical calculation that had BCE gone into bankruptcy on December 31, 2016, the pension fund may have been unable to payout the full pension amounts. There are no indications that BCE will be going out of business any time soon. However, to address the hypothetical shortfall, pension legislation requires the Company to make additional contributions called “special payments”.
The calculation that assumes BCE will remain in business, shows that the Plan is funded to a level of 122.6%.
- Local 162 Achieves New Collective Agreement: The 700+ managers, supervisors and professionals working at the City of Winnipeg, represented by WAPSO-IFPTE Local 162, have achieved a new Collective Agreement through the Interest Arbitration process. The Agreement includes a pay increase of 8.2% over a 4 year and 2½ month period, retroactive to October 31, 2015. For more details click here.
TEAM-IFPTE Local 161
204-984-9470 or 1-877-984-9470
[email protected]
www.teamunion.mb.ca
twitter.com/teamunion161
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