YUFA
Retirement
Keeping in Touch After Retirement
Peter Harries-Jones
President,
Association of Retired Faculty and Librarians at York (ARFL)
20
Feb 03 - There is a peculiar situation at York in which the administration
will not give names of those retiring to either of the two university
retiree organizations, The Association of Retired Faculty and Librarians
at York (ARFL) and the York University Retirees Association (YURA). The
peculiar situation gets more peculiar in that YUFA, like the employer,
also has the list of retirees but is contract bound not to pass this
information on. This results in a classic Catch 22 situation in that
both organizations have to request retirees and prospective retirees to
submit their names on their own account to our organizations, or
alternatively, we (ARFL) must do a mailing on a year by year basis to all
Faculty members, whether retiring or not. As the new President of ARFL, the
Catch 22 is particularly frustrating since I am an ex-officio member of
the YUFA executive.
So the purpose of this message is to request YUFA members to
contact me by email (listed below) if you are about to retire. Why would
I ask this? Well first, this is a matter of routine organization on our
part. Second, ARFL really acts in the interest of faculty retirees, and is
very active in improvement of pension and benefits that constitute
retirees entitlement. Since both pension and benefits are usually more
complex arrangements than wages, it is in your interest to keep in contact
with us. This year there are about 100 of you and about the same number of
retirees next year.
The main difference between the two retiree organizations is that
ARFL is an extension of YUFA in the sense that its members are drawn from
faculty and that retiree faculty concerns about pensions and benefits can
be directly acted upon by us or relayed to YUFA, either in contract talks
or in issues raised in the Joint Committee on the Administration of the
Agreement (JCOAA). YURA is an organization which is open to all employees
of the university and which mainly concerns itself with activities in
retirement.
During the years 2001 until the present, the time of the existing
Collective Agreement, ARFL has acted in concert with YUFA over two issues
which would, if successful, have reduced pension entitlements, the first a
proposed pension reduction as a result of increasing longevity of York
retirees (i.e., the introduction of new general mortality tables) and the
proposed introduction of a ‘shadow pension.' The latter issue is now
before FSCO, the Ontario body responsible for supervising pensions. ARFL
has also actively contributed towards the bargaining proposals to be put
forward at the next YUFA general meeting, especially on the issue of
medical benefits for retirees. On its own account, ARFL has intervened in
the several anomalies that plague our current post-retirement benefit
programme, the most worrying aspect of which is that it is far from
certain whether Great West Life knows which benefits to apply in what
situation. We are also conducting and completing surveys about benefit
Please, if you are about to retire in the next couple of years, drop me an e-mail with your name and year of retirement, that is uarfl@web.net.