The OMERS Sponsors Corporation voted on a series of changes to its bylaws. We’re providing an update, as we get additional information about the results today’s meeting.
With only a few weeks notice, workers and their Sponsor unions successfully mobilized to protect our right to freely appoint our Representatives to the OMERS SC Board, which makes decisions about critical pension benefits and contribution rates. We also protected our right to remove our Representatives on the OMERS SC Board, a key accountability mechanism to ensuring those we appoint are representative of our member’s interests. This is an important victory for workers and their unions.
The OMERS SC Board, however, has passed significant changes to confidentiality that could negatively impact workers’ and their unions’ right to know critical information about our pension plan. We’re very concerned that our representatives on the OMERS SC Board could now be prevented from sharing crucial information, like more potential governance changes, with us in the future.
There are other changes to the Co-Chair structure, to committee composition, and an introduction of term limits for Sponsors Representatives.
At this point CUPE Ontario still does not have access to actual text of the new bylaws, including these changes. Along with other unions, we’ve made a formal request for these which we expect to receive shortly. We will be fully analyzing all OMERS by-law changes and will share additional updates as we have them.
It is important to reiterate that this entire bylaw review process, coupled with last year’s attempt to decrease benefits to workers by removing guaranteed indexing, leaves us with serious and substantial concerns about OMERS.
CUPE Ontario, representing nearly 125,000 active members in OMERS, will take all steps necessary to protect members’ rights, preserve key benefits like indexing and move towards a more accountable and transparent OMERS.