Without a plan

By Chris Sorensen - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - 10 Comments

Our pension system is a mess, and fixing it won’t be easy

Without a plan Dale Seto is accustomed to toiling out of the spotlight. Most days, the aircraft mechanic crawls around inside the guts of an Airbus jetliner, grease on his hands. “We’re kind of the underdogs,” says Seto, 57, who has worked for Air Canada for the past two decades. “But in my opinion, we perform the most important function in the entire airline industry, and that’s making sure that the planes are safe and ready to fly.”

Hundreds of thousands of lives depend on the quality of work done by Seto and his colleagues, but he says the industry’s perennial woes means they haven’t had a pay raise in nearly a decade. That helps explain why he and12,000 Air Canada employees represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers jealously guard their defined benefit pension plans, an increasingly rare species of retirement income in the private sector. More than just a perk, defined benefit plans—in which the employer guarantees retirees a certain level of benefits—are viewed by workers as a key element of overall compensation. Continue…

The short end of the Canwest stick

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 8:20 AM - 35 Comments

Execs get big bonuses, employees get squat; it’s ‘business logic’

If you were to ask the general public how much of a bonus Canwest Global Communications executives deserve for steering the country’s biggest media company into the ground, the answer would fall somewhere between squat and diddly. But according to their bankruptcy protection ﬁling this month, the correct response is $9.8 million.

The Key Employee Retention Plan (KERP) already approved by Canwest’s creditors, and given an initial thumbs-up by the courts, was the subject of “extensive” negotiations from the very beginning of the company’s efforts to extract itself from under its $4-billion debt load last December. Three directors, four top executives and 13 other senior members of management will receive two hefty cash payments—one at the end of this year, the other early next spring—in exchange for sticking around until the streamlined company emerges from the process. The details of just who is receiving the bonuses and how much have been sealed by the court at the company’s request to protect “sensitive personal and financial information.” But it’s clear at least some of the “retentions” will be decidedly short-term as the agreement calls for the three unnamed directors to resign from the Canwest board once the restructuring period ends. Leonard, David and Gail Asper, the children of the late Canwest founder Izzy Asper, are all currently directors, but are expected to have a much reduced role, and ownership stake, in the new company. Continue…
It's not exactly Camp In and Out, but … : Liveblogging the Nortel hearings at Industry

By kadyomalley - Friday, August 7, 2009 at 8:15 AM - 14 Comments

When it comes to special summer emergency committees, liveblogger beggars can’t be choosers, right? The witnesses for today’s meeting hasn’t yet been posted on the parliamentary website, as the committee must first hold a brief, pro forma — and in camera — meeting to vote on the emergency motion, but Canadian Press has the unofficial list of who’s likely to be at the table: “officials from Industry Canada, Ericsson and Mike Lazaridis, president and co-chief executive of BlackBerry maker Research in Motion.” Check back at 9am for full coverage!

(And yes, ITQ will do her best to keep her BlackBerry fangirl tendencies under control for the duration of today’s meeting.)

8:49:24 AM
Greetings, fellow committee junkies! Is everyone excited? I hope so, because ITQ can report that the emergency motion passed without a hitch, and the first panel of witnesses — the Nortel Contingent — is already at the table, waiting for the gavel to go down and the meeting to get underway: senior vice-president George Riedel, carrier networks president Richard Lowe and legal counsel Derrick Ray will be fielding questions for the next hour and fifteen minutes.
As for the MP roster, on the opposition side, we have Liberal industry critic Marc Garneau, flanked by Anthony Rota and Martha Hall Findlay. For the Bloc Quebecois, it’s Mario Laframboise and Robert Boucher — and Brian Masse for the NDP.

On the other side of the table, representing for Team Government, we have: Mike Lake, Dave Van Kesteren, whose name I unfailingly misspell, so apologies in advance, Royal Galipeau, Daryl Kramp and Peter Braid, with Michael Chong wielding the gavel.

Continue…