With the repeal of the “Pension Sustainability and Transfer Act” being tabled earlier today, a key piece of the 2023 legislation from the Higgs government, that violated Charter rights to override freely negotiated collective agreements to attack the pensions of New Brunswick education and nursing home workers may be undone.
“Our members work hard every day to help the schools in this province run, to have the past government step all over their freely negotiated pensions was a slap in the face,” said Iris Lloyd, president of CUPE 1253, which represents custodians, bus drivers and maintenance workers of NB School Districts. “Getting rid of Higgs’ bill and returning to a fairly negotiated process for our pensions is the first step to rebuilding trust between workers and the provincial government.”
The bill impacted the pensions of education workers represented by CUPE 2745 and 1253 as well as nursing home workers represented by CUPE’s New Brunswick Council of Nursing Home Unions, NBCNHU, overriding their modest freely negotiated pensions and forcing these workers into Higgs’ preferred “Shared Risk” model.
“All workers deserve a decent and secure pension for the hard work they put in in their careers,” said Theresa McAllister, president of CUPE 2745, which represents the province’s educational support staff. “The fact that the Conservatives broke contracts that they negotiated themselves in order to attack the pensions of hard working New Brunswickers, shows why we should never trust them to run this province again.”
In addition to breaking freely negotiated contracts with workers, the legislation tossed out the very pension negotiation process that the government had pushed for as a condition to ending the province-wide strike of 2021. Instead of seeing their own process through, the government simply imposed its own preferred pension model. Nursing home workers, who were not even part of the 2021 strike, were included in this legislation.
“It’s time to start repairing all of the damage the Higgs government caused to public services in New Brunswick,” said Sharon Teare, president of the NBCNHU. “We look forward to build a New Brunswick the provides quality services, good jobs and retirement with dignity for all workers.”
Upon its passing, Bill 17 was immediately challenged by CUPE, first in the legislature, through a demonstration by hundreds of workers which resulted in Teare, CUPE NB President Steven Drost and CUPE Regional Director Sandy Harding being banned from the provincial legislature, and then through a Charter challenge launched by CUPE in February of 2024. Following the election of Susan Holt and the Liberals in 2024 the three CUPE leaders been allowed to return.
Should the legislation be repealed, the future of the pensions for these workers is still undetermined. Whatever happens moving forward, CUPE Maritimes Regional Director Sandy Harding says that pension deals should be worked out between the union and the government just as they always have through free and fair collective bargaining. “The whole reason we are in this mess is that Higgs intentionally underfunded these pension plans and then tried to use legislation to override the free collective bargaining process,” Harding says. “We are happy to sit down with a government that respects Charter rights, the law and its own signed contracts, and find a deal that works for New Brunswickers and the workers of this province.”