More than you may think
Roughly 1,500 provincial retirees live in Colchester County, the highest number of any one region
Retired provincial government workers from Colchester County are ready to meet and discuss their pension plans in both Halifax and Truro next month.
Some 1,500 of the 13,300 Nova Scotia Government Retired Employees Association pensioners live in Colchester County – the group’s largest single region.
Its members will join others from around the province on Oct. 1 in Dartmouth for the annual convention, followed by another local meeting in Truro on Oct. 9.
“We’ve been here for 50 years,” said NSGREA president Fred Pierce. “Those retired government employees have that association and they’re a pretty good cross-section of people who were in management and part of the union of government employees.”
According to Pierce, retired provincial government workers receive pensions worth 75 per cent of their old salaries and these are topped up by other payments such as the Canada Pension Plan.
These pensions were fully funded and employees had wellpaid, unionized jobs that they held for a long time, giving them a generous retirement pot in their later years.
The indexing of these pensions, together with other topics such as electing new board members, will be among the topics on the agenda of both the Halifax and Truro meetings.
“That’s a significant component when you add up the figure of the investments and how well they are run,” said Pierce.
Before he retired in 2002, Pierce worked as an inspector and regulator for Nova Scotia’s Department of Agriculture and was based in Truro.
He said his union used “smart,” negotiating tactics that mostly kept them out of the news and their membership relatively intact.
Pierce noted other unionized employees, such as teachers have not been so lucky, pointing to how the Nova Scotia Teachers Union recently lost principals and vice-principals as members.
The Halifax meeting starts at 8:30 a.m. on Oct. 1 at 101 Wyse Road in Dartmouth.
The Truro meeting starts at 1:30 p.m. on Oct. 9 at the Douglas St. Recreation Centre.