End Of Year Report to the Members of the Hourly Pension Plan
Hello to all hourly staff retirees. Your pension plan investments are starting to keep pace with our escalating living costs. After a number of years of dismal returns, this year the plan did make an extremely good return of 12.9%. However, due to the 5-year formula, this still leaves us with a 5 year annualized result of 5.08%. This is below the threshold of 6% at which some indexing would occur. This lack is still due to the disastrous returns of the 2008-2009 period. The better news is that our plan is still being maintained by the University’s input of approximately 2.8 times the members' contributions. This includes an additional $20,000.00 per month top up by the University. At present the committee is looking at possible ways to enhance the pension in the future, which we look forward to.
I wish everyone a good year following this harsh winter. I hope to meet many of you at the upcoming AGM. It offers a free lunch and generally an interesting talk.
There are a number of avenues to become active in MURA, the retirees association for all McMaster University retirees. During the course of the year trips and outings are organized and available to all who would like to join in. There is also an annual Christmas lunch, which is a little less formal than the AGM.
Your pension and benefits representative,
Cliff Andrews
