https://www.dw.com/en/france-to-move-ahead-on-pension-reform-despite-protests/a-64489962
Personally, I had not known of news of the current protests via local Aussie sources, but if anyone has more information/detail on why the reforms are so divisive in the French world, I would be interested.
The first one I saw is raising retirement age from 62 to 64?
I am soooooo jealous, when I was growing up, it was 60 for women, and 65 for men.
By the mid 90s, the minimum retirement age was raised to 65 for all.
By 2007 I think, we were given 10+ years advance notice/warning
(ie time to get used to the idea, and make arrangements for retirement planning if you were in your 40s)
that it would be raised to 70 in a 5-year phase-in on birth year.
Those born in 1958 - retirement age would be 66,
in 1959 - 67 etc through to the 1962 birth year and beyond, set at 70 years old.
Seems to me the French left it very late, to start introducing such things so suddenly.
Rain, yes, the protests in France are over the mooted raising of the retirement age to 64. France has a history of generous labour laws and citizens have never been hesitant to protest robustly!
Here in the UK they are looking at raising the retirement age to 68:
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/jan/25/uk-state-pension-age-rise-68
Though, to be candid, I suspect we will have far more pressing concerns than pension eligibility by the time we get to the late 2030's.
Though, to be candid, I suspect we will have far more pressing concerns than pension eligibility by the time we get to the late 2030's.
I guess so 🙂
Still jealous though,
so I have absolutely NO SYMPATHY for the protestors.
I am in the middle of the "phase-in", don't qualify for aged pension benefits until I am 67!
When I can get my Commonwealth Seniors Card, yayyayay
..discounts on elecK-trickery, car registration, insurance, free primary health care, half-price at the movies etc etc. Bwahahahahaha . And possibly a small $$ 'top-up' on my private fund pension, depending on the income/assets test rules at the time.
In Australia, In '92 I think, the recession of the early 90s, hit us hard - the then Labor Govt, negotiated a deal with the Unions and Employers, for employers to pay a minimum of 9% of employees gross wage/salaries into superannuation (retirement/pension funds). And a mandatory minimum of 2% to be paid by employees. It was called the "National Superannuation Guarantee". Prior to that, only certain white-collar industries had employer funded superannuation schemes.
In addition, while employers had choice of which superannuation fund would be given to their employees to contribute to (like the USA employers on private health care plans, Australia went for private retirement fund plans), the government's financial/prudential regulations on all those pension funds were tightened and are far more secure than the ones I see collapsing overseas in the 2008-GFC etc.
However, it was supposed to gradually increase from minimum 9% to 12% employer funding by 2012 - but that never happened! LOL
My own kids were young tweenies at the time, and working the usual casual afterschool/weekend jobs, and I can still remember my daughter crying over her pay-slip from her casual job at a bakery, with having 25c or whatever taken out, and laughing "Your boss is putting in far more than that, and it will be worth a fortune when you are 65, and be grateful you don't have to pay any income tax on top of it!" 🙂
Politically, it operated as a kind of generous wage rise for everyone, and analyses I have read over time, it was the death knell for Unions, along with the introduction of 'Enterprise Bargaining' instead of Union-led bargaining, focussed more on working conditions, like flexible hours, more paid leave entitlements etc -- so we remained pretty much strike-free until more recent times as Unions have been ramping up again. Like England, our health, education workforce got hit bad through CoVID, and soooo back to the 1970s again.
But still.. no sympathy at all for you European spoiled brats...
A humorous take:
