Retirement: a track to skirt the issue of age

April 26, 2010 - 9:20 am Comments Off

Should he do so without saying? The government raises the question about raising the legal age of retirement. Introduced in 1983, the possibility of a pension at age 60 is an "acquired" intangible to the unions – will undoubtedly touch inflate the number of events already planned. But the past work of the Board of Retirement Guidance (NRC) also show that this solution would be financially much more efficient in the short and medium term of a longer contribution period, this second option had significant effects that 'from 2020 at best.

Therefore, the temptation is great to work around the problem: give everyone the opportunity to leave at 60 if he wishes, but to dissuade the maximum. For this, the pension of a person choosing to leave "early" (before 62 or 63 years, for example) could be amputated, even if it has "all quarters."The track appeared there more than a month in the NRC documents, referring to examples of U.S., Japanese and German. It went almost unnoticed, except in the eyes of government officials who are working on pensions.

"The executive Ponder on it," admits one of the main actors of the file. "It's part of the range of possibilities," says a corporate source, emphasizing that nothing is decided. "I was cooking around that idea," says a union leader. Who speaks the same orders of magnitude, "a discount of 1.25% per quarter or 2.5% below the target age.In other words, for the same number of quarters validated, the person who would liquidate his pension at age 60 would incur a penalty of 10% to 20% compared to that which would prolong his career until age 62 – if the government set the example age as a goal.

A more complicated

The assumption is even less absurd than 22% maximum discount is already applied in France, supplementary pensions (Agirc-Arrco) for private sector employees who retire before age 65. The retiree does not realize, because a fund compensates this difference.

But the existence of this fund, called AGFF, is up to the renewal of a regular union-management agreement.The agreement expires at the end of this year and will be renegotiated just after the reform of pensions.

Advantage of the option: it offers hope of union protests limited, maintaining the symbolic age 60 years. Disadvantage: it would make a bit more complicated than a pension system that is already fairly. And above all, "everyone knows that it is the workers rather than managers, who tend to stop working when they have the right, a government source analysis. The risk is they leave with even lower pensions. The government plans to publish a first draft of its reform from mid-May

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