The pension

Presidents Kostelka and Korosec demand a national consensus

Vienna (OTS) – The two presidents of the Austrian Senior Citizens’ Council, the current managing director Dr. Peter Kostelka and LA Dept. Ingrid Korosec: a value guarantee for the retirement years 2024 and 2025.

The problem: Everyone who will retire in 2024 and 2025 can expect massive financial losses, since the calculation of the annual revaluation number for the pension account lags behind the current inflation trend by several years. In times of stable, moderate inflation, this is not a problem. Now – with persistently high inflation, yes. So it happens that the revaluation value, which is supposed to guarantee the value of a pension, will only be 3.4 percent in 2024.

In this context, the two presidents of the Senior Citizens’ Council are calling for a national consensus that the existing legal situation regarding the revaluation number must be supplemented by the introduction of a “value guarantee” for pensions. It shouldn’t be the case that, as portrayed in the media today, two people with the same career path receive such different pensions just because the calculation formulas for the pension adjustment on the one hand and for the revaluation number on the other hand are so different.

300,000 Austrians will be affected in the next two years. The two senior council presidents are convinced that there are too many people not to give this serious problem a common, just solution.

Questions & contact:

Heinz Haubenwallner
heinz.haubenwallner@pvoe.at
#436642309505

Linz – Some politicians are thinking of radical measures when covering the need for skilled workers: abolish partial retirement, work in retirement, raise the retirement age. Such ideas are impractical and hide the most effective adjustment screw: better working conditions. „If companies adapt their personnel policies and employees can actually do their job until they retire, a considerable part of the current personnel requirements will be eliminated“, AK President Andreas Stangl is convinced.

A smooth transition from working life to retirement – ​​that is what most employees want. For many, however, things are different: illness, unemployment or being “forced” to be inactive due to the care of family members characterize the years before actual retirement and are a burden for those affected. Only two thirds of the more than 78,000 new pensioners in Austria in 2021 came directly from an employment relationship. This means that every third new pensioner was previously unemployed, received a pension advance, sickness or rehabilitation benefit or had insurance gaps.

40 percent believe that they will not reach the standard retirement age

These figures confirm the results of the Working Climate Index. According to this, on average almost 40 percent of employees, in some sectors it is even more than every second person, fear that staying in the job until retirement is (very) unlikely. This applies above all to gastronomy and paper production. But employees are also particularly skeptical in mining, agriculture and forestry, in health and social services and in construction.

You can download a graphic “Holding on until retirement survey” here.

In any case, the primary goal is that those affected are spared years of a stressful, demotivating process in which they are sent back and forth between different institutions under the motto “Too sick for the job market, but too healthy for retirement”. However, AMS, PVA and ÖGK should not shift their responsibility, but work together to develop realistic employment prospects. In addition, employment until retirement has a positive effect on the amount of the pension because additional contribution periods are acquired.

However, if companies continue to hardly appreciate older workers and do not change anything regarding the stressful working conditions, politics must act: by means of job guarantees, the public sector should offer older unemployed people suitable jobs in the public or non-profit sector and thus ensure a smooth, dignified transition into enable the pension.

The AK therefore demands:

• Age(ing) appropriate jobs and better working conditions to maintain the ability to work
• a bonus-malus system that promotes the employment of older people: The federal government must create incentives for companies to hire more older unemployed people (or keep older employees) and pay more attention to the issue of workloads.
• Retention of the partial retirement model, which enables employees with health restrictions or stressful working conditions to remain in working life until they retire
• A job guarantee for older unemployed: The public sector must offer/enable employment for older people willing to work if private companies do not give them a chance.
• Those employees who cannot get a job due to health restrictions despite support and funding must be given easier access to invalidity or disability pensions.

Questions & contact:

Chamber of Labor Upper Austria – Communication
Mag. Dominik Bittendorfer
+43 (0)50 6906 2191
dominik.bittendorfer@akooe.at
ooe.arbeiterkammer.at