TIROLER TAGESZEITUNG, editorial: "Work until you drop", by Liane Pircher, Sunday February 26 issue

The goal that more people should work more and longer is clear. Achieving it is more difficult.

Innsbruck (OTS) – With baby boomers retiring, the pressure to have enough workers is increasing.

It has long been not just a shortage of skilled workers, but a labor shortage that is weighing on companies. Every individual is needed in the labor market. No wonder that politics and business are desperately looking for ways to mobilize idle forces.
One keeps an eye on part-time workers as well as (prospective) retirees. There was still something that could be done for both groups – working more and longer. That could cushion the labor shortage a bit, right? Women in particular must feel addressed here. After all, four out of five part-time employees in Austria are women. The majority of pensioners earning additional income are women. The fact is that one thing often leads to the other: those who work a lot part-time in their middle years will have a bad pension later on. At the same time, the reduction in wage work for many women has nothing to do with laziness, but with the fact that they take care of children and – if they are older – often seamlessly take care of their parents. After all, almost 80 percent of those in need of care in this country are cared for at home. A 40-hour week plus strenuous care work just doesn’t go together, both physically and mentally. Better crediting of childcare and care times for the pension would be helpful here. We should talk about this just as much as about better working conditions for workers over 50. If you want to keep people in work as long as possible, the conditions have to be right. Anyone who likes to work and is healthy will work longer anyway. Those who are exhausted save themselves in the pension. Scandinavian countries show how things could be done better. Austria is still much too conservative and rigid here.