Saiz seeks to penalize the pension in early retirement from the industry

The Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration has taken the first step to develop the new and long-awaited regulatory framework that makes the collection of the pension compatible with the gradual exit from the labor market. The portfolio that leads Elma Saiz has prepared a first draft that has left employers and unions dissatisfied. Special attention has been received by the proposal to reform the early partial retirement of industry workers, essentially those in the automotive sector. The text proposes a cut in the pension when applying the reducing coefficients for the advancein addition to affecting the calculation of the regulatory base.

The first proposal from Saiz’s department orients this modality towards less flexibility. Within early retirement, the manufacturing sector has its own regulations. What does it modify? The future pensions of workers who choose to leave early and combine part-time employment and pension. In addition to introducing reducing coefficients on the amount, it does not recalculate the pension when full retirement is accessed: it does not compute the worker’s entire contribution base, worsening the regulatory base that calculates the future benefit, just as it happened before 2011.

The proposal also introduces greater rigidity through two additional details. The reform proposes that workers can no longer access this modality at age 61, but at age 62, three years before the ordinary age. At the same time, the approach that the Government takes with this type of retirement limits the options that the worker can avail of when it comes to reducing their working hours. Before it was between 25% and 67%, up to a maximum of 80% with a replacement contract. Now it proposes a maximum partiality of 50% of the working day in advances of 36 months (two and a half years before turning 65).

It will also be from the age of 62 when painful, harsh or toxic professions that will enter the new range of early retirements prepared by the Government.

Union sources show their rejection of a proposal to reform partial retirement that they consider a “frontal attack.” “There is no sensitivity in the Government to maintain and rejuvenate the workforce”, they explain about the first text. This modality is used in the manufacturing sector, especially in car factories. At first they consider the proposal “harmful, dangerous and irresponsible.”

A disincentive to advance payment

The maximum objective pursued in the current pension reform is to generalize the progressive exit from the labor market, improve the number of employed people with longer and more comfortable careers in the years before retirement. To mitigate the financial impact of early retirements, those that occur before the ordinary retirement age of 65 years, want to avoid the premature loss of the workforce.

The Government has launched this first lure that, in the perception of the members of the social dialogue, tries to discourage early retirement by tightening conditions. “It is a way of trying to eliminate this resource that is good for productivity, for employment, activity and the rejuvenation of staff,” these same sources criticize. The experts consulted point in the same direction: the proposal takes a step back by reducing flexibility for this group.

Among other conditions put on the table, the Government requires that there be planning for early or premature departures through the sector’s collective agreement. Likewise, it establishes as a condition that the company has a workforce with a majority of permanent contracts (85%).