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March 2023

Macron puts his government at risk with decision to raise the retirement age in France

French President Emmanuel Macron imposed a highly unpopular bill raising the retirement age from 62 to 64 on Thursday by shunning parliament and invoking a special constitutional power. Lawmakers were shouting, their voices shaking with emotion as Macron made the risky move, which is expected to trigger quick motions of no-confidence in his government. Riot police vans zoomed by outside the National Assembly, their sirens wailing. The proposed pension changes have prompted major strikes and protests across the country since January....

UK abolishes tax threshold on pension allowance to encourage people to work longer

British finance minister Jeremy Hunt on Wednesday said he would abolish the tax thresholds high earners face when they invest in pensions, in a bid to encourage them to keep working and reduce the number of people taking early retirement. Hunt said in his annual budget that he would scrap the so-called lifetime allowance, which had meant that people faced a 25% levy if they saved around 1.1 million pounds ($1.33 million)in their pension pots. The capped amount of money that...

China to raise retirement age to deal with aging population – media

China is planning to raise its retirement age gradually and in phases to cope with the country's rapidly aging population, the state-backed Global Times said on Tuesday, citing a senior expert from China's Ministry of Human Resources. Jin Weigang, president of the Chinese Academy of Labor and Social Security Sciences, said China was eyeing a "progressive, flexible and differentiated path to raising the retirement age", meaning that it would be delayed initially by a few months, which would be subsequently...

GOP lawmaker says US should consider raising retirement age for future Social Security beneficiaries

Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina said Sunday that raising the retirement age for future Social Security beneficiaries should be “on the table” as long as it doesn’t affect “anybody that’s heading into retirement right now.” “I think that’s something that has to be on the table, we have to look at,” Mace told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on “State of the Union” when asked about Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley’s call for a higher retirement age for Americans who...

French Senate votes to raise retirement age from 62 to 64 amid nationwide strikes

France's Senate voted Thursday to raise the retirement age by two years to 64, as the government moves to overhaul the country's pensions system in the face of strong opposition from labour unions. The conservative-dominated legislative body voted in favour of a decisive article to raise the age of retirement by 201 votes to 115. Debate will resume later on Thursday over a controversial amendment to the bill. The Senate majority is rushing to meet a deadline of midnight Sunday to finalise...

Reverse SSNIT policy that disqualifies persons aged 60 from contributing to scheme – ACRR petitions NPRA

The Africa Centre for Retirement Research (ACRR) has petitioned the National Pensions Regulatory Authority (NPRA) to reverse the Social Security and National Insurance Scheme (SSNIT) policy that disqualifies members aged 60 and above from contributing to the scheme. The group in a statement dated March 7 noted that if the policy is not reversed, “it will adversely and significantly affect the retirement wellbeing of over 11,000 workers and even more in the future.” This comes after SSNIT issued a policy directive...

February 2023

The rise of elderly workers: The Europeans defying retirement norms and working past the age of 70

While trade unions are mobilising in France to defend retirement at 62, throughout the European Union, men and women are working beyond the age of 65 or even 75. Who are they? The official statistics draw the average picture of a self-employed man aged between 65 and 69, working rather part-time in the health or social sector. But this average situation obviously overlooks the nuances from country to country. In which EU countries do people work beyond the age of 65? Firstly, it’s...

Test case could land Indigenous Australians early age pension

A legal test case could result in Indigenous Australians accessing age pension payments three years early, as a Wakka Wakka elder argues he should qualify sooner because his life expectancy is lower. Dennis James Fisher’s legal team, led by Ron Merkel, KC, argue Indigenous men such as their client, who was born in 1957, do not have the same opportunity to retire and receive the same age-pension support as other Australians. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show that in 2015–17, the...

French workers bring Paris to a standstill in second mass strike over pension reforms

French schools and transportation networks were heavily disrupted Tuesday for the second time this month, as unions staged another mass strike against government plans to raise the retirement age for most workers. Unions and opposition parties called for people to protest in major cities, hoping for a repeat of the first major demonstration against the plans on January 19, when more than 1 million people took part. Strikes that day brought the transportation network to a standstill and shuttered the...

January 2023

France faces second wave of strikes in protest against pension reform

France is bracing for another day of mass protests and strikes on Tuesday over proposed pension reforms championed by President Emmanuel Macron. The government and the political opposition continue to trade blame for the expected disruption in schools, the fuel distribution sector and public transport. An estimated 1.1 million people took to the streets for the first strike day on 19 January, according to official statistics. That was the biggest demonstration since the last major round of pension reform under...