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The Minister of Labor and Social Affairs, Torbjørn Røe Isaksen (H), should have blushed when he presented this year’s social security agreement. For the fifth time in the last six years, the country’s pensioners have seen their purchasing power reduced.
The arrangement for the wage earners was not a party either.
Read also: No, pensioners will not have less to do for the fifth time in six years
But it won LO with its main demand to ensure the growth of the real wage of employees. The same should not apply to pensioners. Everyone should have less to worry about.
The leader of the pensioners union, Jan Davidsen, is cursed. It does not accept a system that prevents the country’s pensioners from participating in the development of prosperity on an equal footing with all other groups. Davidsen believes that pensioners will see a real wage reduction of 0.15 percent.
What irritates me and many of the million other pensioners in the country is that the government does not understand that this discrimination against pensioners is a serious social problem. It challenges support for the public pension system and solidarity between generations.
We are facing a political bomb in motion.
Many of us laugh at the Toll Party before local elections. The day after the elections, we no longer laughed. The party or parties that raise the issue of pensions in next year’s elections have many voters to win.
Discrimination entered the system in 2011. At that time, the Stoltenberg government proposed that pensions be regulated according to wage growth, minus 0.75 percent. Disability benefits were excluded. It is regulated by wage growth. In good economic times with strong pay agreements, you have to live with discrimination. In lean years with weaker pay agreements, it is very unfortunate. Then retirees constantly lower real wages.
Now it has gone too far.
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It is unacceptable that the purchasing power of pensioners is reduced for the fifth consecutive year. The government should have presented proposals to eliminate irrationality. It’s not going to happen. Røe Isaken overshadows the course and notes that a committee has been created to evaluate the entire pension system. Otherwise, you will keep the differential treatment.
We cannot expect anything from the Solberg government. In the Storting, the FRP has raised the banner of rebellion. The party voted against when the Storting said yes to irrationality in 2011. FRP understood where it was going. The party must have that. On the other hand, it is deductible that the FRP did not lift a finger to abolish the scheme in the years that the party was in government and had the Minister of Finance.
In the red-green field, people have begun to understand how unreasonable this is. Labor has come up with a new model, which makes it a little better. SV and Sp are at the forefront and will probably come up with something before the elections. There is hope that something positive can happen if there is a new government after next year’s elections.
Discrimination of pensioners in relation to employees is a cost saving measure.
Commentary: “Who is really robbing whom?”
Jens Stoltenberg was good at modeling, but he was also eager to save money. Much of what your government said and did about the pension system makes sense. There is broad agreement that you should pay to work. Perhaps it makes sense that people who retire early are paid less than those who stay longer at work. What is not reasonable is that pensioners as a group should always receive less than employees.
I hear people say that there is no “sin” in retirees.
They are debt free with repaid housing. Most of the retirees are fine. People who have a job to turn to are doing well too. The unemployed are not well. People with a minimum pension are not doing well either. Single minimum pensioners have incomes below the poverty line.
Retirees have homes in which they will live for life. If they don’t have to go to a retirement home.
Then their pension is taken away. Managers in the private business sector may not need the National Insurance contribution when they retire. They get fat pensions and bonuses that insure them for life. They are not representative of today’s retirees. They drop wages when they quit. We cannot accept a system that denies people real wage growth once they have retired.
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