[ad_1]
– 40,000 crowns is a lot of money when you retire. It is quickly money that provides security and freedom. The extra money can allow you to visit your grandchildren more often and pamper yourself with a little more. We must not disappoint our widows and widowers, says Center Party leader Trygve Slagsvold Vedum.
Vedum has been at the think tank for a few weeks as he waits for the government to do what they announced in Dagbladet a month ago: reject the survivor’s pension.
– Survivor benefits come from a time when Norway looked very different and most women were not working. Times have changed and now the number of beneficiaries has more than halved to 17,000 since the 1970s, in a period of strong population growth, said Labor and Social Affairs Minister Torbjørn Røe Isaksen.
– Vedum is misleading the voters
– Even cheaper
The government presented its proposal before the weekend (see fact box at the bottom of the article), but by then Vedum had already concluded: The small insurance that is mainly obtained by the widows of her deceased husband, he will not take.
– Now we must create calm around this, therefore I challenge both Støre and Jensen not to support the government, says Vedum, who reacts to Røe Isaksen’s argument that the scheme should be removed because fewer people are receiving it.
– You can just as easily turn that argument around completely. The fact that fewer and fewer receive the benefit is not an argument to eliminate it for those who actually receive a survivor’s pension. It’s also getting cheaper for society at large, Vedum says.
– Is it not responsible to go through schemes and is it reasonable that you do not receive a pension that you have not earned yourself?
– The ministry’s own figures show fewer and fewer people are using the scheme, and the way it’s calculated means the amounts are also lower, says Vedum, and he continues to make a more protracted attack on the thinking behind scrapping the scheme. :
Siv surprised: – I have to look at this.
Vedum: – standard A4
– They want everyone to follow that A4 rule. There is a very bureaucratic way of thinking behind this. They think that everyone should exactly follow the state’s standardized model, that everyone should work 100 percent, says Vedum and takes a breath.
– Then life is not like that. There can be many reasons why some people choose to work part time. I think we should have a society in which we think is okay. You have to let someone prioritize having a little more time, be it a woman or a man. This is a scheme in which the other spouse has worked and worked their whole life, so it should provide some basic security if one falls, says the SP leader.
Vedum fears that the elimination of the survivor pension in the National Insurance Plan will also create pressure on other schemes and highlights the survivor plan in the public service pension.
– It will probably be said that it is not reasonable that there is such a great difference between those who only have the National Insurance Scheme and those who have a public service pension. This will create pressure in salary negotiations in the future with demands that the public sector occupational pension be more similar to the National Insurance schemes, Vedum warns.
Asheim: – Sin
Torbjørn Røe Isaksen is on leave, and it is Henrik Asheim who has been tasked with the job of submitting the proposal to the Storting.
As is well known, the government does not have a single majority, and with Vedum out of the picture, one of the parties behind the pension agreement will not be in the notes.
– I am optimistic about getting the majority in the Storting. The changes we propose are, frankly, well adapted to today’s society and are a conclusion to the pension reform adopted by the Storting. So we must have a good dialogue with the Storting along the way, Asheim tells Dagbladet.
– What do you think of the fact that the Center Party has already said no to membership?
– I think it’s a shame. I hope all parties look at this with constructive eyes and see what real do. We will not make change for those mentions of Vedum, which today are widows and pensioners. This will be introduced no later than 2023, and the reorganization of the survivors benefit will mainly apply to those who lose their partner and were born in 1971 or later. Instead, they will receive a restructuring benefit for up to five years.
– What are you doing, Erna?
– The important thing in the future is that we will have a pension system that grants individual rights to pensioners. It’s important that both women and men have their own income, regardless of what may happen, Asheim says.
– Breathe with your stomach
The Center Party is rising rapidly in opinion polls and in some of them it is almost on par with the Labor Party. In recent years, they have had the freedom to attack everything and everyone after being out of various settlements with the government, in which the Labor Party was involved.
– Do you think it’s a Vedum tactic?
– I will not interfere in the strategy of the Center Party. I have the experience that there is a large majority in favor of pension reform, and the Center Party was part of the government that took the initiative. Now it seems that Trygve has already left the negotiating room, but we are strengthening benefits for bereaved children, for example, and we have ensured that women receive their own income and pensions, among other things through childcare . I hope that everyone can breathe a sigh of relief, that they actually take the time to read what we suggest and then take a seat at the negotiating table.
