There are two objectives that are reflected in the latest proposals of the Ministry of Inclusion and Social Security on how to make work and pension compatible. On the one hand, to reduce expenses in the administration, and on the other, to promote the extension of working careers. This is what the document New regulatory framework for the compatibility of work and pension, which La Vanguardia advanced on Tuesday and which has provoked an opposite reaction from both unions and employers, proposes.
The ministry does not hide its intentions. It aims to avoid premature exit from the labor market, preserve the financial balance of the system and extend the compatibility of the pension with work from the ordinary retirement age. Objectives more or less shared by social agents, but not through the paths that are proposed. Inclusion adds difficulties to access to early partial retirement and, as regards active retirement, once the ordinary retirement age has been reached, the step to retirement will have to be delayed five years for combine the salary with the total pension. In previous years, a progressive percentage of pay will be charged.
"These are senseless restrictions. We put in more regulation, exactly the opposite of what most countries are doing, which are moving towards full compatibility between work and pension", says Sergi Jiménez, Professor of Economics and researcher at Fedea. He is one of the authors of the report that this think tank published in February in which he claims that the salary should be immediately compatible with the collection of the entire pension, and that the only limitation is that, from at that time, the worker no longer has severance pay.
It is not the line chosen by Inclusio, which fears the effects on the Social Security coffers of too permissive conditions. Thus, what it establishes is a progressive process, so that, once retirement age is reached, there will be a gradual compatibility of the pension with the salary. Specifically, after one year of delay, 30% of the pension will be received, which will increase to 40% after two years, to 50% after three, to 75% after four years and finally to 100% once five years have passed.
This is combined with two improvements. On the one hand, it is compatible with the delay supplement, which establishes the gradual increase of 4% of the pension for each year of delay in leaving the labor market, with the possibility of opting for the payment of a single premium . And on the other hand, it will no longer be necessary to accredit a full contribution career.
There is also an important novelty for the self-employed, who lose one of the options they used to enjoy. Currently, if they have a dependent worker, they can collect their full salary with the full pension. This disappears with the proposal.
The other big change proposed by Inclusio refers to early partial retirement. That is to say, when, before reaching the normal retirement age, working hours are reduced and supplemented by a new worker who joins the labor market, the relief worker.
In the case of the manufacturing industry, the maximum for advancing retirement with respect to the legal age is reduced to three years (previously it was four), and the reduction of working hours is limited to 50% in the case of an anticipation of three years In addition, reduction coefficients are applied and the pension is not recalculated once the worker reaches full retirement. On the other hand, there are new conditions such as the fact that the company that applies it has 85% indefinite contracts.
For partial early retirement in sectors other than manufacturing, retirement can be brought forward two years, and there is some change regarding access, both for the worker who joins, with some improvements, and for the partial retiree, on their contribution period.
"What has been done now is to become aware of a problem. We are late compared to other countries - says Elisa Chuliá, researcher at Funcas, and professor at UNED. The problem is twofold. On the one hand, financial sustainability, and this is partly solved by delaying the exit from the labor market, and on the other, the need to have a workforce”. He also adds that "basically there is a change in mentality. It used to be believed that a person who continued to work beyond retirement age was removing a place for those who wanted to enter the labor market. It seems that this is changing little by little."
For his part, Sergi Jiménez, from Fedea, insists that flexibility needs to be enhanced and not restricted. "You shouldn't obsess over the Social Security deficit, you won't win or lose much. But you can gain or lose a lot in terms of social welfare," he says.
