Government to raise retirement age for women and men

Poland’s new government, formed in November 2011, plans several important reforms, including raising the retirement age from 65 for men and 60 for women to 67 for both. The reform is to be introduced gradually from 2013. Trade unions strongly oppose the government’s pension proposals, but employer organisations are likely to support them. All the social partners are angry, however, about the government’s plan to introduce such important reforms without consultation.

Prime Minister announces unpopular decision

In what he termed an ‘unpopular but necessary’ move, Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced on 14 February his decision to raise the retirement age of both women and men to 67 years. The current retirement age is 60 years for women and 65 years for men. Mr Tusk became prime minister for the second time after his party, the Civic Platform (PO), formed a government with its previous coalition partner, the Polish People’s Party (PSL), following the October 2011 parliamentary elections. Raising the retirement age is one of the most important reforms that the new government plans to introduce (PL1112019I).

The government wants to gradually raise the retirement age starting from 2013. Every four months the retirement age will be rise by one month (in other words, rising by a total of three months every year). In this way the target retirement age of 67 will be reached by 2020 for men, and 2040 for women. The Prime Minister emphasises that the reform is to safeguard public finances.

A draft of the legislation introducing the reform will be sent to parliament in the first quarter of 2012. No form of public consultation has been launched.

Trade unions oppose proposal

Trade unions are unanimously against raising the retirement age and have protested at the lack of public consultation. Solidarność is campaigning against the proposal and wants a referendum on retaining the current retirement system. Solidarność members have collected more than 700,000 signatures supporting its demand and will submit these to parliament. It says such crucial changes must not be introduced so quickly without consultation. Piotr Duda, Chair of Solidarność, accuses the prime minister of including this issue in his policy address to please the international credit rating agencies. Solidarność says the government should concentrate on society-friendly methods of securing public finance. These include increasing the employment rate, ensuring stable growth of wages and standardising the way pension contributions are made to the system.

The All-Poland Alliance of Trade Unions (OPZZ) has proposed alternative legislation to reform the pension system. The draft was submitted to the previous parliament before the general election, but its proposal that retirement age should be based on seniority rather than age has not yet been considered. OPZZ suggests that workers should be able to retire after 35 years of work for women, and 40 years for men. Jan Guz, Chair of OPZZ, says retirement age cannot be raised from 2013 onwards because talks between the social partners and government must take place first.

Employer organisations support reform

Although employer organisations do not comment in the media on government plans, it is well known that they support raising the retirement age. However, employers are not openly supporting the government at the moment because of their concerns over the lack of social dialogue (PL1112019I).

Commentary

The Polish Government seems confident that legislation to raise the statutory retirement age will be accepted by parliament, and implemented regardless of social moods and trade union reactions. Harsh reforms are best introduced at the start of a term of office, and it seems the coalition government wants to take advantage of that. However, the disregard for social partners is a worrying trend. Social dialogue is becoming weaker, while government is becoming more autonomous and introducing important reforms unilaterally. As a result, the conflict between government and trade unions is likely to escalate.

Ewelina Kuzmicz, Instytut Spraw Publicznych