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The government’s joke on pensions

6 months ago babelfish

The government's joke on pensions

The new financial law provides for the cut in the rates of return for the calculation of the salary quota for pensioners who started working between 1981 and 1995 and who have a salary pension quota for less than 15 years. The (critical) intervention by Michele Poerio, general secretary of Confedir and national president of Federspev

After the slap in the face of the 2023 Budget (cutting the revaluation of pensions for the middle class and managerial categories), the text of the finance law for 2024 arrives in the Senate which provides for a resounding blow that frankly we did not expect (art. 33).

We realize that the current crisis in the Middle East, the continuation of the war in Ukraine, the International Monetary Fund's estimates of our GDP growth at 0.7% for the current year and 0.5% for the next and major natural disasters will certainly have a negative impact on our economy. And if we add to all this the return to the Stability Pact (even if attenuated), after the two years of suspension due to Covid, the situation will not be very happy.

Nonetheless, the Budget is not among the worst and contains various positive elements, but the Government's persecutory attitude towards pensioners who have already suffered (for 14 of the last 17 years) cuts in equalization and various solidarity contributions is unacceptable, just as the underfunding of healthcare which we will talk about elsewhere is unacceptable. Let us only remember that the defunding of the NHS stands at 6.6% of GDP and in the next two years it is expected that it will fall to 6.1% (compared to 11% in Germany, 10% in France and 9.3% in Great Britain).

One gets the impression that the "whole" Government is fully committed to penalizing the middle and managerial class, even though it is represented by over 5 million potentially voting citizens, and truly supporters of over 60% of the entire IRPEF.

The cut in the revaluation of pensions envisaged by the 2023 Budget provides the Treasury with over 3.5 billion and in 10 years will cause damage of 13-15 thousand to 120 thousand euros for pensions from 2,600 to 10,000 euros gross monthly and clearly higher for higher pensions.

In the 2024 Budget the penalties will be greater as we will highlight below.

What political criterion could the government have suggested to the "whole" government to restore (just one year after the Draghi government's recovery of the best "branch" indexation criterion) other than to use "medium-high" pensions as ATMs for " contributions" of a welfare nature that must be supported by general taxation?

WHAT COULD CHANGE FOR PENSIONS

The aforementioned article 33 of the 2024 Budget also increases the theft against pensioners by providing for a cut in the rates of return for the calculation of the salary quota for pensioners who have already started working between 1981 and 1995 (i.e. before the entry into force of the Dini law) and who have a salary pension quota of less than 15 years.

These are worsening changes that affect over 700,000 public pensioners and only some social security funds that merged first into INPDAP and then into INPS.

Precisely the social security fund for employees of local authorities (Cpdel), the fund for kindergarten and primary school teachers (Cpi), the fund for bailiffs (Cpug) and the health pension fund (Cps). I like to remind all politicians that the health pension fund (doctors, etc.) was the richest of all the other social security institutions thanks to the high contribution (33% of the salary compared to 23-25% of the other funds) and the at the time of its absorption by INPS it had over 14 thousand billion lire in assets and 40 thousand properties owned, money which was used to plug the holes of INPS and other coffers.

If this article is not eliminated, the cuts could be very heavy:

  • for an old-age pension of €30-35 thousand gross per year, there may be a cut of around €500 which, projected onto the average life expectancy, achieves a missed increase of over 71 thousand euros;
  • for a pension of €40 thousand the cut can be over €5,500 per year which would reach over €95 thousand if projected onto the average life expectancy;
  • for a pension of €50 thousand the cut would amount to over €7,000 per year with an overall loss of over €120 thousand. And off you go…

For doctors hired between 1981 and 1995 the loss varies between 5 and 25% of the entire pension. Which will lead to their further escape from the NHS.

But it doesn't end here, this would not be the only mockery aimed at this category because the revaluation rates would also be used to calculate the cost of redemptions such as the years of graduation, a redemption which currently costs less than €20 thousand but which with the new rule would rise to over €66 thousand. And these unfortunate people will always have to wait much longer to receive the settlement.

The savings that the Government will achieve with this trick (without candy, given that we are on Halloween) is around 8 billion and coincidentally the cost of the next contract renewal for public employees would amount to 7.3 billion.

What are we authorized to think, without the need to make conspiracy theories other than that the Government gives with one hand and takes away with the other?

The medical unions are already on a war footing having proclaimed a state of unrest and a strike in December.

But it seems that the Government, having realized the danger of a possible flight from the NHS of 4-5 thousand doctors, is trying to patch things up by hypothesizing to attenuate or eliminate article 33 using a maxi amendment. We know well, however, that patches are often worse than holes.

We as CONFEDIR, FEDER.SPeV. and Aps Leonida we have already reacted at a legal level at national and European level to protect our pensions and our pensioners so grossly penalized by the 2023 Budget and we will still react against the new penalties contained in the 2024 Budget.

We say to the Government that we are always available for any discussion and in-depth analysis but we strongly add: hands off the pockets of pensioners!

We are tired of being the perennial St. Patrick's well of all the Governments (with the exception of the Draghi Government) that have followed one another over the last 30 years!

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/legge-bilancio-2024-pensioni/ on Sat, 04 Nov 2023 07:27:49 +0000.