In recent days, another attack on the already precarious balance of the pension system has taken place. While negotiations with the Government on the so-called Phase Two are underway, the trade union organizations - which are negotiating with the Government and are preparing to promote mobilization initiatives in support of their claims - have received surprising and unexpected help from two important parliamentary exponents, former ministers, now presidents of the Labor Commissions and, above all, very authoritative, for their skills and experience.
Let's talk, for those who haven't figured it out yet, about Cesare Damiano and Maurizio Sacconi. The two don't love each other and probably don't even respect each other. As ministers they have always persisted in changing the provisions that the other had passed. However the unpredictable happens, Margaret Thatcher used to say. So the brothers-knives of labor policy one day left everyone speechless, issuing a joint statement with the same "distinction" that characterized the final acts of the US-USSR meetings during the "Cold War". Let's read together this masterpiece of diplomacy, defined by the two presidents and entitled: "Appeal for a more gradual retirement age".
"Although starting from different approaches to the structure of the social security system - they write - we share the need for a structural postponement of the adjustment of the retirement age to life expectancy, which otherwise would bring it to 67 years starting from 2019, at least in terms such as to introduce a greater gradualness. The Fornero maneuver did not actually envisage a real transition whereby people who were already close to retirement age at the time of its approval had their working age extended to six years. Beyond the possibility of 'social' or onerous advance payments – continues the note – the Italian system is already characterized by the global primacy of the retirement age. Without prejudice to long-term sustainability objectives, a little common sense would help society regain confidence in the social security system, starting with young people. In this sense, we appeal to colleagues from all parliamentary groups as well as to the Government and in the next few days we will convene a press conference to illustrate the reasons and contents of our initiative”.
As announced, the meeting with journalists took place, even with a good response from the media, which are always ready to support the reasons attributed to pensioners, considered juris et de jure the poor part of the country, even if the official data deny sensationally this commonplace.
Especially since - with regard to an alleged failed transition - eight safeguards have been launched (for a cost of 11,7 billion when fully operational) in order to guarantee the maintenance of the old rules for an inexhaustible number of applicants. The eighth intervention operates essentially through the increase of the contingents of categories already subject to previous safeguards, through the extension of the term (from 36 to 84 months following the entry into force of the pension reform) within which the subjects must accrue the old requirements. The safeguard is aimed at guaranteeing access to social security treatment with the old requirements to a maximum of a further 27.700 subjects, bringing the numerical limit of the safeguarded subjects to a total of just over 200.000 beneficiaries.
The eighth safeguard intended to definitively conclude the transition process towards the new requirements established by the 2011 pension reform, ordering the suppression of the so-called. Redundancy fund established in 2012 and the consequent use of the residual resources contained therein to help finance the pension interventions envisaged by the budget law (but the redundancy bands are already on the move to obtain a ninth one, with the support of the trade unions ). The Parliamentary Budget Office (UPB) has warned, in a recent dossier, against the forcing that is being done in the field of pensions. In particular, the Upb points out that, with the eighth safeguard for expatriates, the logic and purpose of the measure have changed.
"Beyond the functional details, a consideration of a general nature emerges", recall the Upb. “Up to now, the exceptions to the 'Fornero' reform have all been conveyed by annual or infra-annual safeguards, aimed exclusively at the past, i.e. at groups of workers who, different as regards other requirements, in 2011 all shared a sufficient proximity to the retirement. From safeguard to safeguard, this common requirement has expanded, and the eighth safeguard has come to include those who, with the old rules, would have seen their pension start within 7 years of the entry into force of the 'Fornero' reform (6 January 2019 )”.
It hardly needs to be recalled that the automatic link to life expectancy was not introduced by the Fornero reform, but is the result of the action of the centre-right government and two ministers of the time: Giulio Tremonti and... Maurizio himself Sacconi who is now asking for "a structural postponement" of the automatic application of the link to life expectancy which would bring the age requirement to 67 starting from 2019. In this regard it should be remembered that the new "step" is not a son of guilt or a whim of fate, but the consequence of a legal provision which, in the first application, limited, in 2013, the elevation of the requirement to three months; later, the 4 months were added in 2016.
The tactic used by Damiano and Sacconi has already been tested on other occasions (even if they ensure that they are only interested in a quickdraw and not in overcoming the hook). As usual, it starts with a postponement and ends with the abolition of a rule considered inconvenient. It was so much with the rule that provided for a slight economic penalty in the event of early retirement before the age of 62, even going so far as to return the stolen goods to those few workers to whom the rule had been applied; what with the harmonization of the contribution - with that of employees - for members of the separate management.
It is no coincidence that the president Tito Boeri, in a lucid, honest and courageous interview, given to Davide Colombo in Il Sole 24 Ore, highlights the risk that even a retroactive deconstruction may begin: "We think - says the president - to the generations who have experienced these adjustments (...)" or "took the female option in the expectation that there would be an increase in the requirements of 2019 and suffered a penalty". It is plausible, according to Boeri, that in the face of a changing situation, these subjects would organize themselves to obtain compensation. And they would find ''a political market ready to welcome their protests, a market in which the same protagonists who today are asking for the blocking of automatic adjustments have been operating for years''.
In the interview, Boeri helps to debunk several "urban legends" that circulate when it comes to pensions. The first concerns the bogeyman of 67 years, as if all Italians were forced to go into retirement no earlier than that age. To support such a thesis, it would be necessary at least to find an Italian or an Italian woman who, in recent years, has really retired at 67 years of age or so. Obviously, ours is a paradox, but it has a foundation of truth if we look not at the legal age but at the effective age at the start of retirement, which, according to Boeri - who cites a figure from 2014 - is 62 years. It is therefore a lie to say that ours are the strictest requirements in Europe, because if you look at the age at which people actually retire, we are below the European average and Germany's 64 years.
If desired, it is possible - thanks to the data of the INPS Actuarial Coordination - to know the effective average age referred to the flows of old-age benefits provided in 2016, with regard to the main private schemes of employees and self-employed workers: the average age at the was equal to 66 years (66,8 men and 65,1 women). The data change by a few decimal points in the first two months of the current year. It should be remembered that, in the case of old age, the equalization of genders, already initiated by the last Berlusconi government and accelerated by the 2011 law, has a great impact. So much so that, compared to then, the average age at the start for males has grown by 0,9 3,7 years, while it was XNUMX years for women.
The trend of early/retirement pensions is different. From 2012 (when the "cursed" Fornero reform came into force) until February of this year, more than 600 early pensions were paid, against 450 old-age benefits. And at what average age did the coveted threshold cross in advance? In 2016 at 60,7 years (overall figure for men and women of all the managements considered: 61,1 for the former and 59,8 for the latter); two decimal places more in the first months of 2017. Even more reduced (and therefore generous) are the data on the effective retirement age in the employee pension fund.
Here, then, is the greater burden the blockade would entail: 141 billion in more spending between now and 2035 (and an increase of 200 pensions a year) which would add to the political effects determined by the "dismantling of a reform (...) that we have 'sold ' all over the world as sustainable because it is based on automatic adjustments to longevity”: automatisms which, among other things, remove matter from the discretion of politics.
It is also of great interest to note that Boeri is rethinking another cliché that has raged in the debate for a long time: has the increase in the retirement age taken away space for youth employment? “The stop to new hires – Boeri points out with reference to the situation in which the reform was launched in 2011 – was inevitable (…) now the demand for labor is growing more than the entire economy. So you can't make a comparison between the two moments - he concludes - we are light years away ". Welcome back among us, Tito.
