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68 is too late

Unite, PCS and the NUT have combined to launch a great campaign against a higher and escalating retirement age. Please do watch the excellent video and sign the petition. The three central tenets of the campaign are:

  • We will retire into ill health.
  • They want our children to work to 80.
  • Our young people will end up on the scrapheap.

There is a strong relationship between income level and healthy life expectancy. The poorer you are the lower your healthy life expectancy after age 65. The most deprived 40% of the population – around four million people – spend on average 25-30% of their retirement with a serious health problem, and 45% with a disability.

Even 68 will be the highest state pension age in Europe — Francois Hollande, has promised to reduce the pension age from 62 to 60 for many workers — but it will rise from there. According to the Daily Mail, babies born today won’t retire until the age of 77 and their children will work into their 80s.

There are more than one million young people out of work. If we don’t free up jobs for these people we risk abandoning a generation to worklessness, but the increases in pension age will mean more older people in the workforce and fewer young.

YouGov have done a survey (poll results are available to download here) for the campaign which has revealed:

  • 77% of people think it is unfair that Britain is set to have the highest retirement age in Europe.
  • 62% of people think the change in pension age will hit the poorest hardest.
  • People are concerned that youth unemployment will increase as older people stay in the workforce.

For further information, visit 68 is too late.

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