Sarkozy to Change Pension Bill, Won't Budge on Retirement Age
Sarkozy to Agree on Some Changes to Pensions Bill
Michele Tantussi/Bloomberg
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, seen here, will modify his pensions-system overhaul bill in response to strikes and demonstrations, said his spokesman.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, seen here, will modify his pensions-system overhaul bill in response to strikes and demonstrations, said his spokesman. Photographer: Michele Tantussi/Bloomberg
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he won’t retreat on raising the retirement age following nationwide protests by workers, agreeing to only some changes for people in physically demanding jobs.
Unions said the modifications aren’t sufficient and said they may call for further strikes to derail the pension overhaul that parliament began debating yesterday.
Protests across France yesterday drew between 1.1 million and 2.7 million people, according to police and unions, making the demonstrations among the biggest in the past two decades.
“We must make sure French people’s pensions and their children’s pensions will be financed,” Sarkozy said today in a statement after the weekly Cabinet meeting in Paris. “I am attentive to the worries that have been voiced,” he said, while calling his proposal “the most reasonable way.”
Sarkozy has vowed not to compromise on the key plank of his pension reform, which would lift the retirement age to 62 from 60. While he agreed to be more flexible in allowing people who started work early in life or in physically demanding jobs to retire before 62, unions including the Confederation Generale du Travail, or CGT, and Force Ouvriere threatened to call another rally on Sept. 18.
People’s Demand
“The scope of this protest is big,” Francois Miquet- Marty, political director of the Paris-based Viavoice pollster, said by telephone. “The French people demand a compromise on the pension reform, but also a change in the way of governing. There is general dissatisfaction with the policies of Sarkozy and his government, and maybe the president will have to carry out his Cabinet shuffle earlier than planned.”
Sarkozy and his top aides have said the Cabinet will be reduced in size in the second half of 2010.
The amendments to the pension bill were presented to parliament today by Labor Minister Eric Woerth, government spokesman Luc Chatel told reporters after the Cabinet meeting.
The main change is that workers need to demonstrate a 10 percent level of incapacity, to be determined by a medical board, to benefit from early retirement, compared with 20 percent in the original bill. The change will triple the number of beneficiaries to 30,000, Sarkozy’s office said. About 700,000 people retire every year in France.
Hardship Jobs
He also called on companies to study ways to put people with physical jobs on part-time work or in training positions at the end of their careers. He also said he’d create a group of experts to study the effect of so-called hardship jobs.
France’s main unions were meeting today at CGT headquarters to decide whether to call for more strikes.
“If the government wants to calm the conflict, it must make concessions on the core of the project: the retirement age,” union UNSA said in a statement, calling the amendments “insufficient.”
The Confederation Francaise Democratique du Travail union called Sakozy’s proposals “home repairs” and said “from all evidence, new strike actions are required.”
Opposition to tighter pension rules sparked extended strikes in 2003 and 2007. In 1995, President Jacques Chirac dropped an attempt to eliminate retirement privileges for transport workers after walkouts crippled the country.
France’s legal retirement age has been 60 since Socialist President Francois Mitterrand cut it from 65 after his 1981 election. Germany decided in 2007 to raise its retirement age gradually to 67 from 65. Spain and Italy have also increased their retirement ages to 65 to address the squeeze of longer life expectancies and declining birth rates.
To contact the reporters on this story: Helene Fouquet in Paris at hfouquet1@bloomberg.net; Gregory Viscusi in Paris at gviscusi@bloomberg.net
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