The opposition parties PvdA and GroenLinks believe that the cabinet is still taking too little action to increase the number of workers who build up pension. That is why they openly question their support for the government’s proposal to change the pension system. The cabinet needs at least one of these two parties to gain a majority in the Senate.
The bill from Minister Carola Schouten (Pensioen, ChristenUnie) mainly affects the supplementary pensions that salaried employees build up on top of the AOW benefit. Each pension fund now has one joint pension pot. It is cut up into personal jars. In addition, the funds no longer have to build up large financial reserves, so that people see investment profits more quickly in their pension pot, but so do investment losses.
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PvdA and GroenLinks are in themselves positive about this adjustment. They also gave political support to the 2019 pension agreement that resulted in this law – between the previous cabinet, trade unions and employers’ clubs.
But according to both parties, too little has been done with a different agreement from this pension agreement. That the group of employees who do not accrue pension should be reduced. There must be ‘solutions’ for this, the agreement says, ‘before the introduction of the new system’.
“If we continue like this,” said GroenLinks MP Senna Maatoug on Wednesday in a debate about the pension law, “we will not achieve this ambition and target”. PvdA member Henk Nijboer called stronger measures on Monday, in an earlier debate, “a hard demand”.
‘Social disaster’
About 1.7 million workers do not build up supplementary pension. Almost half of them are self-employed. The other half are salaried employees. About 1 in 8 of the latter group does not build up a pension, according to CBS figures for 2019 – the most recent. These are mainly young employees: half are less than 35 years old. Temporary workers are also overrepresented. „This is a social disaster in the making”, Maatoug said on Monday.
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Minister Schouten believes that it is up to employers and trade unions themselves to reduce the group without pension accrual. “It’s a condition of employment,” she said Monday. That is why she has asked the trade unions and employers’ clubs to come up with additional measures – and to announce them within a few days.
Two years ago, employers’ clubs and trade unions presented a “plan of attack”. The most concrete result of this is that temporary workers now start to build up pension after eight weeks. Until recently, that build-up only started after six months. There were also less drastic measures to raise ‘awareness’ and lower ‘barriers’.
No pension obligation
PvdA and GroenLinks want more than a new plan of attack. Both parties would have liked all employers to be obliged to offer a good pension scheme to their staff, but they know that this is politically unfeasible.
That is why they are now asking for a hard target, preferably in the law. This must state by what percentage employers and unions will reduce the number of workers without pension accrual in the coming years. And: that the government intervenes if that goal is not achieved.
The question is whether Schouten wants to go along with this, because until now she has always rejected government intervention. At the same time, it is questionable whether PvdA and GroenLinks will vote against if they thereby block the complete pension reform. GroenLinks was the strongest on this. “This part is extremely important for the weighting that my group makes,” Maatoug said on Wednesday. “I don’t think what’s here is good enough.”
The House of Representatives will discuss the pension law next week.