AK President Stangl: In order to be able to reach the standard retirement age, employees need better working conditions

If companies adapt their personnel policies and employees can actually do their job until they retire, a considerable part of the current personnel requirements will be eliminated

AK President Andreas Stangl

Linz – Some politicians are thinking of radical measures when covering the need for skilled workers: abolish partial retirement, work in retirement, raise the retirement age. Such ideas are impractical and hide the most effective adjustment screw: better working conditions. „If companies adapt their personnel policies and employees can actually do their job until they retire, a considerable part of the current personnel requirements will be eliminated“, AK President Andreas Stangl is convinced.

A smooth transition from working life to retirement – that is what most employees want. For many, however, things are different: illness, unemployment or being “forced” to be inactive due to the care of family members characterize the years before actual retirement and are a burden for those affected. Only two thirds of the more than 78,000 new pensioners in Austria in 2021 came directly from an employment relationship. This means that every third new pensioner was previously unemployed, received a pension advance, sickness or rehabilitation benefit or had insurance gaps.

40 percent believe that they will not reach the standard retirement age

These figures confirm the results of the Working Climate Index. According to this, on average almost 40 percent of employees, in some sectors it is even more than every second person, fear that staying in the job until retirement is (very) unlikely. This applies above all to gastronomy and paper production. But employees are also particularly skeptical in mining, agriculture and forestry, in health and social services and in construction.

You can download a graphic “Holding on until retirement survey” here.

In any case, the primary goal is that those affected are spared years of a stressful, demotivating process in which they are sent back and forth between different institutions under the motto “Too sick for the job market, but too healthy for retirement”. However, AMS, PVA and ÖGK should not shift their responsibility, but work together to develop realistic employment prospects. In addition, employment until retirement has a positive effect on the amount of the pension because additional contribution periods are acquired.

However, if companies continue to hardly appreciate older workers and do not change anything about the stressful working conditions, politics must act: by means of job guarantees, the public sector should offer older unemployed people suitable jobs in the public or non-profit sector and thus ensure a smooth, dignified transition into enable the pension.

The AK therefore demands:

Age(ing) appropriate jobs and better working conditions to maintain the ability to work
a bonus-malus system that promotes the employment of older people: The federal government must create incentives for companies to hire more older unemployed people (or keep older employees) and pay more attention to the issue of workloads.
Retention of the partial retirement model, which enables employees with health restrictions or stressful working conditions to remain in working life until they retire
A job guarantee for older unemployed: The public sector must offer/enable employment for older people willing to work if private companies do not give them a chance.
Those employees who cannot get a job due to health restrictions despite support and funding must be given easier access to invalidity or disability pensions.