The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, announced this Wednesday an agreement with unions and employers on pensions and social security. “It is a very positive agreement, which strengthens our public system and makes it fairer for millions of workers and pensioners,” he said during his review of the political year. “This is the Government of agreements, since I became president, 21 have been signed with social agents,” he claimed.
The objective of the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, which is in charge of this matter, and the agents of social dialogue, CCOO, UGT, CEOE and Cepyme, was to close this negotiation, which has been going on since last December, throughout July. Both the trade unions and the employers’ association worked hard throughout yesterday to meet this goal.
Specifically, the agreement covers changes in early retirement, establishes a regulation to recognise reduction coefficients for retirement age in arduous or dangerous activities and sets out the parameters for collaboration with mutual insurance companies for trauma leave.
“We are improving the compatibility of pensions with work and, with them, we are guaranteeing the transition to a flexible retirement adapted to each person,” said Sánchez. The agreement reached, according to the President of the Government, will also allow “better use of the resources of the mutual insurance companies” and “regulate access to retirement for particularly hard, dangerous and risky professions.”
For months, the social partners and the Executive have been addressing the issues that had been left pending in the last pension reform, which had been committed to before June 30, 2023, but which was left pending with the early elections, and with which the unions intended to correct some harmful aspects of the regulatory changes that the Popular Party imposed in 2013. “The agreement reached today is of utmost importance for pensioners of today and of the future and for the challenges of our labor market, since it ends the dichotomy between workers and pensioners and adapts to the needs of each person,” said Minister Elma Saiz.
Among the new features incorporated in the agreement is the extension from 2 to 3 years of the advance payment for requesting partial retirement with a replacement contract, with the requirements of 33 years of contributions and 6 years of seniority in the company. In the case of the manufacturing industry, the current regulations are maintained until the end of 2029. In addition, the conditions of the replacement worker are improved, a demand of the unions. With the new regulations, their contract will have to be indefinite, full-time and in a non-amortizable position.
As for delayed retirement, those who choose this option will receive an additional 2% increase in their future pension every six months and not a 4% increase every year, as is currently the case, and it is compatible with active retirement, for which the requirement of having a full contribution career is eliminated. In addition, the agreement includes measures such as the recovery of the 1.5 multiplier coefficient to improve the contribution periods of people with fixed-discontinuous contracts.
“This agreement allows us to maintain partial retirement, the replacement contract, both for workers in the manufacturing sector, who already had it, and for the rest, who will see the time to access it reduced by one year,” said the Secretary General of UGT, Pepe Álvarez, who highlighted the changes in the matter of reduction coefficients for retirement, which “allow progress so that people who are in difficulties can access this coefficient that allows them to bring forward their retirement age.”
“It improves all the compatibility formulas between pension and employment, both at ages prior to ordinary retirement, as well as at later ages,” said the Secretary of Public Policies and Social Protection of CCOO and union negotiator, Carlos Bravo, who indicated that “the gradual and flexible retirement model is being deepened” and “the last element that was pending from the 2013 reform of the Popular Party, which was based on the reduction of rights, is being corrected.”
The employers’ association, for its part, has pointed out that the agreement “modernises the retirement framework in Spain” and “ratifies the value of social dialogue as a key instrument for achieving stable, broad and long-lasting agreements, for the benefit of all citizens.”
Source: www.eldiario.es
