“without a moratorium, 9 out of 10 women will not be able to retire”

The Welfare and Social Security Commission of the Chamber of Deputies This Wednesday, an informative meeting was held on the “Pension Debt Payment Plan”, with the presence of guests and specialists on the subject. With the moratorium law expired on December 31, which leaves some 800,000 people unable to retire in the next two years and which was not extended, the sanction of a new law promoted by the ruling party is being debated, which did not obtain a quorum from the opposition of Juntos in the December sessions.

The economist, columnist for The Left Daily and university professor, Lucia Ortegaexposed together with the deputies Nicholas Del Caño y Myriam Bregman and stated that “a pension moratorium is important because between 800,000 and one million people who will reach retirement age in the next two years (60 years for women and 65 for men) will not be able to retire. 80% of those people are women.“.

“Without a moratorium, they will only have the PUAM, which is barely 80% of the minimum amount (today $ 40,099) and without the right to a pension for the death of their spouse. For women, it is in fact an increase in the retirement age up to 65 years ” , he remarked.

“However, this reality is not new, nor will it be solved in two years with a moratorium. Hhere is a more serious and profound problem of our pension system: that of its lack of financing and that of an increasingly precarious world of work“.

“If people about to retire today cannot do so and need a moratorium, it was not by choice, it is because they have worked in the informality or for having been in certain periods unemployed. Also, for having carried out tasks such as cleaning, cooking, caring for children, the sick and the elderly, etc., mostly tasks done by women who were not recognized or paid, but that play a fundamental role in the reproduction of the labor force. These women do not have contributions, not because they did not want to, but because of a patriarchal capitalist system that does not recognize this unpaid work.”

The economist, columnist for @leftdiary and university professor @OrtegaLu_ held his exhibition with @myriambregman y @NicolasdelCano: “There is a capitalist and patriarchal system that does not recognize the unpaid work of thousands of women who do not have contributions” pic.twitter.com/Jqw7p7e0lf

– The Daily Left (@izquierdadiario) February 1, 2023

“Many times we hear arguments such as that the moratoriums are unfair because these people ‘did not contribute.’

“Secondly, because the pension system is financed to a large extent, and increasingly, with tax resources, which today fall mainly on consumption and in a regressive manner on lower-income sectors. Consumption that these people have made, providing resources to the system and yet today they will not be able to see any retribution for it”.

He also noted that a limit of moratoriums is that “they put the burden on the worker, who are made to pay with a discount to his credit for something that is not really his responsibility but that of the companies that frauded him and did not pay his retirement contributions. Even that discount was hidden behind the lower wages received for not being registered.”

And he added that “now the idea that years of contributions are ‘bought’ is redoubled, distorting the essence of a distribution and solidarity systemnot only discounting a part of the salary for retirees, but requiring workers close to retirement to also start “buying” contribution periods in advance, in addition to the ordinary discount that is made in their salaries”.

Among other of the points mentioned, he noted that “the moratoriums are incorporating “periods to declare”, but if these are not updated they lose their effect, and more and more people begin to be left out of the possibility of reaching 30 years of contributions For example, in the bill that already has an opinion, the limit period is raised from 2003 to 2008, so a woman who turns 60 in 2023 and was never registered will not be able to retire either, since she will be able to declare up to 27 periods”.

He also highlighted that people who are now of retirement age began to enter the labor market when they turned 18 between 1976 and 1983, when the last civic-military dictatorship that raised the unemployment floor and destroyed 40% of the purchasing power of wages . “It is minimally unfair to say that they are not deserving of a retirement because they ‘did not contribute’. Or even worse, that 0.3 points of GDP cannot be allocated to their retirement because fiscal goals with the International Monetary Fund must be met” .

“In fact, in 2022 indeed the fiscal deficit goal with the IMF was exceeded and this was achieved thanks to a cut in the spending on retirement and pensions that fell from 8% to 7.7% of GDP“.

In another aspect, he pointed out that the context of this discussion is a global agenda with clear guidelines from international organizations to move pension systems towards a kind of universal coverage of very low salaries, among other changes that are resisted and repudiated by the majority, “For example, in France, where almost 3 million people demonstrated yesterday to reject the attempt to increase the retirement age.”

The treatment of this subject is part of a serious crisis of insufficient pension assets and loss of purchasing power. In the first case, because 91% of retirements and pensions are below the value of the Basket for the Third Age. “The debate cannot end between poverty retirement or no retirement, but how to guarantee that at least the needs of retirees are covered.”

Likewise, regarding the loss of purchasing power of assets, it indicated that “in the last five years the real value of retirement and pensions deteriorated between 24% and 30%. More specifically, after the suspension of pension mobility in 2020 and the new retirement formula for 2021, the minimum salaries collapsed by 11% in the last three years, reaching a loss of 18% for the maximum salaries. In other words, with the new pension mobility, they continued to lose and that is the product of having refused to incorporate a floor that guarantees that the retirement adjustment can never be less than inflation.”

Finally, in the presentation it was indicated that the idea that pensions cannot be raised for a Budget constraint“because the lack of financing of the system is not questioned, which is explained not only by the labor fraud that we mentioned before, the growth of the monotax, among others, but also in the permanent subsidies and tax benefits to companies. Or the lack of financing due to the reduction of Cavallo’s employer contributions that were never repaid”.

“While the moratorium was expiring and there is a debate on whether or not a new moratorium is pertinent, if there are resources or not, other moratoriums are applied without further ado: such as those made by the AFIP to companies that owe taxes such as Profits, or grant them tax laundering laws to the companies that fled”.

A pension moratorium is necessary and urgent today. But this only is insufficient without also addressing a discussion of how to raise system resources how to apply a true labor laundering, how to recompose the assets and restore the mobile 82%, among other urgent problems”.