ZSP to Campaign against Raising the Retirement Age

The ZSP-IWA has initiated a campaign against pension reform in Poland. The government has announced its intention to start raising the retirement age beginning in 2013, also eliminating early retirement options for certain categories of workers.

We criticize both these plans and the existing pension system, which is highly dependent on financial speculation and which currently provides pensions which put most retired people in dire poverty.


Among the problems that we also point out is that fact that employers are allowed to make much smaller contributions for workers on trash contracts, many of which are forced on such contracts in violation of the provisions of the labour code. Employers save big on these contributions but workers will wind up with lower pensions and are now being told by the government that, unless we all work until 67, our pensions will be too low. We also note that the high amount of workers in emigration paying their pensions into other countries is having a heavy toll and this is ultimately a problem of high regional unemployment and poor wages in most of Poland.

The ZSP will be supporting calls for a public referendum on this issue, criticizes the government´s disinformation campaign on the issue of pensions and public finance in general and call on people to take action against these changes. We also criticize the main unions for not taking sufficient action on this issue and encourage people to push for a general strike, organized outside of the control of the union leadership.