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Government seeks to raise
retirement age to 67
Juan
Francisco Medina, aged 61 |
The
country’s unemployment rate reached 18.83 per cent last month:
in other words, more than 4.3 million out of work
Juan Francisco Medina Builder, 61 says “At this rate I’ll
drop down dead before I get my first pension”
“I’m losing strength, I’m tired. At this rate
I’m going to drop dead before I get my first pension”.
Juan Francisco Medina not only has to bear the typical ailments
of a 61 year old; he also has the ‘scars’ left by a
lifetime on the scaffold, his place of work since he was 16. He
had worked out that he only had 1,300 days left before he could
hang up his trowel and spend his time resting and fishing. July
7th 2013 was when he was due to retire... that is until the Government
announced its plans to raise retirement age to 67 from that very
year. “This measure is ridiculous. It’s fine for people
working in offices to retire at that age but for those of us in
construction it’s crazy. We physically can’t take any
more. This involves too many hours out in all weathers, in the damp,
the heat.. and doing hard work. My waist won’t hold out much
longer”, he explains as he climbs up and down the ladder of
the building he is helping to renovate in Malaga.
Even though he is in charge of one of his firm’s jobs, he
has to help out with everything from shuttering to signing for materials.
He is on the site ready for work before eight o’clock in the
morning and doesn’t finish until six o’clock. “They
should pension us off and give our jobs to the young ones”,
he adds.
Juan Francisco is now hoping that the reform will not mean him having
to work until he is 67.
Celso Almuiña
History Professor, 66
“It’s crazy to disregard experience”
Isabel F. Barbadillo
“Working down a mine or at sea is not the same as sitting
at a desk. With simple and uniform solutions injustice is committed”.
These are the words of the Professor of History and journalist Celso
Almuiña, who at 66 is still teaching at the University of
Valladolid and hopes to continue until he is 70. Other universities
have brought forward retirement age to 65.
Almuiña is in favour of reopening the retirement debate but
differentiating between professions. At 65 a miner might be exhausted
but in the university, medicine or the judiciary the situation is
very different. In these fields professionals start their careers
later because the training is longer. “It would be a terrible
waste of human capital to get rid of professionals with a wealth
of experience”, he adds and criticises some company’s
early retirement programmes.Last Friday the Government approved
a draft bill that would raise the retirement age from 65 to 67,
an idea strongly opposed by the country’s largest labour unions.
The plan aims to “guarantee the sustainability” of the
Spanish retirement system through to the year 2030, Deputy Prime
Minister María Teresa Fernández de la Vega told reporters
after the weekly Cabinet meeting.
She said the higher retirement age would be phased-in gradually,
beginning in 2013 and becoming fully effective in 2025.
Spanish unions greeted the formal announcement with hostility, coming
as it did just hours after the National Statistics Institute said
that Spain’s unemployment rate reached 18.83 per cent last
month, which represents more than 4.3 million people without jobs.
Seizing on the latest jobless figures, the conservative main opposition
Popular Party called the initiative to raise the retirement age
an attempt to distract attention from the increase in the ranks
of the unemployed.
The proposed change “will not affect current pensions,”
Fernández de la Vega said, citing the “challenge”
posed by the aging of the Spanish population.
Government demographers forecast that the number of Spaniards over
the age of 64 will double over the next 40 years, constituting nearly
32 per ent of the total population. By 2049, according to that estimate,
the ratio of workers to retirees and minors will be 10 to nine.
Fernández de la Vega said the government’s bill would
be reviewed by the parliamentary committee named to monitor implementation
of the so-called Toledo Pact, an accord among politicians, business
and labour intended to ensure the long-term viability of the pension
system.
“We will seek the maximum consensus” on the measure,
the deputy premier said.
Joining De la Vega at Friday’s press conference, Economy Minister
Elena Salgado said that while Spain has time to adjust the retirement
age, the process must begin now so as “to do it as gradually
as possible.”
The secretary-general of the UGT, one of Spain’s major unions,
told the press that raising the retirement age will not achieve
the goal of guaranteeing pensions in the long term.
The government plan “implies a cutback of pensions, of their
amount, and a toughening of the conditions of access,“ Candido
Méndez said. “It’s a very controversial measure
that can only be seen as short-term, probably to satisfy the financial
markets, and I don’t know if it will even satisfy those markets.”
The head of the other big labour organisation, Comisiones Obreras,
said his group is adamantly opposed to the “unjust”
proposal.
Conversely, the CEOE business confederation welcomed the government
initiative as the opening of a discussion that is “very important
for society.”
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On trial for keeping payments made
on flats that never existed
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Jesús
Ruiz Casado and his wife face four years in prison for cheating
off-plan property buyers out of more than 600,000 euros
In the courtroom. Aifos owner Jesús Ruiz
Casado and his wife during the trial in Malaga. Álvaro
Cabrera“You sold fresh air instead of homes to honest people
who gave you their life savings in good faith”. These were
the words of the Public Prosecutor on Tuesday in his summing up
of the case against Aifos owner, Jesús Ruiz Casado, and
his wife, María Teresa Maldonado, a joint administrator
in the firm. Both face prison terms of four years, accused of
taking clients’ deposits for properties that were never
built.
“We always intended to build and hand over the properties
and if problems came up we informed clients and tried to provide
a solution”. The developer is accused of cheating around
thirty clients out of 626,000 euros paid towards homes that were
never built. During the trial he denied siphoning off funds into
personal accounts or keeping amounts that clients had paid in
advance for properties in Rincón de la Victoria and Torrox.
Casado’s wife, María Teresa Maldonado, told the court
that her role in the company was limited to decorating show flats
to help sell new developments.
Her husband said that contracts signed between the company and
clients were drawn up by his legal advisors and that he was not
familiar with all the clauses.
The Aifos boss explained that their normal procedure was, first
to buy the land - “always urban”, he stressed - “then
we went to the town hall to present a basic project, we applied
for planning permission and then cleared and prepared the plot
and started to sell”.
“We have never signed a contract if there were planning
problems and if any came up after that, we informed clients, and
gave them their money back or offered an alternative”, he
added in answer to questions from a lawyer representing a group
of victims.
Ruiz Casado went on to say that it was not true that Aifos refused
to guarantee the amounts handed over by clients, arguing that
theirs was a solvent group. “That depended on the client;
guarantees cost money and some weren’t interested”,
he stressed.
According to the public prosecution the company started to market
the developments in question in 2001 via advertising and offers
in which they made “false statements about uncertain characteristics
of the properties to be built”. Sales contracts were drawn
up in August that year and clients paid the agreed amounts in
“the belief” that construction work had started and
that they would be able to move in in 20 months. However the defendants
“had not even got the relevant planning permission from
the local authorities”.
The prosecution explained that buyers had handed over amounts
ranging between 25,906 and 70,433 euros each.
“This is a scandal” announced the public prosecutor
at the end of the trial on Tuesday in order to sum up the behaviour
of the defendants. However he did call for the Aifos bosses to
be sentenced to four years in prison, rather than seven, bearing
in mind the extenuating circumstances that they had compensated
some of the buyers.
He added, though, that any compensation had come after clients
had been put off for a long time and with the “dishonest
proposition” of “take the money but drop the charges”.
Nevertheless he stressed that the fact that they had given some
people their money back did not cancel out any offence because
“the buyer bought properties that never existed. It was
a fraud, a swindle, using properties that were a basic need for
a disabled person and an ill child”, the prosecutor reminded
the court, referring to the personal situation of some of the
affected buyers. “From the beginning you were deceiving
people in a despicable way. The courts are full of claims”,
he added.
“Illicit financing”
Representing a group of the buyers, lawyer Elena Narváez
said that between 2003 and 2005 Aifos developed a commercial policy
that affected around 700 clients due to the firm’s failure
to meet its commitments. “This is the consequence of an
illicit means of financing sustained by deceit”, she concluded.
The lawyer reminded the court that the Aifos administrators had
confirmed that the money handed over by the buyers had not been
put towards the developments in question but had gone into the
firm’s general account.
Aifos is currently in administration and faces some 900 legal
claims for properties. The owner Jesús Ruiz Casado and
three directors also face charges in the Malaya corruption case.
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