It was certainly a shock for thousands of Greek pensioners: beginning of august they saw their supplementary pensions to have undergone cuts from 21% up to 46%.
Affected are 311,680 pensioners receiving pensions from 11 pension funds.
The 3. bailout and the Pensions Reforms provided that if the sum of main and supplementary pension exceeds 1,300 euro gross, the supplementary pension has to be cut.
The second wave of cuts to be implemented as of September will affect another 924,345 pensioners belonging to other pension funds.
The Pension Reforms ended up in throwing all pensioners in one bag and have them ‘share’ the available pension funds, although this is – first of all- “unfair” for the pensioners of the private sector. They have been loyally paying their social security contributions all through their work life, while the pensioners of the public sector have been paying much less and thus receiving disproportionately much more.
Public servants who massively left service with early retirement of 25 years in 2010, they ended up receiving a pension amount equal to their salary – although it should have been much lower.
Yes, it is unfair. And this is what I hear from more and more people form the private sector. “But you know, SYRIZA nowadays is more PASOK and PASOK helped it gain the power and so Tsipras does all he can to satisfy the public sector,” one private sector pensioner told me the other day.
A friend told me that her supplementary pension was cut by 70 euro and that recently she also saw that the extra ‘share’ retired civil servants receive from an additional fund was cut as well. She has lost some 150 euro per month. She complained that the Prime Minister had promised not to cut the pensions.
And that’s true. Pensions have not been cut. Cut are the supplementary and the extras that have been flowing into civil servants’ wallets from different sources.
PS I still believe that this system is “unfair” for the workers of the private sector. SYRIZA will have to decide one day, which side it is on.
‘Public servants who massively left service with early retirement of 25 years in 2010, they ended up receiving a pension amount equal to their salary ‘
Did i read this right ?
yes, you did. always like that not just in 2010. we speak about net amount. GR’s civservants have a complicated payment system: salary gross + several benefits (a 100 here a 100 there) and they somehow get incorporated in their pensions through other channels.
I recently heard of a worker in the private sector who goes into retirement at the age of 45 , because ‘he had worked enough years’.Possible ?
hardly. even if he started at 15 he can’t retire at so early age