One of the main concerns for people retiring is the safety and security of their pension. With fiscal austerity gripping all of Europe, pensions are being edited and redrafted which has caused major upset in many countries.
The UK is feeling the brunt of this, for the first time in over 40 years, British surgeons, general practitioners, nurses and most associated with the NHS have gone on strike due to pension changes. This has all happened due to worries and fears over the security of their pension. When people are willing to essentially put other’s lives at risk in order to ensure their own future security – something must be wrong. This begs the question of, just how safe are people’s pensions, and what steps can be taken to ensure everybody has financial security in their retirement, especially in an ever ageing population?
Steps need to be taken to ensure that pensions are secured; steps which will prevent strike-action which could severely upset the functioning of EU member state, and steps which will also ensure that economic troubles aren’t exacerbated by actions which affect the stability of pensions.
Yet, the pensions themselves depend on the stability of jobs available. With rising unemployment, many are seeking work which will not guarantee them a secure pension, and thus will not guarantee them an easy retirement. It is all well and good to only think of the now, and put the future aside until later, but with the way the economy is, young adults are being forced to think about how to secure their future for 30 or 40 year’s time, before it is too late. It is therefore down to EU member states to cohesively agree on how to effectively deal with employers who risk their workers’ pensions.
The last thing people want to worry about when retiring is whether their pension is going be able to support their future life. Especially when, nowadays, the amount of years a person spends in retirement tends to equal the amount of time they actually spend working.
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