AIBU in thinking the government have made the correct decision not to blanket pay all WASPI women £3k? This goes against the Ombudsman recommendations to pay between £1k-3k to every WASPI women.

...and yes, most people born before 1954 are on the old state pension which is lower so the rises aren't as great for them as stated.

Is it everybody you think should retire at 60 or just you? If the former, how should it be funded in a country with an aging population and a younger generation struggling to put a roof over their heads? If the latter, why?

Maternity pay started in 1979 and that was the beginning of maternity rights.
Some WASPI women will have been sacked for becoming pregnant-some will have benefitted from changes in the law.
Child care was difficult to find and after school and breakfast clubs didn't exist, some people opted for part time work which reduced private pension pots but wouldnt affect the state pension.

I worked for the local council in the early 70's and, when I became pregnant a few years later, was encouraged to leave at 20 weeks (in case it was too much for me) and my job was not held open. I reapplied 10 years later and got a similar job but was asked at interview 'who will look after your children when they are poorly?' and, even worse, told I wasn't eligible to join the council's v generous pension scheme as I had had brain surgery 3 years before. That was in the mid 80's. But i did see the publicity telling me that my working years would increase so feel the recent judgement is correct.

I am a WASPI woman.
I most definitely was informed about the first gradual rise in the state pension for women born between 1950 and 1955.
I had a personal letter years ago with my new retirement date on it.
I was not affected by the jump from retiring at 65 to 66. I don't think people had much notice of that. It applied to men too.
I don't have much sympathy with the people wanting compensation, I think there are other priorities.
Re the winter fuel payment-there were some very wealthy people getting it but I think the people who are only just over the threshold for pension credit will notice a difference. Its making me careful with the heating.
I don't object strongly to what the government have done so far but if they further target pensions in any way they will create a disincentive for people on modest incomes to join private pension schemes.

I didn't say that they gave maternity pay above statutory and given that I wasn't talking about myself not sure why you are saying that I was "privileged" My point is that it isn't the case that all women in the WASPI group were sacked when pregnant and that no one got maternity pay. I agree that things are better now than they were then regarding maternity leave but other things are worse for younger people.

The government of the day SHOULD have written to ALL women who were in the age range to be affected by this, and exlained exactly what those women needed to do in order to mitigate their own situation.

They did not.

There was a fair amount in the press, but people will have just read that the state pension age was going up and thought oh well, nothing I can do about that.

I am beyond livid, and have been since the day I found out I have to pay 7 more years of NI contributions, and in return, get 7 years less in state pension paid to me.

Those affected should be recompensed for the government having failed in their duty to inform them of what the effect of the changes was going to be.

How are you working that out? I suspect you're comparing the new state pension with the old state pension. Most people over 70 are on the old state pension which is considerably lower.

Regardless of communication, state pension ages should not be changed for adults already working. It's morally wrong and leaves them with reduced time in which to make up the shortfall.

Once you start working and start paying NI it should be seen as a committed contract. You pay in for a minimum of x years over your lifetime and get y when you are z years old. People should be able to rely on it or they should be able to opt out of paying into it at all. (Put health costs into income tax and make NI voluntary.) You cannot force people to pay in to a scheme without also giving them the security of knowing what they will get out of it.

If state pension ages need changing then it needs doing for people who are not yet working - and needs to come with corresponding consideration for how to ensure they still have a fair shot at saving for a private pension.

I agree though, that unless you spent at least 15 years or so not working, not listening to the news, or reading the newspapers than there is no way these women could have missed the raise in pension age.

I'm mid 50s and in 80s and early 90s pregnant women were, if not routinely sacked, managed out, or demoted. I was one of them. The hositily was awful.
I remember a meeting about pensions i was not invited to, because 'I probably wouldn't come back after the baby'

how many times do we have to say it. Just because it wasn't YOUR experience, it was for a lot.

For example: every woman who ever joined the forces until about 1995, who got pregnant. Was out before 12 weeks, or immediately if they were further along. Thus not even qualifying for SMP.

Then you were very privileged if your company gave maternity pay above the statutory few weeks (which was reclaimed from government) and were not getting rid of women whilst pregnant.

I'm similar era and absolutely did see women "managed out" and constructively dismissed whilst pregnant and my peers were all routinely asked about family plans when interviewing for jobs.

Its happening now, it was mainstream back then.

AFAIK it was a cohort who were born between two dates, and i think these are the ones who had the extra 2 years added on where the letters were 28 months too late.

But as i said, i read about it when it first happened then didn't really follow it because it seemed obvious to me that they knew they had diddled them out of pension, they knew how much it was, and they knew who they were. Seemed like a no-brainer to me.

But what specifically singled them out by DOB?

You had your children young then. I am in my late 50s and I was working in the mid/late 1980s when women your age were pregnant and they were not getting sacked for it. In the company I worked for they were paid too.

Their date of birth. It was 300k, not 100.

@Brefugee I’m intrigued by the 100k people they identified. What was specific to that group to single them out? I don’t know enough about the report to understand.

YOu are so wrong OP

i spent most of my first, planned, pregnancy either in court or at my lawyer's office. It was absolutely shit. And in a country where it is so super illegal to fire a pregnant woman, when i went to register as unemployed they denied my claim because i must be lying about it. My lawyer actually came with me to the challenge on that because he couldn't believe how stupid some people are.

Back to WASPI. When this first started, and because i haven't totally kept up i assumed it was still the case, the DWP could actually identify something like 100,000 women who were absolutely shafted by this. And at the time it was first being discussed the sums involved weren't really huge. And those women absolutely deserve to be compensated and the fact that they can be identified (some living in utter poverty due to life circumstances, some have since died) makes it all the more outrageous that these women are not being compensated for their losses.

All the others, meh. Not so much. When i entered the workforce at 18 i was supposed to have a retirement age of 60. Which went up to 63 then 65. It's now 67. Yippee.

I am not surprised at some of the, frankly, vile ageism on here.

I get the impression though that many younger women seem resentful of my generation

Speaking as a millennial our generation has seen broken promise after broken promise. Tuition fees treble overnight, interest rates go up just as people have racked up giant student loans and/or mortgages, Brexit etc. With climate change and a rapidly declining birthrate many of us have a pretty bleak outlook for what our retirement might look like. I think younger woman are being pretty sanguine about all this to be honest.

That isn’t true. I and most of my friends had our children in the 1970s when there were no maternity rights. You keep being told this but still persist in your fiction.

Women currently in their 60s, especially later 60s and above were routinely discriminated against in the workplace, sacked for being pregnant or even on marriage, blocked from educational opportunities and barred from workplace pension schemes. It entirely to be expected that women who then find themselves single in older age will struggle when all they have is the state pension (if that) and its one of the lowest in Europe.

What utter rubbish.
I'm not claiming no-one ever was sacked, as there are bad employers now and throughout history, but to say people were "routinely sacked" is cobblers.
Yes, I am in my 60s. Yes, I was at work in the 80s.
Yes, everyone was aware pension age was raised - discussed in staffrooms, in pubs, in baby groups, and anywhere people meet each other and chat, even if you somehow never read a paper, listened to the radio or watched the news on the TV.

Don’t worry all of you 30+ jummy mummy’s what goes around comes around. By the time that you retire there will be no state pension and you’ll be working till you drop

More than aware of that @Kingoftheroad . Younger generations have been absolutely screwed over, I was listening to an economist yesterday who said that those born each decade since the 1950s have been poorer than those born in the decade before them. Those born in the 2000s can probably forget home ownership completely.

But I'm not stupid or complacent, I've seen the way things are going and am planning ahead. Small house in a cheap area, overpay the mortgage to reduce the interest I'll pay. No getting into debt to run a car, live within my means etc. Importantly I'm maxing out my AVCs, so that my workplace pension will provide for me when I can no longer work (and I've set my target retirement age at 70).

The situation is very different now. When the state pension was introduced there were 20 people of working age to every pensioner, now there are fewer than 3 people of working age to every pensioner. This will be a combination of people living longer meaning more pensioners, plus falling birth rate meaning fewer working people.

Unfortunately, an individual having paid taxes for others to have a pension doesn't mean anything for what they'll get as a pensioner.