State retirement age is too old for working class people

[Spiceup]

An observation from some things I've seen lately. I'll explain.

I work in a public sector organisation that employees highly qualified and very well paid professionals alongside support staff on not much more than minimum wage and those in between.

Part of my role is managing sickness absence. What I am seeing lately is that the professional types, despite doing what are generally accepted to be stressful jobs, on the whole, stay well until well into their sixties, although many do retire earlier simply because they have the kind of pensions that make that possible.

People in the more lowly jobs are often genuinely finished by their mid-late 50s. Just worn out and suffering from multiple health problems. Perhaps because of their lifestyles or maybe from just having harder lives (not necessarily harder work lives, but getting by is just generally harder for them). To have to go on to 67 is just absurd and very few do, with ill health retirement common (so the state is paying anyway).

I can't begin to imagine how similar people manage in genuinely physical jobs, in construction for example.

Is it more common for working class people in their 50s to be worn out, or perhaps more comfortably off professionals retire before they get to that point so I don't see it?

@2020isnotbehaving it's not 30yrs for firefighters. It's 40 but that doesn't entitle you to a full pension unless you have 40 years in by the time you reach 60.

There's a lot of jobs that people will struggle to do by retirement age. I can't imagine my 9st DP will still be able to carry 20st people down ladders in his 60s.

I don't do a physical job but people are pushed out of my role way before they reach retirement age. I hear a lot of nasty comments about older members of staff, yet we'll all be working much longer than these 'old, senile and useless' staff members.
I used to have the right to retire at 55 but now it's 67 minimum.

My DH was a professional in a very stressful job. He started with MH problems in his late 40’s and it forced him to retire early in his late 50’s.

@MiniPumpkin

Is 67 retirement age ? I thought it was much older ? Im a social worker in justice services, can be stressful, involves a fair bit of travel and I’m sure you can imagine some pretty complex decisions. I love my job but as one of the younger ones at 34 I often joke I’ll die at my desk 🤣 I can’t see myself doing my job in 30 years time. Im fit and healthy but the busy element takes its toll, I’m exhausted in the preparation for annual leave. I don’t know how physically demanding jobs like construction employees do it. I hear from my older colleagues it’s a fight to get out on pension earlier. You need a health problem to get out? An older male in our team was clearly unfit to do the job, and he made a point of making this clear in his work, eventually he died when fell down at the bus stop… I must put the lottery on 🥴

State retirement will be older than 67 for you

I completely agree OP. I WFH behind a computer screen and not sure how I will manage when I’m in my late 60’s never mind how someone doing a physically exhausting job like a manual worker or labourer will cope! I honestly think the government’s plan is to have people working until they are dead to help them whole pensions and social care crisis- in the same way they knowingly put covid patients back in care homes to kill off the elderly. I don’t trust the government one bit.

Kitkat I thought so, may aswell get comfortable 🤣

*with the whole pensions and social care crisis- sorry, I have been drinking wine!

Yes of course, unfortunately.

I don't think it's about retiring earlier before work breaks people, I think it's about not accepting that work should break people - part of which is recognising that working lots of hours doesn't actually increase productivity. If people didn't work such long, tough hours they would be in better health for longer.

If we didn't have unhealthy, unsafe working practices that leave people unwell too that would make a difference, because this is about more than freeing up time for people to "take responsibility" outside of work.

It's not simply about the "choices" people make about diet or exercise or whatever outside of work. If you spend 40 hours pw in an environment that damages your hearing or your lungs or your back it doesn't bloody matter if you have time to cook dinner from scratch or go to pilates, your health is still going to be fucked.

Why do we accept people working in environments or ways that damage their health?

I think I have to disagree about structures considering how we treat disabled people and that there wasn't so much as a murmur that UC was cut for everyone except the "hard working" who received less of a cut than people unable to work.

Why on earth is it socially acceptable to deliberately impoverish disabled people or unpaid carers? You're not "hard working" so you're worthless?

This is so hard. On the one hand we really can’t afford for people to retire at 62 for a 20 year retirement.

But expecting people to work full time up to 67 (maybe 70 in the future) is really hard on employees.

I work in hospitality. I work so hard and so long hours. There is no way I can do this into my 60s. I’m old at 35 in this industry.

I have worked in healthcare for 12 years, I am not even 30 and I am worn out, I am done.
I'm not min wage anymore, but I'm looking for a whole new career direction now. My back is so bad, I sound like a bag of rice crispies when I move where all my joints click, I had my wrist broken by a patient with dementia a few years ago and it has never been the same. I'm ready for retirement now.

I don't think it's right that we have a society built around working people into the ground and discarding everyone with disabilities or too frail to work as "worthless". All the toxic rhetoric about "hard working" people like that's our only value as human beings.

If we want to rebalance things, I don't think it is helpful to be arguing the extreme that people should be worked to the bone for thirty years and then get an extended holiday for the next thirty or forty years.

I would prefer it if we had healthier working practices - and a healthier culture around human value relative to how much someone works - so that people's health wasn't already in the dustbin by their 40s.*

This.

Obviously I do recognise that ageing is still a factor even in a hypothetical healthy, safe workplace.

A few people have mentioned office jobs as the easy option. Sitting down all day is really bad for humans! It causes different problems to physical labour but it's not the easy/healthy alternative it keeps being presented as. That's why people struggle.

Especially when you factor in limited daylight and possibly being in a prolonged state of stress, both of which cause damage to human bodies.

People in the more lowly jobs are often genuinely finished by their mid-late 50s. Just worn out and suffering from multiple health problems. Perhaps because of their lifestyles or maybe from just having harder lives

Poor health outcomes for people living in poverty are way more complex than just lifestyle. The issue isn’t that the pension age is too low, it is that public health is pretty bad at improving health outcomes for people who live in poverty. Poor housing, food deserts, a lack of education, inability to access appropriate healthcare either due to poor availability or finding it too difficult to navigate the system.

Instead of focussing on the pension age, we should be improving health outcomes.

I also take exception with the term “more lowly jobs”

The people I'm talking about don't have particularly physical or even demanding jobs. The ones who are finished in their 50s do seem to have had difficult lives though, struggles with bereavement, single parenthood, mental health, difficult domestic situations. The kinds of things that more well off people suffer with too, but that money can cushion you from. My Grandad (who grew up very poor and became quite wealthy) used to say "money can't buy happiness, but it makes being miserable a damn sight more comfortable".

@Malibuismysecrethome

The WHO in 2008 put the average life expectancy of a Glasgow male at 54. Considerably lower than several years above retirement age. The Glasgow Effect.

The publicity that the ‘ Glasgow Effect’ got did shine a light on health inequalities.

However, it’s also worth mentioning that those life expectancy stats, and the ones specific to the Calton area mentioned upthread were skewed due to drug and alcohol related deaths.

There's a lot of jobs that people will struggle to do by retirement age. I can't imagine my 9st DP will still be able to carry 20st people down ladders in his 60s.
No he probably won't and this is where moving sideways should be an option - he may be able to move into the fire prevention & education side, day shifts only and similar grade.

I'm an HGV driver, and in my current job most of my colleagues are half my age. They're very well paid, and they need to be. Midnight starts, half a dozen deliveries of heavy cages and pallets, all of it without help. I'm healthier than they are, because my day starts in daylight and involves three assisted drops. I don't break toes, or lose fingertips, or suffer cracked ribs when the load moves. I doubt any of them will be working at 50, certainly not in haulage.

I agree. My mum had a job which really took a toll on her physically, it’s absurd to think people in physically demanding jobs can just carry on past the point where their body just can’t do it anymore.

On another note I find there’s such a big divide between the haves and the have nots when it comes to pensions. I used to work in the NHS and it sounds like a similar thing where there were incredibly well qualified staff (band 8+) Woking alongside band 2 support staff. I actually found the constant obsessing about retirement and pension pots from people earning so much quite distasteful.

I now work in the private sector where there is still a divide but not as sharp. The high earners are so much more obsessed with their pensions than people earning a normal wage.

It also impact them both ways - body becomes knackered from the more physical work (standing all day, etc) and they are more likely to have dementia because of the lack of stimulation mentally

Yes! DH has a hard manual job and is constantly tired now (early 50s). His DF was a farmer and retired at the same age for that reason. My grandparents all lived into their late 80s and 90s and DH said it was because they were accountants and school teachers, so hadn't had a 'hard' life.

Art first I thought he was talking rubbish - but these days I think he may have a point. Many 'office' jobs obviously have their own stresses (and perhaps more nowadays than in the past), but hard manual labour on low pay must take its toll on your body. Plus maybe some of those socioeconomic groups have other lifestyle/diet/working hours issues affecting their health too.

I don't think we can generalise but it's definitely a concern!

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I think what will happen is that the number of people 'on the sick' will increase.

I've worked full-time for 27 years - the only break longer than 2 weeks I've had in that time was 7 weeks having/recovering from major surgery (childfree so no mat leave etc.)

As things stand I have another 20 years to go before state retirement, but I can take my company pension from the age of 50 (albeit with increasingly severe reductions the earlier I take it). My company pension even at full strength would be less than NMW).

My best option might be to 'semi-retire' at, say, 55 - take my reduced company pension and get a part-time NMW job to top me up until I reach state pension age (67 for me) - if I even live that long, of course.

@Cable1905

I retired at 60 from teaching a couple of months ago and I felt ready to go. In a conversation with one of the classroom assistants who is same age she commented that she was looking after her grandson at night to allow her daughter to work, she is also a carer for her mother. Her job is difficult and she has been physically assaulted in the past. She is knackered but retirement is another 7 years away for her. Making the retirement age the same for both sexes never took into account what the majority of woman do. Many are caught in the middle, caring for older and younger family plus the effects of the menopause. Too many women are burnt out just holding their family together and many will have a very poor quality of life when they do retire. Life expectancy is declining in the UK

This makes me so sad. Some people’s lives are so hard. You are completely right of course that so many caring responsibilities fall to women and that is on top of their actual paid jobs.

Of course it is - deliberately and callously so because the government do not want to pay out state pensions for decades.

I have a friend who is a national level union officer and he has had a government minister say - off the record of course- that raising the age of state and various public service pensions will, firstly, mean the government pays out for less time and , secondly, as people have to work longer the life expectancy will decrease and it's a win-win for the government in terms of pensions, NHS, wider benefits, adult social care.

The people most affected will be the working classes whose only income is whatever they earn- those with no other significant savings, no property to downsize or second home to sell off.

This government wants less responsibility for the welfare state and public services of any kind.