Mixed feelings about WASPI victory

[Fauxflowersnoflowers]

Early 40s here, so this doesn't as such directly affect me, but I've been intrigued by the story about the WASPI campaign and done a bit of reading around it and I'm still confused.

The changes apparently were in the public sphere since as early as 1995 and could have been known about. Many women were aware and did take financial steps to address the changes. The current case seems to centre around whether they should have been personally informed, not was the change fair.

WASPI just said on Women's Hour that they don't object to the equalisation of the pension age, but then callers were objecting to having to work longer and not getting a good retirement, so the two arguments seem to contradiction each other

Also, it seems misunderstood that a compensation payment would be a full reinbursement of the "lost" pension, from my reading it's more likely to be a fixed amount to recognise the fact they should have received a letter. Although again, it appears many did, just not everyone, so who gets the compensation? All of them or just some?

I suppose the other question is how do we pay this? Public services are already stretched badly, childcare costs are crippling and there is a bit of a worry for me that the funds to pay this are going to come out of other areas that will just make the loves of younger women harder and push their pension ages even further back, maybe into their 70s.

Feel really conflicted about it. On one hand kudos to the women for getting this far, but in the other it feels like a really clear example of the importance of properly understanding your own finances and educating yourself about your pension planning.

Sorry. Clearly I misunderstood you. The 2011 act was shocking, they’d never have dared do it to men.

From the Ombudsman report, so you don’t have to just take my word for it:

The evidence we have seen confirms DWP did make considerable efforts - across a variety of formats and using a range of media channels and stakeholders - to promote pensions awareness and planning for retirement through its pensions education campaigns. This included:

• a TUC-led ‘Pension Power for You’ campaign and helpline in 1997, and a second TUC helpline campaign in 1999 that was partly government-funded
• a ‘Monopoly’-themed pensions campaign (June 1998 to April 2000). Adverts were displayed on buses and trams, in telephone boxes, on fast food containers and on screens in Post Offices. Adverts, advertorials and inserts were placed in national and local press, magazines and catalogues. Information was shared through mailings and mailshots (based on marketing data), in pensions packs, on flyers and at exhibitions. A new series of pensions leaflets (PM1-8) and a pensions website were also introduced
• a ‘Working Dogs’-themed pensions campaign (January 2001 to March 2004). Adverts were placed in national and local press, on postcards, and shown in cinemas and on television
• various waves of issuing information about pensions, including information about State Pension age changes, direct to people who requested it, who had responded to surveys and to advisers.

It’s the Working Dogs campaign I remember

That all applies to the 1995 act. It’s the 2011 one that’s the killer.

Gee thanks.
Couple of things. For some women it would mean working to an age they were simply unable to do their jobs, infant teacher for ex. Simply harder to get up off the floor, amongst other things.
Secondly, us Waspi bods financially planned for retirement at 60 so to find that my state pension isn’t completely paid up is not great because it now needs paying till 66. I honestly didn’t know, thought I was paid up, as did my contemporaries.
I retired from teaching because I was emotionally drained and unable to sparkle in the classroom any more at 60. Got a part time job, then Covid so couldn’t work.
Thirdly, the gov can’t turn round to 40 yr olds and say sorry, 26 more years instead of 20, out of a clear blue sky. Retrain? Career change? Should have been very gradual increase.

My mum was one of those affected. It was unfair as for example my friends mum who was 3 months older got pension at 60, yet my mum had to wait the extra years.

That's not a true equivalent, though.

However unpopular it may be, the government can tell people that they have to keep working for longer before they're allowed to give up working (assuming that they can then live on the state pension).

You obviously can't just tell somebody with a disability to 'stop being disabled' for a few years.

I agree, but a lot of people still seem to be complaining that they didn’t know about the 1995 act!

The 2011 act is completely different. But it didn’t increase retirement age from 60 and that’s what a lot of women are saying - they expected to retire at 60.

I don't think they should be paid compensation. They're still retiring earlier than my generation will be.

Government money literally comes from people paying tax now! Everything the government fund is because of taxpayers.

I find this really hard to get ny head around. If you get to what you thought was pension age but a state pension is no longer available to you for a further 5 years or however long then surely you just continue working for that period?! You might be disgruntled but why would you just leave?!

I understand people being unhappy. Every tax paying adult is going to foot these bills not just men.

As of it being paid, yes. But see my post above. (A quick calculation says that the govt. have saved around £50,000 on my pension alone. If I get £1,000 compensation (IF), the public coffers are still quids in.) Those tax paying adults, over the last six years, have benefitted from £49,000 that I didn't get. Multiply that by all the WASPI women and you get billions. According to the campaign, raising the pension age has saved the government £181bn, compensation of £2,000 to each woman would cost around £7bn (3.9%). Those women would have contributed £174bn.

And anyway, while the Ombusman might have said compensation is due the govt. appear very reluctant to pay it. It may - quite possibly will - not happen.

I started reading this thread early on and came back to see if it had gone the way I expected. It has - women vs women - just how the men like it.

Context is missing from the debate. Only those of us women who lived through the 'gaining equality' can remember the cultural and societal norms that financially held us back.

Only a very few escaped them and flew; many of us foot soldiers just slogged away and stood our ground to start to make headway towards 'equality' for women.

Oh yes, I knew in the 1990s that men and women were now equal for state pension and felt that was fair, seeing as I wanted equality. But as a single woman who preferred manual and admin occupations, I've never had enough spare to tuck away into a pension. But I was happy. Now I'm just an oldish, 61 year old, knackered single mum to an adult disabled ds whose 'deal' with the nation was broken when it was decided I had to keep going until I'm 67. I started working full time at 15.

I'm not a WASPI myself, being 1962 vintage but I do agree with them, based on context alone.

Thats just unfortunate and one of these things. My mum was born in 1960 so she will have had friends a few months younger who are classed as WASPI women. There always needs to be a line drawn somewhere and there will be winners and losers.

I suggest some of you younger MNers read some social history about women in employment and what conditions were like. Women had to fight for the right to work in some roles after marriage, equal pay, maternity benefits, childcare, workplace pensions etc so that women like you could benefit.

Well there's always got to be a cut off, but I do think the age could have been lifted more gradually.

I do recall getting at least one letter about this, but I also remember it being covered in the media. Plus, once I got to my mid 50s I would occasionally check my state pension forecast.

Couldn't agree more.

And you will have more chance of getting a reasonable private pension. Plenty of older women were paid less than men, were not allowed to join pension schemes - part timers were often excluded, and had no employers contributions at all.

The women who did that aren't exclusively in the waspi group. Most are older and many younger women are still fighting for equal rights.

Do you seriously think younger people have more chance of a decent private pension?

Younger women are unlikely to get anywhere near as good a private pension as a lot of the people who qualified for pensions from the WASPI generation. Particularly if they don’t work in the public sector (although even public sector pensions are, for most people, not as good as they were)

I agree that lots of people give up work a few years before state pension age and live on savings or go part time knowing they only have to manage on less money for a few years.
My colleague who gets her state pension at 65 left work at 62.

WASPI women started and won that fight did they? It's over is it? Guess we can all sit back and relax then.
And frankly what the WASPI women are fighting for now is the opposite of equality.

Their husbands would have expected their wives to be there to look after them, not out at work, especially if they had never gone out to work, or had worked intermittently or casually, which was the case for very many women for much of the twentieth century.

I was born early 1953. I was given a lot of warning that the pension age would increase and it did increase gradually. For women born 1950 onwards it went up two months for every month of your age. The second jump didn’t affect me. I think women born in 1954 had a bad deal which was unexpected. I don’t think all women born in the early 1950s should be compensated, perhaps just those who had the sudden two year jump. In the current financial climate I personally don’t think it’s a priority. I’m fortunate though that I have an NHS pension and was not totally dependent on the state pension.