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.

@Eleganz women in NHS and public sector tended to have pensions. If you worked part time outside public sector you often could not join the pensions scheme. And many places employers did not contribute to pensions.

Getting less and less likely to happen. Younger women are opting out of having children altogether.

Or, you know, those women could have more time for their own lives and the pursuit of pleasure and personal fulfilment. Hope nobody sees my life in terms if its potential service to others.

It added another two years to mine. On top of the 1995 change.

I remember media talking about pension equalization (and at school) in the 80s when I was a kid. It’s been known for a long time that it was coming.

ultimately if you wanted to rely on the state pension, I do think you need to find out when you can claim it. Responsibility is on you.

Don't you think it would be wise for you to make the slightest attempt to keep up to date?? It's not hard!

Do you know of all the new laws/regulations/rules relating to driving/road use, etc since you passed your driving test?

What do you expect? The government to send a bloke round every year to have a one to one chat with you to personally tell you everything that has changed that may affect you?

1. A lot of the work was done by people older than the WASPI women - the Equal Pay Act, for instance, was passed in 1970 so only the very oldest could have been even tangentially involved
2. And this is the generation raising the future taxpayers Which was the generation raising the younger women you seem to dislike so much?

No it wasn't that you paid more NI it was if you weren't contracted out to a private pension. If you were contracted out part of your NI went to your "other" pension, if you didn't have another pension you accrued additional pension through SERPS and later S2P. I retired in the transition period and I get my pension calculated on the old scheme as it is more than I would get with the new pension.

@Annettekurtin What kind of school did you go to? I was at school in early 80s and pensions were never mentioned once.

Why should one group of women get compensation for getting the state pension earlier than men and the younger generation? Compensation that will be paid for by the younger generation.

In that case, why can't WASPI women also get compensation for the fact that when they had children for the vast majority the only option for childcare was to be a SAHM? Cutting down on their earning power.

Different generations experience different challenges. In the past housing wasn't nearly such a high proportion of income, whether that was rent or mortgage. But there weren't nearly as many benefits either for WASPI women. Women now may be struggling, but so were many WASPIs. Which is why pitting generations against each other can't ever have a resolution. Times change, factors change.

Am I missing something here? You say that because of the incremental increases people would only have to work an extra year or so.

I was 60 in January 2014. I didn't get my first pension payment until June 2019. That's 5 years 5 months. When I was first notified of the change to my pension start date I was told 62 and three months which I thought was fair enough. But I thought the eventual increase was too big a leap.

Your mum worked in the public sector which has had good pensions for full-timers for many years. If your father worked in manufacturing it was possibly a unionised company which adopted best practice.

This thread is utterly depressing to read. We live in a patriarchal world and, as women, we still face massive barriers. It is so sad that we cannot support one another and celebrate our wins. Instead we're falling into the divide and conquer mentality that deflects from the people who are responsible for this mess - the government.

Well I'm a WASPI woman and I left school and started work in 1968. I think there are WASPI women older than me. Believe me the world didn't magically change with the Equal Pay Act, there was still fighting to do, have a look at why Birmingham Council are effectively bankrupt.

"there were no work pensions"

Well, there clearly were work pensions despite the poster I was responding to's claim that there weren't - the details of how generous they were and whether they included part time workers or not doesn't mean they did not exist.

I think the late stage changes were not fair but it seems so many have made this worse by failing to plan properly for their retirements.

But the claim was there were no work pensions. There were.

Born in 1955, I am a waspi woman, and my retirement age went out the full 6 years, from age 60 to 66. So if any compensation is due, I should be in line to get it. But I'll eat my hat if I do actually get anything.

The only reason income tax isn’t paid on a state pension is because your personal allowance is automatically applied to it, not because the government thinks you deserve to get it tax free!

And pensioners pay all other taxes, just like every other citizen, council tax, VAT, petrol tax, road fund, alcohol tax, tobacco tax. The only one we don’t pay is National insurance because most of us have paid it for our 40 odd years of full time working because that is the money that will be used to pay the pensions of the next generation down.

You didn't know about the second change when it was accelerated, unless you had a crystal ball in the 80s.

This is absolutely untrue for the waspi generation. Discrimination against part time workers has been illegal for decades. People retiring now have had years and years to pay into pensions.

younger workers can’t afford to pay into pensions because of housing costs. Should we give them compensation?

Why should one group of women get compensation for getting the state pension earlier than men and the younger generation? Compensation that will be paid for by the younger generation.

it’s all very well to pretend it’s the “government” somehow denying people something they’re entitled to. But actually what is happening here is the younger generation of taxpayers are paying for a benefit for the older generation of mainly non taxpayers

Following the first part of your argument, you would need to claw back money from everybody else whose retirement date (promised when they entered the agreement) was honoured. Not just deny one group.
Secondly - pensioners pay taxes! It's not just the 'young generation' who pay taxes.
The Ombudsman has ruled - it should be honoured or any government can pull the rug on any arrangement contracted decades before - let's think - withdrawal of maternity pay (you are told when already pregnant), no parent tax relief, no childcare benefits etc etc - to be introduced just when you are hoping to have children.
Major changes need to be introduced decades before and fully communicated giving people the opportunity to plan ahead properly.

YOU, and your cohort of men and women will decide if you get a state pension. It what you have a vote for. YOU can, and should fight for that pension.

i also challenge the idea of the removal of state pension. To do so will leave millions in poverty, especially women, and a much more expensive and difficult means tested benefits would need to be introduced to stop older people being destitute and the pressure that would being into the nhs and social care. The state pension does provide a universal “basic” income to those over state pension age. It is just not efficient or cheaper to replace it with something else.

We are already storing up enormous issues with the rise of SIPP schemes, where the governments have passed ownership and control of pensions onto the individual rather than the state (by, for instance, raising NI TO THE 5% contribution levels most SIPP contributors pay into their own scheme). I simply do not understand how labour did not riot on that one. The money made by financial companies off the backs of the poor and low paid for management fees, annual fees, admin fees etc to administer a SIPP for everyone in uk is appalling. The risks of pensions investment failure is now pinpointed on a single pension holder rather than across an entire population. The risk is shorter term ,not long time like a NI scheme.

justnhow many owners of SIPPs really understand how their pension will be taken, when they can take it, how much it will be worth? Do people understand that their retirement day will have to be influenced by when their investments are doing well, vs not retiring at all if their planned retirement age coincides with a market crash? Do people notmunderstmadnthenhugemrisksmtheyre forced to carry. It is simply obscene and screwing over the poor to line the pockets of the rich, agian.

fight for your state pension. Fight it in the way that WASPI women fought for equal pay in the 1970s, fight for it in the way that women fought against being disbarred for employment once they married/had children.

it makes no sense to remove it, other tha. To line the wealthy’s pockets even more.

@DigitalDust I left school and started at a factory. The boys from my class were automatically given a higher paid role than the girls. Bernard Matthews factory. Discrimination was still very real. We did not have equal pay.
There were various high profile cases in the nineties and that did help to change things.
Maybe you should listen to women who were there rather than just read wikipedia?

I am a 'peak' millennial born in the late 80s,the daughter of a WASPI woman.

I was delighted to see the verdict of the report today and support the WASPI campaign 100%. Not just for the way the changes were brought in, which I believe to have been unfair, but for the fact that changing the pension age for these women was so say in the name of equality. Absolutely disgraceful when these women never saw anything like equality in their working lives. Some started work before the equal pay act. Even after that the sexism they faced at work was awful. Far fewer opportunities in the kind of careers they could choose and the seniority they could achieve. Rubbish maternity rights. No such thing as shared paternity leave. Nothing was 'equal' in their experiences of the workplace.

Even now the gender pay gap exists, sexism is there. It certainly was when I was thinking about my career options 20 years ago.

For those who think there will be no state pension for us, we should be fighting for it then, shouldn't we? The way the WASPIs have for their cause.