AIBU to think that WASPI women should not be entitled to compensation?

[mugglewump]

They've been on the news again marching for compensation in a climate where the government is having to make very difficult decisions about funding to stop our debt ever increasing.

I think there are far more deserving cases for goverment money than women who didn't act on information at the time and sort their pensions out or keep working (p/t or f/t) until retirement age.

Moreover, the people paying this compensation are those who will be working until they are 67 to 70 to claim a state pension. Surely, it's a bit ick to expect them to bail out women who retired at 60?

I completely agree - but lots and lots of posters seem to think it was. I find it fascinating that people had developed this narrative (why would that ever make sense? Why would it be policy to use pensions as compensation) and therefore feel they were owed it. It's a bit similar to the widespread belief that people fund their own state pensions ('I paid my stamp!') but while that's equally inaccurate I do understand where it came from, unlike the idea that there was some sort of state scheme to screw over working women but then give them five years' extra pension to even out the balance which just seems nonsensical.

All you Mumsnet people who are saying that the WASPI women didn't get the SECOND lot of info about the changes in time to prepare are WRONG.

Do you think you know more that the Ombudsman? Ridiculous.

The opportunities to women of the age whilst they were growing up and working were unequal to men - the equal pay act and equality bills did not exist until the 70's. At the time they were teenagers there were less opportunities. We cannot change the past, and I feel that they do deserve the pension they were expecting. Agreed the govt has competing commitments, interesting how KS, AR etc etc were happy to have photo opportunities promoting the WASPI women's cause during the election campaign but are now distancing themselves.

You've misunderstood me entirely. So don't 😏 at me.

I wish all women had the ability to stay home with their children if they want to, but it should be funded between her and her husband.

Due to how expensive housing, living costs and taxes (to fund YOUR state pensions that we won't get ourselves) are now, most young women have to work full or part time.

Do you not see that in a lot of ways it is harder to be a mother now than when you were young? So I'm asking how can you reasonably expect young women who already don't have the choice to be SAHM's like their mothers and grandmothers, who will never get a state pension like older generations, to pay even more tax to compensate them?

One years notice is plenty of time to arrange NOT to retire.
It's not as if it was the day before and you'd already handed your notice in, and your employer had already replaced you.

I may support an individual woman's circumstances but not every woman born in a range of years.

The government never directly told me about the changes that I recall, but I heard/learnt about it in newspapers, news, from friends/colleagues, from my annual pension statement etc.

There is likely to be a very small minority of those women who didn't stick their heads in the sand and genuinely didn't know.

No they’re not. They are against not being given enough time and information to prepare adequately.

Same here. I contacted a financial advisor and set up a stakeholder pension and contributed to it until I moved to an employer who had their own scheme. Subsequently when I was in another role that didn't have a pension I made more contributions to that original stakeholder pension.

Since I started my first full time job I have contributed a minimum 10% of my salary to a pension scheme because I want the freedom to retire early if I wish.

I have indeed done this and am well aware of the ombudsman’s decision. I am merely saying that in my opinion, and that of my friends and colleagues we were very aware of the upcoming changes and were fairly fed up that we’d have to work for longer, but accepted that there needed to be a move towards parity between men and women. I was always quite surprised at the ombudsman’s decision. It was everywhere, and we all have to take some responsibility for our own affairs.

Wasn't there a cohort of women caught by accelerated changes in 2011, i.e. they'd had assumed the changes they announced in the 90s would apply to women younger than them, but then it was sped up? So they were effectively told at 58ish that they wouldn't be able to get SP at 60 after all. I might have got that wrong, but I do think that's unfair. (Millennial working to god-knows-when here, so no skin in the game.)

Surely the govt could have compensated people gradually rather than not at all - e.g. 0.5% uplift in SP for affected people?

My mum is the age of the WASPI women. Her view is that you had to be living with a bucket on your head not to know it was coming, it was in newspapers, radio programs, widely discussed.

First post nails it. And why yet another WASPI thread ? Haven’t they been bashed enough ?

You'd loathe my MIL then.

Born in 1951, working class, working minimum wage jobs from the time she was 16 until she retired. No private pension, nothing but what shed saves and her state pension entitlement. One of the least online people I know.

She is scathing about the WASPI campaigners. Like other women her age who've commented on this thread, she says you'd have to actively avoid knowing about it when the change was made, and even if you somehow missed it then people should have checked what they were entitled to before making retirement plans.

She gets particularly cross about the narrative around this as she feels it treats women her age like they're children and not in control of their own lives, they have to have special treatment that doesn't happen for other changes.

I'll admit to having an instinctive sympathy to the WASPI cause but MIL made me reevaluate and actually read the ombudsman's report, which I agree has some issues around internal logic...

People have to take responsibility for their pensions. Pensions, state and private have been changing for quite some time. The so called gold pate state sector pensions have moved to career average etc

There are plenty of government/pension feeds in the news and social media. I certainly knew about the change to 65 and the latest increases.

I just don’t understand how people can ‘retire’ and then find out the financial situation. The WASPIs had the opportunity to stay in work, they weren’t forced to retire at 60.

And yes they had access to company pension schemes. I know a couple of former IBM/BT who have a generous pension. A WASPI will finance their summer holiday.

A minority of women will have buried their head in the sand and not properly planned their retirement, if they had properly planned they wouldn’t have became aware of the changes which were first announced when these women were in their 40s.

It’s unfortunate but ignorance and poor planning doesn’t justify a payout.

95% of this movement is just grabby women jumping on the bandwagon though and it’s gross.

If the DIL who's posting here had any real interest, you would think she might have a better grasp of history.

My parents lived in poverty and started work at 14. That was the school leaving age pre- WW2.

To say that someone born in the 1950s could work in a mill at 13 ( so mid-late 1960s) raises eyebrows. Not only would they be truanting but the employer was risking prosecution.

It may have occurred but it just seems unlikely. A child of 13 working in a mill who had an accident would be an enormous risk for the owner.

DWP was giving out incorrect information so good luck checking it for yourself. This was a part of the case made. They also acknowledged that many women never received the notifications.

The main case of the waspi women was the late changes - not the changes "everyone" knew about back in the 90s. It was the cohort of women who suddenly found their retirement had been delayed another couple of years with very little warning and certainly no time to make additional provision.

Women in this group doing nicely on public sector final salary pensions can afford to be smug and sneer at the waspis (and other benefits such as WFA).

Those who had the typical low paid patchwork career of multiple part time jobs and being barred from private pensions, or who had divorce settlements based on assumptions of state pensions are the key group affected. They particularly struggle to get work in their 60s due to ageism and are more likely to be made redundant.
The subgroup of people most likely to be living in poverty are older single women. The cohort of people most likely to be living in poverty are the second half of the boomer generation.

To read MC mumsnet you would think every woman over 60 is swanning around on endless cruises whilst "hogging" a large detached house and sucking her DGC's blood to pay for it. The reality is very different - as ever with identity politics, the rhetoric simply hides real inequalities based on economic class.

I think this is right.

All this nonsense claiming that they could have planned better if only they had known. When clearly, they weren't planning at all because if they had been planning properly, they would have known!

I believe this is the case, but what would they have done differently? The bottom line is they needed to stay working for 7yrs rather than 2yrs. So many of the points made on the WASPI website would be the same for everyone. So really the only answer is the put the retirement age back to 60 for everyone, yes?
Why should that group get to escape those challenges? Yes it's shit for them but there had to be a cut off date somewhere.

I agree @Completelyjo

I know a few people affected and from what I can gather it was vaguely announced as a proposal in the 1990’s but no decision had been taken as to the age applicable. The crux of the matter is not whether it was in the news, on the radio or discussed anywhere else. It was that the DWP failed to adequately advise those women who were actually affected by it. The ombudsman’s decision was clear on that.

But it’s not about the cut off date, it’s about the amount of notice they were given and the failure of the DWP to notify clearly and in a decent time frame.

But their title is "against state inequality", which is not true. They could give themselves a different title which made clear that was the issue, and not that they were campaiging for equality, which is patently untrue, and a lot of the agro would go. They choose a controversial, silly, and downright in your face offensive name to the tens of millions of people who have to work until a real state pension age.

I’ve not read the full thread but want to add my voice to those saying they were not informed or informed too late to act. I found out by chance overhearing a colleague's conversation - so clearly some people knew about it. I was lucky in that it only affected me by six months but my younger sister was shocked to find she would lose over four years. Hand on heart neither of us received a letter but found out relatively early - late 90s - so were prepared. I am not seeking compensation.