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?

Where were you where a newspaper was only a long journey to an airport?

The WASPI website is an interesting read. The issues that the WASPI's are complaining about, such as limited work opportunities for older women, dealing with health issues, needing to to undergo "humiliating" jobseeker interviews, are exactly what all older women face. The difference? They assumed they'd be ok and could retire at 60.
The pension age was always going to increase and there was always going to be people that it hit first.
Can I have compensation because when I started work in my 20s I was told I'd be able to retire at 60? Where do you draw the line?

Yeah, I have to say their comms are atrocious. Everything I read that comes from them and their supporters makes me less inclined to agree with them.

Also, what is this “WASPI women can’t afford not to have the compensation”? They’re not a monolith. My mum is one, retired at 55, has hundreds of thousands in the bank, and is now living an extremely comfortable life (multiple cruises per year). She started pretending she knew nothing about the chabges once she heard about the compensation (despite the fact that she retired early anyway so it made no difference to her). She certainly can “afford” to not have it and if she gets it, it’ll be ludicrous given that the financial impact on her was absolutely zero.

She’s not a nice person and a terrible advocate for the cause but their comms team isn’t much better!

I was given plenty of notice of my new retirement age. The only group that I feel were unfairly treated were a small cohort born in 1954 who had the goalposts suddenly changed again without notice. I agree with OP that there are higher priorities for government spending than compensation to WASPI women. I don’t think this particular thread is ageist, however MN as a whole is rife with ageism and stereotyping.

Clearly we all have our own opinions on this, but it's a pity that younger women who oppose this do not take the time to think how different working life was for women until fairly recently, unequal pay, less opportunity, no free childcare, no universal credit etc etc. I am in favour, and am amazed that the government ombudsman's decision is being ignored. OP, how about a thread on why we all have to subsidise kids having breakfast at school, why idle/obese/addicted people can choose not to work and be looked after by the state, why illegal immigrants are escorted across the channel and put up in hotels - all things I don't agree with as a good use of taxpayers' money. I'm sure you can think of more.

Working life is still unequal for women. Employers are just less open about it now. It's still really difficult being a woman in the workplace, especially a woman with children. We are still discriminated against and treated unfairly, just much more quietly.

"Free" childcare is not free btw. It's subsidised.

'I don't want free childcare that is geared to getting me out to work, I would prefer it to be good childcare that helped my DC and that the cost of it be paid to me to use as I think fit i.e. to support me at home, use grandparents, a childminder or a nursery.'

This is just as naive as your previous remark about not having been consulted over the changes to your pensions. We would all prefer lots of things and lots of money given to use to spend as we wish but it's not going to happen. The government have their agendas, one of which is having people in work and paying taxes.

My mum is older than the WASPI's. I went to a free school nursery. She got family allowance and then got very generous family credit when I was a teen. Universal credit is just lots of benefits pulled into one payment.
Inequality still exists. It's also a hell of a lot harder now to live off one wage than it was 20-30yrs ago and beyond.

Another person who is younger generation, (my DM is of the WASPI cohort) who knew all about it. I remember having an in depth chat with my Dad about it years ago, about how in particular it would affect my mum and her pension age. And my Mum certainly knew about it, although now she's on the side of the WASPIs, which I find slightly bizarre.

I'm gen X, (seemingly the forgotten generation) and have worked part time from being 14, throughout school then university, put myself through uni (no parental help, in mid 90s, last year group to get a (very small) grant, one of first years to have to take out student loans), started work properly, got married, had kids, had no help with childcare costs and astronomical nursery fees, worked my entire life so far, and will also end up retiring probably when I'm 70 (if I'm lucky.)

I do have a public sector pension (not civil service though) but as I've said, I've worked really all my life from being a teenager without any breaks apart from maternity leave.

I just think you have to try to make the best of your situation, provide for yourself, and I don't think you can count on much any more. I think the WASPI compensation would be better invested in education or health.

Free nursery school depends on area not era. Nursey school was also not the same as nursery care. I went to nursery school - it was either mornings or afternoons depending on age and usually only for two terms before yr 1 entry. In some areas it was three terms. My young end millennial children also had two terms each of half day nursery school before yr 1. Neighbouring borough had no nursery provision, just as some boroughs had none when I was 4. There were no free childcare hours, no salary sacrifice for childcare schemes and precious little quality control of childcare.

Family allowance was just the old name for child benefit (and the first child didn't qualify). Flat rate paid to the mother. Family Credit/FIS/Working Tax Credit - all names for the prevailing in work benefit for low income workers. "Generous" was not a word I often heard used for any of them.

Inequality still exists. Yep completely agree with this - its exactly why we should focus policy on economic class rather than meaningless identity categories.

It's also a hell of a lot harder now to live off one wage than it was 20-30yrs ago and beyond.
Don't agree with this. Many of the families describing women as housewives were families where the women had a bunch of patchwork low paid jobs at antisocial hours. All the women I knew as a child worked but none in naice 9-5 or 9-3 jobs. Early morning shifts, evening shifts, night shifts, weekend shifts - usually more than one job with a bit of each. These women were even recorded in the census as "housewives" by many recorders if they were home for part of the day time and their jobs described as "pin money" even where it was putting food on the table. I remember how irritated my DM was at her work contribution being so casually dismissed by the census collector.

Then as now, a full time parent at home was a luxury situation. Very few families lived entirely on one income. That said the standard of living enjoyed by my children was unimaginably high compared to that in which my siblings and I grew up. Both generations grew up with two working parents.

It's not a question of ',taking the time to think' about how different working life was. The WASPI campaign isn't requesting reparation for that. People really need to stop making this some sort of 'everywoman' fight. It isn't. It's about a group of women born between 1950 and 1960 specifically who feel they weren't adequately notified about pension changes. That's it.

I'm only 14 years younger than the youngest WASPI. Honestly, how much massively harder was it for a woman born in 1960 than it was for me? WASPI women were having families and working in the 70s and 80s, not the 30s.

I started FT work in the early 90s, before the change in pension age was announced. I was already hearing about the importance of a pension besides the state one, and I was a factory worker on a low wage, not even minimum wage because that didn't exist until 1999.. I was hardly perusing the financial times at that age. Now a bunch of well-heeled, well-educated middle-class women are telling me they didn't know, didn't understand, weren't told. Come on!

This isn't about how hard you had it. The oldest of you might have had children before the advent of maternity leave in 1975. I suppose some of you might just have had the means and the desire to get a mortgage on your own before 1975, which was also the year that legislation changed to permit women to do that. The oldest of you would have been 25. The youngest 15.

All the sexism, etc that WASPI women would have experienced was still experienced by women born in the 60s and 70s. I experienced blatant wage differences in my first employment, wasn't allowed to get a forklift licence by my bosses who openly stated it was because I was female and this was still acceptable for them to do in the 90s.

So don't tell me how women born in a narrow ten year period deserve compensation because generally it was 'so much harder' for them because it isn't going to wash. Even if you don't accept a woman born just 14 years later didn't have massively more privilege and opportunity than you, a woman born in 1961 definitely didn't. And yet she's not going to be eligible for any compensation, is she?

Because this is about a specific circumstance. It's not about the oppression of women in the workplace or how hard it was generally, it's about women born within a ten year period who were the first cohort to go through a significant change to pension age and feel they weren't adequately informed.

Stop riding on the coattails of the wider fights for women's rights to justify this.

The free childcare nonsense points are such whataboutery. Firstly those women did have free childcare, children were entitled to free playgroups and preschool places in the 80s too. Up until very recently the only real additional childcare provision was that you could use the “free hours” you could already access in a school nursery setting but now apply it to a private nursery.

@C8H10N4O2 There were no free childcare hours, no salary sacrifice for childcare schemes and precious little quality control of childcare.

The free hours is literally just applying the same free entitlement to preschool hours but in a private setting. It’s also term time and equates to a handful of hours a week.

The childcare vouchers started in the late 80s so there’s every chance many WASPI women had the ability to use them towards childcare.
The childcare vouchers don’t exist anymore.

@C8H10N4O2 There were no free childcare hours, no salary sacrifice for childcare schemes and precious little quality control of childcare.

The free hours is literally just applying the same free entitlement to preschool hours but in a private setting. It’s also term time and equates to a handful of hours a week.

The childcare vouchers started in the late 80s so there’s every chance many WASPI women had the ability to use them towards childcare.
The childcare vouchers don’t exist anymore.

Well in some cases the line was drawn at less than nine months notice that your retirement age was extended by six years. I have three relatives all born only a few weeks apart and they all had very different retirement ages notified to them. The information given to them by DWP was confusing and inaccurate, and l think this is what many people can’t or won’t grasp. You make plans coming up to retirement - including financial ones. Many women were in ill health and took much lower early retirement pensions in anticipation of SP topping them up, then found themselves ineligible for benefits when the retirement age was extended. I think it’s easy to sit back and judge when you’re not affected, but many women were, and significantly so.

Yes but the obvious remedy to that was that you carried on working until state pension age @Lovelysausagedogscrumpy. No one was forced to subsist on one small pension for 6 years. This is all about a group of women who wanted to stop work at 60 - well wouldn't we all!

Free childcare was not widely available in the 1980s. And it was a political issue. Before the 1987 election, the Labour Party considered making nursery places free for 3 and 4-year-olds, but the Tories opposed it, due to costs.
There was also debate about whether local authorities should be required to provide childcare places. It wasn’t until 1989 that childcare vouchers were introduced, allowing employees to use some of their wages to pay for childcare. So it still wasn’t free.

I think you may not realise two things:

1. Sometimes people get carried along by the system. They pay their NI via PAYE, you get to a certain age and retire and your pension happens. Obviously you have to apply for your state retirement pension. You don't need to think very much because the pattern is long established.
2. Some of the WASP generation have been in and out of work, caring for children and parents. They don't have a consistent work record, let alone a Government Gateway code. Some aren't computer literate. Some opted out of pension payments as they were married. The dates for retirement were changed and changed again.

Not thick, just not part of the system or unable to deal with it.

I did point out that many women took early retirement through ill health because they anticipated SP. Not so easy to get back into the job market when you’re late 50’s/early 60’s and in ill health. And it really wasn’t about whether these women wanted to retire at 60. It was about how and when the changes were notified, and the significant financial effect on many. I don’t subscribe to the notion that all should be compensated, or that they should receive backdated pension, but the fact is that the effect on many was significant.

This. Well said.

So if one is forced to retire through ill health @Lovelysausagedogscrumpy then how would the government having written to you years previously explaining the change in pension age have helped? Would these women then have simply decided not to become incapacitated later on? Either they were well enough to work after 60 or they weren't. If they weren't that sucks - just like it socks for everyone since - but it's not really relevant to the topic of compensation.

No. At the time they became ill, they would have realised that because their SP would no longer kick in at age 60, they couldn’t afford to retire on a significantly reduced workplace pension taken early on health grounds. Then they would perhaps have been able to hang on until their full workplace pension was payable at age 60. Instead they were forced to re-enter the workforce at significant disadvantage due to age and ill health. This is not rocket science.

I'm Gen X. I've been in and out of work. I've got long term health issues. I've cared for an elderly, ill parent. I've topped up my NI contributions so I've enough years for a State Pension at 67. I didn't get a personal letter about doing that, but topping up has been in the media a lot so I looked into it and decided it was a good idea for some years.

My silent generation mum retired at 60 in 1992 and it seemed incredibly young even then.

The WASPI Whingers need a reality check. The changes were announced in the nineties when these women were in their forties at most.

I'm sick to death of the infantalisation going on here. Women unable to take in information that was everywhere, who left their husbands to open letters and pass on information, who never glanced at a newspaper, watched TV, bought a magazine, talked to anyone.

The whole attempt to justify it is nonsensical.

I think @Lovelysausagedogscrumpy meant they chose to retire early rather than struggle on because they knew they could survive until their state pension, rather than forced to retire. Then the pension date changed and they didn't have enough to cover the extended period.

By 'illegal immigrants are escorted across the channel', do you mean picked up by lifeboats as they are drowning? From the rest of your right wing rant, I'm sure you would prefer to leave them to drown, even the children.

What if some of the Waspi women are idle and obese? Would they still be deserving of compensation? What if they 'chose' not to work and to be looked after by the state? A lot of the arguments from some Waspi women are that they can't work and that applying for benefits and having to actively seek work is humiliating.

The truth is that if compensation was awarded, most of it would go to women who don't actually need it.