'WASPI women' appeal court ruling

[GrimSisters]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54158832

I'm 41. I'd always wondered why women retired at 60 and men at 65 and have known all about the changes for years because I read the news and don't live under a rock.

Given that, at the moment, I'll get my state pension at 68, I'm struggling to understand what the problem is. Please could someone explain why having to work until 65, along with their male counterparts, is so distressing?

I thought we wanted equality? Must admit that I'm struggling to have much sympathy. I work in a relatively low paid job and have four colleagues aged between 55 and 63 who haven't complained about the situation.

If you're one of the women who has been affected by this change, I'd be interested to know what the real issue is because I'm really confused as to why it is such a massive issue.

The Equal Pay Act is a joke. I found out I was being paid less than my male peers - despite me having demonstrably more knowledge of our sector than them - in 2013, FFS.

@OnlyTheLangoftheTitBerg - if that’s the case you could have brought a claim under the equal pay act. did you?

@Gurufloof - the reason successive governments have raised the state pension age (rather than lower men’s pension age) is because Universal state pensions are enormously expensive. Also no one currently has a state pension age of 70.

@Angryresister - no one is losing anything they paid in. Ni is a tax and State pensions are benefits. They may be contribution based benefits but they are still benefits.

@Oliversmumsarmy - how would you propose women find out about their pensions entitlement if they are not prepared to watch tv news or read newspapers? You think it’s ok for them just to assume that they were the same as when they started work 40 years ago and somehow the state should be obliged to pay out?

It is annoying for people who feel they missed out. But it isn't unfair. Men have less life expectancy than women yet had to work longer. This needed to be put right.

@Viviennemary

It is annoying for people who feel they missed out. But it isn't unfair. Men have less life expectancy than women yet had to work longer. This needed to be put right.

No one is arguing about the changes, it’s the way they were implemented that’s caused so much distress. It’s not just that women are angry, it’s about injustice, inequality and in some cases real hardship.

[quote CayrolBaaaskin]@30yearstomorrow - women do have equal state pensions to men. The reduced stamp was abolished in 1977. You only need 30 years of contributions for the previous state pension (35 now).[/quote]
It was only abolished in 1977 to new claims. If you had opted to pay the reduced stamp before then, you could continue to do so. I worked with many women in the 1990s that were still paying the reduced stamp - they were mostly part-timers with children still at school. And because they worked part-time, they couldn't join the company pension scheme. I know two of these women who'd stopped work in the early 2010s to become carers for an elderly parent in anticipation of getting their state pension in a short time, and with very little notice that short time became several years. That was certainly not fair. Add into the mix the parent dying (lived in a council house, no inheritance) and a divorce before pension splitting became a legality and you've got a woman who has been well & truly shafted by changes to legislation.

The 35 year qualification is one of the most galling things. I had 45 years of contributions. Some women had 50 years. Not only were our pensions delayed in a really unfair way, but we had to continue making unnecessary contributions at the time we should have been getting our pensions. That was just rubbing our noses in it.

My mother was affected by this. She’s been hoping for a windfall.

I should point out that she cashed in her NHS pension in her earlier years. I don’t know by what mechanism (I can’t cash mine in!) but she had a good spend with it. She wasn’t known for financial planning, but had the cheek to complain that these changes took away the chance to plan.

My recollection is this:
Initially, changes to the pension age were legislated for in advance, with a phased changeover which, though a pain to those of us of the 'wrong' age, was eye-rollingly OK & fairly well communicated.

However, a second change was made which overrode the first, making the situation less fair & much worse for WASPI women & it was not communicated well, or at all to some women.

It's not fair to ignore the second phase (as some commentators do) or to blame women for 'not checking the newspapers' for unexpected legislative changes - or 'not understanding' as someone said above. Should not the Department for Work & Pensions be blamed for not at the very least informing women indvidually that their pension age had been changed (from 60 to 66 overall in some cases)?

I'm sick of the victim blaming and gloating which can emerge in discussions about this topic, & the fudging of the history of the two changes which occurred. It was easy money for the government, I seem to remember George Osborne saying.

Remember, those of you who can't summon up any sympathy for WASPI women, that any government could do the same to you: snatch away your pension just as you get close to it, without bothering to tell you in advance, & make you work another 5 or 6 or 10 years. You think they'll stop at 66? No chance.

[quote CayrolBaaaskin]@Angryresister - no one is losing anything they paid in. Ni is a tax and State pensions are benefits. They may be contribution based benefits but they are still benefits.

@Oliversmumsarmy - how would you propose women find out about their pensions entitlement if they are not prepared to watch tv news or read newspapers? You think it’s ok for them just to assume that they were the same as when they started work 40 years ago and somehow the state should be obliged to pay out?[/quote]
Do you not think that after the first change to their pension age, which if I remember rightly was EU-mandated, women might reasonably assume that no more changes would be made as the UK had met the requirements?

Also, are you not aware that some stories never make it to the news media, for a variety of reasons?

In any event, the person to whom child benefit gets paid is credited 12 years ni contributions even if they don’t work.
Mine will never reach 35 years as my kids were born abroad I never got Child benefit, even though I paid NI while I worked there but not when an at home Mum. My time out for kids was completly unpaid, but should have been fine as I was paying when working and would meet the 30 years of payment before retirement.

I thought we wanted equality? Must admit that I'm struggling to have much sympathy. I work in a relatively low paid job and have four colleagues aged between 55 and 63 who haven't complained about the situation.

Yes but you have to start life with equality, I was 10 before the sex discrimination act became law. The subjects I could take at school were limited. Because of that my career choices were limited and therefore my income the same.

Had I chosen to have children I would have had a max of 6 months maternity leave - many other women didn't get any.

If I married my husband could pay less tax than me.

I gave up a good job to care for my son who was born premature and had complex medical needs and needed 24/7 care. I fall into the WASPI age group. I cannot remember whether I was warned or not by letter about the state pension age raising because I was completely sleep deprived at the time and my focus was on keeping my son alive. ANyway there was nothing I could do, I could not go back to work and enrol in a private pension scheme . I spent 22 years on Carers Allowance before my son died. My chances of getting back into employment at my age and with that employment gap and being female and an ex Carer are not high and are even worse with Covid now. I do think it is a discrimination issue because very few men of working age are willing to give up their jobs and their ability to pay into a private pension to look after their sick family members. Family Carers are lauded for the billions they save the NHS but they are shafted at every turn .

Also no one currently has a state pension age of 70
Yeah you got me, my actual state pensionable age is 69 years and 10 months. Close enough to 70 years as makes sod all difference.
At the moment. Theres still plenty of time to change that.
There is the little matter of quite possibly not being able to work that long. There is still age related discrimination, legal no, happens yes. It's just dressed up in a different way.

[quote CayrolBaaaskin]@OnlyTheLangoftheTitBerg - if that’s the case you could have brought a claim under the equal pay act. did you?[/quote]
I can't speak for Only, but in my case (round about the same time) I was only able to do so because I had a trade union who backed a group of us to take action. You need good lawyers, you need male colleagues prepared to step up as "comparators" and disclose their pay details, it's a long and complicated (and expensive) process.

Most equal pay claims (Tesco ongoing at the moment) tend to be large organisations or public sector because the staff there are more likely to be unionised.

An individual woman, or a couple of women, in a small firm? Unlikely to be able to afford the legal fees, I'm afraid.

It's also shocking the number of times an internal company pay audit reveals a pay gap (this is what happened in our case) and the company's response is "We can't afford to fix it - sue us if you think you can win."

The idea that equal pay just drops into your lap simply because the Equal Pay Act has been on the statute books for 50 years (!!!) or that it's easy to rectify the situation when you discover you're not being paid fairly is a rather naive one.

It is annoying for people who feel they missed out
!? understatement of the year.
Thankfully DH earned VERY well and we haven't divorced. I spent many years as a trailing spouse so didn't work. My choice. And worked a bit of part time when I could. Had I been informed with little notice that I had to wait several more years for my pension and I didn't have DHs income I would have probably had to get DCs to subsidise. I would have been on Jobseeker's Allowance - no jobs round here.
I used to read the mones pages in the broadsheets regularly and didn't know this would happen, I had a friend 3years older she has had 10 years of pension , I've had 3 months.
It was the lack of warning that was bad.

Sorry 5 years of pension

I agree with your principle but think it’s the lack of notice this group was given (though some have suggested it was mooted many years previously 🤷‍♀️) that is the issue.

How much notice were the second group of women given when the change was accelerated. But if a change is made somebody willl lose out. Like changing people to universal credit, the two children rule, the temporary change of stamp duty.

I find this thread sad.

My sister was an early feminist. She used to read Spare Rib in the 70’s

Feminism then was about sisterhood, sharing and looking after each other.

This thread is bickering about young v old. I don’t see much evidence of the early principles which paved the way for how life is lived today.

Universal income is the way forward. Why should anyone who’s worked all their life and contributed to society be made to live in poverty or denied money owed? We are the 5th richest nation. The mark of a civilised nation is how it looks after it’s young and it’s old. But no one in number 10 gives a shite.

My sister passed away in 2009. She would have been a Waspi.

A bit of social history worth reading:
www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/1918-vs-2018-13-things-women-couldnt-do-100-years-ago/

For example, it wasn't until 1975 that a woman could get a bank account in her own name without a male counter-signatory.

So it's not just the lack of notice giving inadequate time to make other arrangements. It's a host of other things as well: unequal pay (and lower occupational pension as a result); lack of transparency round "NI holidays" or choosing to make lower NI contributions; gaps in employment history due to the rules round maternity leave at the time; different contractual arrangements meaning women lost their jobs at 60 whether they wanted that or not.

So many of the posters who don't see the problem or think it's a minor issue seem not to have any grasp of the historical situation; they mistakenly assume society in the past (when the WASPI women started their working lives) worked the same way it does today in all respects except state pension age.

It didn't. It was set up to systematically financially disadvantage women. Have done that to them, they're now being shafted all over again by a late change in the rules with inadequate notice.

@CayrolBaaaskin So women should make sure to read newspapers every day and watch every news programme just in case the government decide to change the rules about pensions?

Here's a novel idea, how about women getting a letter about the changes? You know like they did with the first change.

We didn't assume that things would stay the same as when we started work because we had all received a letter telling us things were changing. As another poster said, were we really to expect yet another change brought in with very little time to spare?

Saying someone is "not prepared to watch tv news or read papers" is
a ridiculous thing to say and rude but then you are rude.

Not everyone even has a tv or just maybe they have a busy life and don't watch much. I don't watch the news because I suffer badly from depression and the news makes it much much worse. In fact I, and several people I know with depression, was advised not to watch it.

As I said before, although you seem to like to ignore anything you don't agree with, with the first change it was talked about amongst my friends and family members including my mum mentioned it to me. Not one single person mentioned the second change. In fact when I did find out about it and mentioned it to others, including women of a similar age to me, not one of them knew about it.

@Viviennemary how can you possibly compare it to the 2 children rule? It wasn't brought in for existing children so if people decided to still have more than 2 children that was their decision.

It wasn't my decision to be born in 1954 was it?

I'm 67 and I am one of the women affected by this and I think it was done fairly . I missed 12 years of working whilst my children were small . Which I knew would make a difference to my pension. When I did start working part time in the mid 30s , I paid full stamp . When I was 36 I decided to train as a nurse . Once qualified I joined the NHS final salary pension scheme . I received a letter sometime in the 90s informing me that I would no longer get my pension at 60 but at 63 . I then was informed in the mid noughties that they had tweaked it and I would need to work an extra 6 months .
I cannot be the only woman born between 1950 and 1955 that was given this information.
I've always thought that women should retire at the same age as men