This week the Irish government has announced another anti-worker measure. This time it is a new pension scheme that tries to increase the age of retirement to 68. A historical achievement of the working class could be taken back.  Workers will also be signed up to a pension plan, non state-guaranteed, and administered by the private sector pension industry, which will get the money through the PRSI system. The new scheme plans as well to bring public sector workers in line with workers in the private sector. The plan is that those who are 62 now won’t retire until they are 66 (2014), and those who are 49 or younger won’t retire until they are 68 (2029). The government will get rid of the impediments to retire after 65 and will rise accordingly the age to quality for a state pension. At the moment around 50 percent of workers depend on getting a state pension only.  The government expect that between 65-70 percent of workers will participate in a mandatory pension scheme, although they will be allowed to opt out, on top of the state pension.

 ICTU’s meeting on Monday should make an assessment of the effectiveness of the work to rule campaign and the partial actions that we have seen in the past weeks. It should listen to the views of the workers in the hospitals and the government departments, the council offices and then make plans to ensure that the wage cuts are defeated. The pressure is beginning to mount, but for sure it never went away. The CPSU vote to escalate their action with a variety of limited and indefinite strikes is an indication of this. The CPSU has been at the forefront of the struggles over the last year, But that should be no surprise, they are directly employed by the government and directly affected by every twist and turn of Cowen and Lenihan.