bNearly half of working people in the Netherlands do not expect to be able to work until the retirement age of 67, according to a survey by the CNV trade union. They say they are collapsing under the pressure of work. “You cannot expect all these people to continue until they drop,” said CNV chairman Piet Fortuin.
On Wednesday, police officers stood on the barricades because they demanded a continuation of the current early retirement scheme, the RVU. This makes it possible to sit behind the geraniums, spend time on the golf course or look after the grandchildren three years earlier.
As a supplement to the pension, a net monthly income of around 1,300 euros is paid out. However, this arrangement is in danger of being abolished in 2025.
Everyone wishes the uncle officer an early retirement. It is not easy to separate young people fighting in the middle of the night, to comfort a bereaved old lady or to calm down an aggressive drunk driver who has to surrender his driver’s license.
Peter de Waard is a journalist from de Volkskrantspecialized in financial and economic topics.
But it will mean that blue on the street becomes as rare as a postman on Monday. In an alarming article about increasing staff shortages in the public sector, this newspaper reported last Saturday that even without RVU, 17 thousand of the 63 thousand officers will retire in the next five years.
And that is not the only sector where things are going wrong due to a lack of personnel. Prisoners are already being released due to a shortage of guards, the tax authorities are losing income due to a shortage of inspectors and the school week has been shortened to four days due to a shortage of teachers. And all those professions are also tough, especially now that the workload is increasing due to a lack of colleagues.
For a new government it is an almost impossible dilemma. The shortages will continue to grow, now that after the baby boomers, generation X is also retiring and a smaller younger generation prefers it influencer then it becomes possible to earn a living in the public sector.
In the private sector, the business community, there is still room for improvement by hiring foreigners: from Polish construction workers and tomato pickers to highly skilled Indian IT professionals, such as at ASML. But much public work requires Dutch training and competencies.
The rapid aging of the population actually forces people to continue working longer. Otherwise the workload will become even greater. It is also necessary to keep the current pension system affordable. In addition, older people also more often rely on public services such as healthcare. But there is hardly any social support for further raising the retirement age, nor for lowering benefits.
If almost half of workers do not work until their 67th birthday, the pension system will one day collapse with a thunderous crash.
There is a consolation. People usually say in surveys that they want to retire earlier. But at the supreme moment, they face it like a mountain. Then they suddenly realize how much they will miss the colleagues, the regularity, the stories, the feeling of doing something useful and the excitement.
No golf course can compete with police work. And many people also succumb to the pressure on the par-5.
