French balk at waiting until 62 to retire

By Dale McFeatters

Scripps Howard News Service

France's public-pension system is facing massive shortfalls that could jeopardize the whole system. One reason is that the retirement age of 60 is one of the lowest in Europe.

Germany's is 65, but it is raising that to 67 to get the system on a sounder financial footing. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has sensibly ― and, one would think, obviously ― proposed raising his country's retirement age to 62 by 2018.

A goodly number of the French want nothing to do with working those extra two years, even if by doing so, according to the government, it would save nearly $30 billion when fully in effect, enough to put the pension system in the black.

But France's powerful public-employee unions say the shortfalls should be made up by higher taxes on younger workers, who might not find that particularly fair.

The BBC reports that the proposed reforms also ``would affect 5 million civil servants, many of whom retire at the age of 55, and would target the bonuses and the tax breaks that provide pensioners with ― on average ― a higher standard of living than ordinary workers."

The unions staged one-day marches and wildcat strikes across the country, disrupting rail, air and commuter service, closing schools and post offices, causing brownouts and forcing public radio stations to replace live programming with recorded music.

These strikes are pale copies of the 1995 walkouts that paralyzed the country for three weeks and forced the government to back down from proposed pension reforms. But Sarkozy shows no indication of backing down, and in any case the Greek-debt crisis has European governments leery of assuming ever-mounting public debt.

The unions have pledged to hit the streets again in the fall when the higher retirement age comes before parliament. One union president complained to the Associated Press that the government is ``refusing to imagine other sources of funding."

If a vivid imagination can save Social Security, we in the United States would really like to hear about it.

Dale McFeatters is an editorial writer of Scripps Howard News Service (www.scrippsnews.com).