Women’s retirement age increase sparks dispute

The gradual increase in women’s retirement age has drawn criticism from the trade union and support from the Vorarlberg Chamber of Commerce, ORF reports. The retirement age for women will reach 65 in seven years.

Vienna labour market policy expert Ingrid Mairhuber told ORF Vorarlberg that the rise was directly linked to high unemployment among women. She said unemployment among women aged over 60 had increased sharply just months after the first stage of the increase began in January 2024.

Trade union calls increase counterproductive

Reinhard Stemmer, chairman of the Austrian Trade Union Federation in Vorarlberg, described the increase as pointless and counterproductive. He said that unless companies employed older workers, the policy would leave people without work and without a pension for longer.

“Reality disproves the promise that a higher retirement age automatically keeps more people in employment for longer,” Stemmer said in a statement. Raising the retirement age on paper was not enough, he added. The decisive question was whether people actually had jobs until then.

Stemmer called for working conditions to be changed so that people could remain in employment voluntarily and in good health for longer. He said this required more prevention and workplace health protection, age appropriate jobs and working time models, more opportunities to gradually reduce working hours in later life, and stronger protection against age discrimination.

Chamber says increase is necessary

The Vorarlberg Chamber of Commerce supports the gradual increase in women’s retirement age. Vice President Andrea Längle said the pension system was “a subsidised insurance system, but not an instrument of labour market policy”.

Aligning women’s retirement age with men’s was necessary for reasons of fairness and would also help secure the pension system’s long term financing, Längle said.

She added that linking rising unemployment among women over 60 directly to the increase in retirement age was too simplistic, saying the economic slowdown was also a factor.