Editorial:

Exploiting retired workers

"Work until you drop" is the derisive comment that has greeted 
the Federal Government's plan to extend the working life of older 
workers. And people have a right to be suspicious as the high-
sounding good intentions that accompanied the announcement have 
little to do with the real motives behind the Government's 
scheme.

The Government has three main aims: to wind down the public, 
centrally funded age pension and transfer pension responsibility 
to the private sector (the super funds); to create a massive pool 
of savings which will be a major source of investment capital 
available to the private sector; and to create a pool of reserve 
labour.

The claim that it is becoming more and more difficult for 
governments to continue to pay the aged pension and other support 
payments for retired workers was behind the introduction of 
compulsory superannuation.

The Keating Labor Government legislated in 1992 for compulsory 
superannuation. It was intended to slowly replace the taxpayer 
funded, federal government administered and equitable aged 
pension. To introduce superannuation, workers at the time gave up 
a four percent wage increase that had already been awarded.

Before compulsory superannuation was introduced, the official 
retirement age for male workers was 65 years and women workers 60 
years. They would then draw an age pension, subject to a means 
test.

While workers remain at work they not only continue to pay taxes 
but employers continue to make contributions (foregone wages) — 
in effect funding their own retirement. The superannuation levy 
is now up to nine percent of wages and will continue to rise.

The promotion of super schemes was only a first step towards the 
goal of replacing the public pension by private self-provision 
schemes, at best leaving a safety net for the most desperately 
needy. Bringing an end to government welfare obligations was the 
ultimate objective.

Having people work for longer will see many thousands delay 
drawing the aged pension. This, then, is in part another welfare 
cutting measure. To win acceptance of its nefarious scheme the 
Government has offered a carrot. Workers who stay at work will be 
permitted to draw out some of their accumulated superannuation.

As was intended, superannuation has become a huge reservoir of 
investment capital to be used by the big corporations to fund 
their business ventures, takeovers and mergers and take up the 
opportunities provided to them through privatisation.

Super funds are dependent on the performance of the capitalist 
economy which has become increasingly unstable. Over the last few 
years the annual returns of funds went into the red as a result 
of declining profit returns as corporations used workers' 
retirement money to gamble on the markets.

The Federal Government's scheme also aims to provide a pool of 
trained and experienced workers who would be available to work on 
a part-time, casual basis and on more flexible hours. It would 
become an employers' delight.

With such work becoming a second source of income (over and above 
superannuation), many would be prepared to take lower wages. The 
situation would be used by employers to push down the wages and 
conditions for other workers, to deunionise and further casualise 
the workforce.

The longer term objective is to completely privatise Government 
social responsibility to the aged, part of the drive to 
deregulate and privatise all services across the board, be they 
child care, education, transport, health or telecommunications.

Security in old age — like other basic social needs — should be 
guaranteed, not left up the greed and anarchy of the markets. 
Workers who toil all their lives, pay taxes and make by far the 
biggest contribution to the economic and social well being of the 
nation are now being told "work until you drop", while those who 
do not have the savings necessary to live in dignified retirement 
(and there are many) are to be left to scrape by on a poverty 
level "safety net" pittance.

There is only one fair and equitable scheme — it is an aged 
pension that is universal, government-run and funded out of 
taxation where all contributions are pooled and used for the 
common benefit.