In the newly flared pension debate, SPD General Secretary Kevin Kühnert called on companies to turn away from the “youth madness”. Often older people would not find a new job after losing their job, he told the newspapers of the Bayern media group. The companies would have to rethink: “We can no longer afford youth madness.”
It is also often due to the attractiveness of the jobs and working conditions that many employees decide to take early retirement, said Kühnert. Employers should ask themselves why this is so. “If someone says I’m fed up with my job and would rather retire with deductions, then every employer should be interested in the question: why are you fed up?”
At the same time, like Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD), Kühnert rejected a higher retirement age. “It’s not about extending working life.” Rather, it’s about “people who would like to still work, but for whom external circumstances mean that it doesn’t work”.
Even an employment rate of 70 percent among the over-60s “would be a great thing,” said Kühnert. It is currently only 60 percent. If it were to rise accordingly, it would “mean hundreds of thousands more workers.”
