Finally a pension reform for Spain

An important story for the national news today: Spain's central government, trade unions and the employers' representatives have finally agreed the pillars of the future public pension system. Tomorrow, the government wants to present its proposal for the public pension system's reform; this then has to be put into law and agreed on by a majority of the Cortes (national parliament) where the ruling Socialists do not have a majority of their own but are dependent on the supporting votes of small, "nationalist" parties, such as CiU from Catalonia, PNV from the Basque Country, and Coalición Canarias from the Canary Islands.
The main points are these: if you want to retire with a full pension at age 65 you have to have worked 38.5 years paying contributions into the social security system. If you want to retire at age 67 with a full pension you have to have worked for 37 years contributing. To calculate a worker's old age pension the government will take into account his or her income during the last 25 years. That is positive for those who lose their jobs shortly before reaching the retirement age but bad for those who earn high wages only late in their working life. Working women who interrupt their working life to bear children will get a bonus of nine months for each child in the computation of their contributions with a maximum of two years (= 2, 66 children - sic).
The age for retiring early will be pushed from 61 to 63.
The introduction of these measures will start in 2013: from then on, workers who want to retire need to contribute an additional one and a half months each year to reach retirment their retirement, i.e. instead of retiring on their birthday they have to work six weeks more - and so on until by 2027 the general retirement age is hoped to have reached 67.
To get the trade unions' agreement the government has promised "active labor policies" for the unemployed aged 55 and above; if they participate in these programs they will receive a benefit of around 400 EUR per month (a ridiculous sum if one lives in a big city where the cost of life is close to northern European levels).

The original story from the Spanish daily El País is here.