Pension after 45 years: Verdi demands a bill, Left Party presents data on women
Verdi chief Werneke urges Labour Minister Schweitzer to secure the penalty-free pension. Government figures show a quarter of women drawing it receive less than 1,200 euros.
Symbolic image · Photo: Rufus46 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
In the coalition dispute over the penalty-free pension after 45 years of contributions, the Verdi union is raising pressure on the SPD. Union leader Frank Werneke told the Funke newspapers that Labour Minister Alexander Schweitzer (SPD) "should present a draft law" that forgoes raising the retirement age, keeps the so-called pension at 63 and secures the 48 percent pension level beyond 2031. It affected "more than 250,000 people per age cohort", he said.
The possible savings of around 10 billion euros amounted to only "about 0.1 to 0.2 percentage points of the pension insurance contribution", Werneke argued. The claim that mainly well-paid office workers benefited was "not true". According to government figures in response to a Left Party inquiry, reported by the RND network, a quarter of women on this pension receive less than 1,200 euros in statutory pension, compared with about five percent of men; among those who retired in 2025, the figures were 28.2 and 6.9 percent.
Left Party pensions spokeswoman Sarah Vollath warned via RND that women and workers in eastern Germany would be hit hardest. The government's pension commission recommends abolishing the rule, and Chancellor Friedrich Merz backs that course. Resistance is growing in the SPD, and Schweitzer is seeking a compromise. In their coalition agreement, the conservatives and the SPD agreed in principle to keep it.