Research ‘exposes pension time bomb’

A survey of members by Unite has revealed a pension and retirement “time bomb” facing workers, the union says.

Over 10,000 members across four key sectors (construction, health, passenger transport and road haulage/warehouse) took part in the survey, Unite reports, and each sector produced overwhelming evidence that workers do not believe they can continue in their present jobs to the existing state pension age of 66/67, let alone any later.

Among the results were that 86% of health workers do not believe they can mentally continue to undertake their current roles beyond the age of 66, while 83% of them could not physically continue.

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “Tens of thousands of workers will be forced out of employment due to the physical and mental demands of their work but will be too young to receive the state pension.

“The government needs to urgently rethink its entire strategy of expecting workers to work even longer. A failure to do so will consign workers to the misery of being too old to work but too young for a pension. Plans to accelerate the introduction of the state pension age to 68 are clearly unworkable.”