Pension reform: Fed believes ‘public sector employers must be forced to pay social contributions’

In order to protect local pension funds, Congress passed on August 8 a measure to increase the salary contributions of public service employees by 1% and reduce the pensions of public service retirees by 3% until the end of 2025.

of Unpopular measures, voted on Vauban Avenue’s elected officials reluctantly rejected the proposal, and retirees reacted particularly badly.

Guest of television news this Thursday evening, Joao D’Almeida, secretary general of the Fédé retirees’ union, pointed out that politicians are responsible for the dramatic situation at the CLR, the institution that provides pensions to 6,000 retirees and members of the public in New Caledonia.

“Our elected officials have been vocal in saying they were forced to take these measures, which are inevitably unfair and unpopular, but they are the ones to blame for all of this.”

responsible because they are”Vote on the text they think No respect. They are responsible for voting on inadequate budgets, they are responsible for voting on tax measures that provide resources for quality public services, so they are fully accountable.You said today that we are in front of the wall? But they built the wall”expressed offense against the representative of the Federal Reserve retirees, referring to the intervention of Vaimua Muliava, who is in charge of government civil service affairs, during the congressional session.

Joao D’Almeida recalls that the unions had sounded the alarm several times before reaching this point. “On June 30, 2021, our organization demonstrated in front of Congress, not to demand additional benefits, but to warn about the difficulties facing the hospital sector because of the need to reform Ruamm (the unified health and maternity insurance program, editor’s note). It is now August 2024 and Ruamm has still not been reformed.”

This immobility creates problems “cascade”, Representatives of Federal Reserve retirees believe that. “This allows some employers, particularly hospitals, to not pay (social) contributions, but no fund can operate without contributions.”

Fédé therefore plans to write to all employers in institutions or public services to remind them: “Contributions to social security schemes are an obligation”. “A lot of people say: We’ll pay the wages and we’ll see what happens next. Joao D’Almeida was outraged. In its proposal to smooth out the CLR, the Fed wants to make it mandatory for all public employers in the country to pay social contributions.

I don’t understand why we ask those who earn the least to work three times harder than those who are active.

Joao D’almeida, Secretary General of the Union of Retirees

It would be unfair to organized labor to have reforms that would affect retirees more than they would affect employers and employees.”When you retire you earn less than someone who was active. I don’t understand why we ask the lowest paid people to work three times harder than the lowest paid people Joao D’Almeida was annoyed by two measures of the reform, a 1% increase in contributions for employees and a 3% reduction in pensions for retirees.

“There’s an intellectual construct that I just can’t understand. We asked that question multiple times, and we get the accounting element. But the logic of making the weakest pay three times more than everybody else, I’m sure we’re going to have a hard time recovering from this.”

These measures to temporarily save the CLR are also a response to the state’s persistent demands to reform national social security in exchange for its financial support. But for João d’Almeida, retirees have already done enough. “Since 2017, our cumulative inflation rate has been 14 per cent, which, when combined with the various superannuation taxes used to correct the CLR, equates to 20 per cent of the purchasing power extracted from retirees.”