Retired at 60 without discounts linked to the “children variable”. The new mechanism for early retirement with the women’s option that the Meloni government has included in the maneuver risks lasting 2-3 weeks, no more. In the Chamber, where the examination of the text has begun in what promises to be a real race against time to approve the budget bill before December 31st, they are already working hard to cancel the registry bonuses linked to offspring: a year in the case of only one child, leaving at 59 years of age; two years in the presence of two or more children, with retirement at 58 years.
It remains to be understood which of the three modification hypotheses on the table will transform into the final solution: age threshold of 60, to be added to the 35 years of payments requested, for all women; same way out but limited to the specific cases envisaged by the current version of the maneuver (female workers with civil disability exceeding 74%; caregivers; “fired”); flat mini-extension of 6-8 months of the scheme which currently allows to benefit from early treatment with the “contribution recalculation” if in possession of 58 years of age (59 for self-employment) and 35 of contributions, pending the next reform social security. Much will depend on coverage, as well as on the type of compromise that must be reached by the majority. Meanwhile, Bankitalia warns: “Making possible an early exit for women’s option slows down the participation of women in the labor market”.
The current scheme
Currently, female workers can leave early, with the recalculation of the check contribution, having matured 58 years of age (59 if “autonomous”) and 35 years of payments. The flat extension for 2022 had been decided by the Draghi executive for a cost of around 111 million and a potential audience of 17 thousand women.
The squeeze with the Meloni maneuver
The text of the budget bill presented by the Meloni government extends the measure for another year but with various limitations that reduce the potential number of female workers to 2,900 and the impact on public finances to 20.8 million in 2023. In particular, Option women is made accessible to only three categories: female workers who assist, at the time of the request and for at least six months, their spouse or a first-degree relative living with a disability in a serious situation; women with civil disability greater than or equal to 74%; those fired or employed by companies for which a discussion table is active for the management of the company crisis. The age threshold then rises to 60, with a one-year discount (leaving at 59) for female workers with one child and a two-year discount (leaving at 58) for those with two or more children. But the “children variable” continues to be the focus of most oppositions and raises more than one perplexity in the same circles of the majority.
The tweaks to come
In the Chamber, where the maneuver is being examined, work immediately began to adjust the measure. The first hypothesis, which would also be appreciated by the Minister of Labour, Marina Calderone, provides for the use of a “dry” extension of 6-8 months of the scheme currently in force, i.e. leaving the access requirements and the basin concerned unchanged, in waiting for the whole system of flexible outgoings to be reviewed with the organic pension reform expected in 2023. This solution, at the moment, does not seem to convince the MEF technicians too much. A possible alternative change is to leave the age limit at 60 for all female workers by resetting the “children variable”. But in the event that the available resources were to prove insufficient, the road would open wide to maintain the 60-year requirement for only the three categories of workers already indicated (civil invalids, caregivers, “fired”).