Robin Hood wrote:Nikitas wrote:No one retires at 33. Youngest possible retirement is for submarine crews, permanent not conscripts, at 35 and that is after 17 years as sub crews. Then come people who have worked in heavy and unhygienic jobs, ie chemical plants, mines, etc, who retire after 20 years of work.
There are some exceptions won by politically powerful unions and some generous clauses for mothers of underaged children.
For the majority it is 60 if you have 40 years of labour stamps, or 65 if you do not and soon the general age will be 67.
And now for what the superficial lot do not tell you. Here you APPLY for your pension. On application you must STOP working and prove it, ie by sealing your account books, and wait till a few months you get the minimum pension, then wait for up to FIVE years to receive full pension. Many people do not live long enough to get full pension. If you work after you get pensioned then you must continue paying social contributions increased by 50 per cent. Funny how no one asks how pensioners can survuve with no employment waiting for their pensions to start rolling in.
Greek bashing is fashionable in some journalist circles, which is OK, but not when facts fly out the window.
Interesting. It never did seem logical to have retirement at 33ish. I have a GC friend who was a saturation diver and he retired early (not sure how early ... maybe mid forties). Even now he is in his sixties he still suffers the effects of his occupation. So maybe in a very few rare cases this could be justified?
I'd never heard of retirement at 33 but did have relatives in Greece who had to retire after some 25 years service - which meant mid 40s or early 50s. But they all went on and started new businesses and didn't retire in the classic sense. The reasons given for early retirement from some professions was to enable the younger generation to get jobs. That's probably why we have such a high youth unemployment rate now - because people are forced to carry on working.
Furthermore, around the time Greeks were retiring after 25 years service, this was similar in the UK; especially in the civil service and teaching. If not, it used to be really easy to retire on grounds of ill health.
