Trade unions have gathered enough signatures to force their ‘67 is too much’ referendum. With this campaign that was launched on 27 April 2017 the unions want to reduce the country's retirement age to 65 from the current 67 years of age, reduce penalties for early retirement and extend the transition period for equalising the retirement conditions for women and men. The number of signatures needed was at least 10% of all the registered voters or 373,568 people and the unions’ collected more than 600,000 signatures in total. In December 2018 parliament approved the government's proposal to raise the retirement age to 67 and to reduce pensions for people who retire early.
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For more information, please contact Sanne van der Gaag or Sjaak van der Velden, De Burcht (Scientific Bureau for the Dutch Trade Union Movement) sannevandergaag@deburcht.org or the Head of communications at the ETUI, Steve Coulter scoulter@etui.org. For previous full issues of the Collective bargaining newsletter please visit www.etui.org/E-Newsletters/Collective-bargaining-newsletter or consult the archive with all articles in our database at www.cbnarchive.eu. You may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org.