What was the Meeting of the Social Security Council’s Problem Team in February?
The discussion on the repeal of the law on the retirement of bridging pensions was the main focus of the Social Security Council’s Problem Team, which took place on 16 February 2021 in the form of a video conference. The government side was represented by Mr. Stanislaw Szwed, Secretary of State at the Ministry of Family and Social Policy. The meeting was also attended by representatives of the Social Insurance Institution and the Central Institute for Labour Protection.
Ms. Izabela Tomczyk, Director of the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Forecasts zus presented the most important conclusions from the zus information sent to all members of the Team, about insured persons performing work under special conditions or of a special nature for the period 2010-2019. Work under special conditions is work related to risk factors, which with age are likely to cause permanent damage to health. They are carried out under specific conditions of the working environment, determined by the forces of nature or technological processes, which, despite the application of technical, organisational and medical prevention measures, require workers to exceed their capacity, limited by the ageing process even before retirement age. The contributor shall provide the Social Insurance Institution with information about the employee for whom he was obliged to pay contributions to the Bridging Pension Fund. In the material presented in 2010, there were 7.5 thousand payers who submitted documents for 312,4 000 employees working under special conditions or of a special nature, while in 2019 the document was submitted by 8.5 thousand payers for 317.0 thousand employees. Among those for which payers submitted a document for 2019, men predominate by 74.1%. The largest group were employees performing the work of drivers in public transport, as well as employees performing the work of medical staff in the operational teams of surgical disciplines and anesthesiology in acute on-call conditions.
The possibility of amending the provisions of the Law and the way in which the team continued to work were then discussed. All trade union organisations are in favour of abolishing the provisions of the law on the termination of bridging pensions. At the last meeting of the Social Security Team, work was agreed by the working group to develop solutions for bridging pensions. It was agreed that the working group would also include representatives of zus and ciop. The team is awaiting submissions from representatives of those organisations who have not yet identified the persons for the work of the working group.
