Employer’s organisation VNO-NCW is advocating for a list of professions which should be eligible for early retirement. By forming such a list, the Netherlands would follow Austria by setting up regulations for heavy professions. Other European countries such as Poland and France already have the same kind of regulation, using physical indicators to determine which professions should be allowed early retirement.
Jan van Ours, professor in Labour Economics at Erasmus School of Economics, is not fully convinced of the idea. “The problem that remains is determining which professions are categorised as ‘heavy’ and which are not. Physical stress is easily determined by using calories as an indicator, but mental pressure is not so easily measured. If you look at the number of burnouts among people who work in education, for example, you could also classify that as heavy work."
Van Ours also emphasises the costs that would come with the regulation. “If people retire early, should they also pay a higher pension premium? If not, the costs will have to be carried by people in less heavy professions who work longer.”
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The entire article can be found here (in Dutch), Algemeen Dagblad, 19 March 2019.