Teachers retiring at 65 won’t fix budget: union

By Abraham Gerber  /  Staff reporter

Requiring teachers to wait until 65 before they could retire would not relieve the government’s budget woes, while training for new teachers would be thrown into crisis, National Federation of Teachers’ Unions (NFTU) officials said yesterday, disputing Minister Without Portfolio Lin Wan-i’s (林萬億) claims of a national consensus on the issue.

“While in most professions a highly paid employee who retires is replaced by someone with a comparable salary, the salary structure for teachers is different. Teachers receive their highest salaries after 50 and those who retire are replaced by graduates who only earn about half as much,” union president Chang Hsu-cheng (張旭政) said, adding that requiring teachers to retire at 65 would not relieve the budgetary pressures because of the higher “replacement ratios” for older retirees.

“The total monetary value of pensions for someone who retires at 65 is not much less than for someone who retires at 55, because the 65-year-old retiree would have contributed considerably more per year to their pension,” he said. “When you weigh it all up, a later retirement age is not necessarily going to be better for the budget.”

Lin last week announced that the national pension reform commission had reached a consensus that, with appropriate “supplementary measures,” the retirement age for most professions should be raised to 65, sparking a protest by civil servants and teachers outside the Legislative Yuan in Taipei on Sunday.

Private-sector workers begin receiving their pensions at 60, with civil servants and other government employees often allowed to take a discounted pension if they retire earlier.

Given the declining demand for teachers as the number of schoolchildren shrinks following years of low birth rates, raising the retirement age to 65 would effectively rule out the recruitment of any teachers for at least 10 years, preventing schools from receiving any new blood, Chang said, adding that the average retirement age for teachers is 54.

“From an institutional perspective, it would make more sense to adjust the formula so that the overall pension received by a teacher is the same, regardless of when they retire,” he said, adding that some parents prefer their children to be taught by younger teachers.

“We recommend that the government choose a more natural mechanism [than a mandatory retirement age],” he said, adding that voluntary retirement allows for a “natural elimination” of teachers who feel worn out or lack the passion to educate.