Labour party to withdraw support from pension deal over taxing jobs

The PvdA is threatening to withdraw its support from the pension agreement, which was finally reached in June last year after a decade of negotiations. According to the labor party, the coalition is not sticking to its promise to make money available so that people with physically taxing jobs can retire earlier, RTL Z reports.

The cabinet signed an agreement on a new pension system in June last year with opposition parties PvdA and GroenLiks, the trade unions, and the pension funds. The coalition parties VVD, CDA, D66 and ChristenUnie need the opposition parties' support because they don't have a majority in the Eerste Kamer, the Dutch Senate.

One of the conditions for GroenLinks and PvdA's support was that the government allows people with physically taxing jobs to retire earlier. 800 million euros were promised for this. "We're not seeing any of that money yet. We talk to people who have been working for 45 years and have a damaged back. They ask where those millions are," PvdA parliamentarian Gijs van Dijk said to the broadcaster.

The party gave the government until the summer to come up with a concrete plan on this front, or the PvdA will withdraw its support. And with that goes the Senate majority for the pension agreement.