Germans Protest Retirement Age Hike Plan

[HenryTo]

Scenes like this won't do anything to help the European and Germany economy. On the other hand, everything else equal, working in manufacturing just isn't too apealing when you are age 65.

Time to implement some structural reforms and increase funding in education and win a few Nobel Prizes...
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Germans Protest Retirement Age Hike Plan
Tuesday January 30, 2:27 pm ET
Thousands of Workers Participate in Protests Against Germany's Plan to Raise Retirement Age


BERLIN (AP) -- Tens of thousands of German workers took part in protests Tuesday against a government plan to raise the retirement age to 67, the country's biggest industrial union said.

The IG Metall union said that some 85,000 people across Germany took part in demonstrations and brief walkouts -- among them, some 10,000 people at a protest outside a DaimlerChrysler AG plant in Sindelfingen.

Other companies where workers protested included automaker Volkswagen AG and truckmaker MAN AG.

The protests were the latest in a series over recent weeks as IG Metall seeks to pressure Chancellor Angela Merkel's government to review its plan to raise the retirement age from its current level of 65, in gradual steps from 2012 to 2024.

"I appeal to the government not to ignore this anger," union leader Juergen Peters said at a rally in Ruesselsheim, where General Motors Corp.'s Opel unit has its main plant. He argued that "flexible ways out of professional life" were needed.

The government made clear that it had no plans to budge from its plan, which still requires parliamentary approval.

"We have talked about this for long enough," Franz Muentefering, the vice chancellor and labor minister, said on ZDF television. "I assume that it will be approved definitively in March."

The move is meant to reduce the costs of supporting an aging population.

[rffrydr]

German unemployment fell 106,000. A decline of 40,000 was expected

If your scenario about europe as the marginal producer proves out then these structual wage increases will (again) prove costly. If the Chinese hold it together through the Olympics then Europe buys time for another exit---inflation?
_________________
Today is the Tomorrow you worried about Yesterday!