In five years, the number of people who are working but not accumulating a pension will have fallen by almost half a million. This mainly affects people who work for a company that does not have a pension scheme for its employees.

According to the Central Statistical Office, there were more than 900,000 employees without a pension in 2019, and this number is set to be halved in the next five years. The intention is set out in a letter from Minister Schouten to Parliament. In doing so, he follows a recommendation from the Labor Foundation, an advisory body of employer and employee associations.

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The foundation assumes that the halving will be achieved, among other things, if employees pay more conscious attention to whether they are building up a pension or not. Therefore, there should be a public campaign and employers should actively report their employees if no pension plan is built up, for example monthly on the pay slip.

It should also be easier for start-ups and smaller companies to start pension schemes for their employees. That is why employers and employees want to work on a basic pension that can be used across all sectors. In addition, the Arbeitsstiftung will actively write to all sectors without a pension fund with the urgent request to arrange this.

But the number of pension builders must not only increase among employees. The Labor Foundation also wants to make building up an old-age provision more attractive for the self-employed. They cannot rely on an employer who can arrange this for them. The Labor Foundation, for example, proposes that employees who quit a company and become self-employed can stay with their old pension insurance for longer.

New pension law

Advice is important in the run-up to the new pension law. It is currently being debated in the House of Representatives and is expected to come into force in July 2023. There seems to be enough support in the House of Representatives, but not yet in the Senate. Minister Schouten hopes to be able to convince a number of opposition parties with this tightening of the Labor Foundation.

The coalition relies primarily on the PvdA and GroenLinks. They supported the pension agreement at the time, which made a number of agreements about the future of the pension system and outlined the outlines of this law. However, their support cannot be taken for granted because they believe that a number of agreements have not yet been sufficiently fulfilled.

In particular, PvdA and GroenLinks insisted on drastically reducing the number of people without pensions. Whether Schouten’s new letter will be enough to support these parties remains to be seen in the coming weeks.