Band 5+: Some people think that having a set retirement age (e.g. 65 years) for everybody, regardless of occupation, is unfair. They believe that certain workers deserve to retire and receive a pension at an earlier age. Do you agree or disagree? Which types of workers do you think should benefit from early retirement? Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

Having a fixed retirement age irrespective of what occupation a person is involved in, is a heavily debatable topic which resurfaces every now and then. While some people believe in this opinion, there are other set of people who doesn’t agree to this and think it is unfair to have a common age for all occupation personnel. I also agree that it is unfair to set common retirement age for all, it should vary based on each occupation.

Our workforce is segregated across multiple domains where quantum of work and magnitude of stress is completely different. For example, those who are working in software industry domain, the nature of their work is more focused on intelligence and less on physical strength. A software engineer might not be very fit physically but if the person is intelligent enough to write & execute a computer written code, then it will more than suffice. Whereas, the person who is working in a manufacturing industry, needs to be physically fit to complete the day-to-day activity. The activities in manufacturing field are repetitive in nature and might not need much intelligence to execute but it needs core physical strength to get the work done. In such case, if we classify both the workers working in above mentioned industries together and put a common retirement age for them, it will be completely unfair for the manufacturing workforce.

By virtue of its working nature, workforce involved in manufacturing industry will be more prone to injuries with each passing year. They won’t be able to work with full efficiency till the age of 60 and might need to retire early, but for software industry workforce maintaining work till 60 might not be that much challenging as they don’t need to go to site for daily work and they can work from the comfort of their home. Hence, any workforce who is involved in manufacturing or any similar industry which is heavily dependent on physical labour need to retire early and receive pension at an earlier age. This will help maintain the equilibrium in the society and won’t over burden any particular sector workforce.