Under Dutch labour law, a collective labour agreement is legally binding if the government endorses it. As far as I know, it has been challenged by pilots wanting to work longer but they lost their courtcase. I'm not sure if the government could force a later retirement age on pilots, since the collective labour agreement is between a company or group of companies in the same sector and the unions. As long as these two don't come up with something that's outside the general rules and labour law the government will not intervene (e.g. they can agree to a retirement age lower than the legal maximum, but not higher). The retirement fund for KLM pilots is for KLM pilots only, is independent from the company and government and financially sound (oversight by the Dutch national bank, as for every pension fund in Holland). KLM and it's pilots pay high premiums to keep it that way. This construction allows for politics to be kept out of play to some degree in case of discussions on retirement age. NB: the discussion is on age discrimination here, not money.
Raymond: courtcase against KLM / Dutch ALPA was concluded by Dutch supreme court in October 2004, I don't know if the case was subsequently brought to the European Court. If you speak Dutch:
Rechtspraak.nl - Zoeken in uitspraken, look for LJN: AP0425, Hoge Raad , C03/133HR
Good luck,
LH
In the case of AF: the raising of the legal retirement age has no direct effect on the collective labour agreement yet, but there could be severe indirect implications due to the way retirement for aircrew is arranged in La Douce France. Here there is a
national retirement fund for
all aircrew (pilots
and cabin crew from all French airlines). For the moment this pension fund is coping fairly well compared to other funds in France, but since retirement for pilots (60) and cabin crew (55!) is quite early compared to other professions it is only a question of time before trouble will arise. The general situation in France was that people needed to contribute to their respective pension fund for 40 years to get a full pension, with exceptions for certain professions, e.g. railway workers (37.5), pilots and cabin crew. Since the official working week is only 35 hours and there is a generous amount of paid holidays (I think it's 31 days) the retirement system is rapidly becoming too expensive, as is the social security system and state healthcare. The Sarkozy government, desparately short of cash, has introduced measures to combat this. Amongst other things working more than 35 hours became legal (and untaxed), but only on a voluntary basis. The 'regime speciale' for railway workers was abolished under heavy protests (and strikes of course!). Previous governments have promised the French pilots union not to change the law or their pension system without consulting them first, so they were severely p*ssed off when the legal retirement age was raised to 65 overnight. They see it as the opening artillery barrage on their age 60 retirement right, so stand by for more skirmishes on this one! NB: the discussion is on money here, not age discrimination.