Government plans to scrap the popular Altersteilzeit block model
The federal government intends to implement the pension commission's recommendations one to one, and one of those recommendations is to abolish the block model of Altersteilzeit — the version of phased early retirement that roughly four in five people in the scheme actually use.
Altersteilzeit lets an older employee move to half their hours in the years before retirement, with the employer topping up the reduced pay and the pension contributions. In theory the hours are halved across the whole period. In practice most people choose the block model instead: you keep working full time for the first half and then stop entirely for the second half, drawing the reduced salary throughout. That second block is, for many workers, the part that makes the arrangement worth taking at all — it is what turns a pay cut into an early exit.
Removing it would change the calculation for tens of thousands of employees, and the objections are coming from both sides of the bargaining table at once. The service-sector union ver.di and the employers' association of the private banks have both said publicly that the block model must stay, which is an unusual thing for those two to agree on. Their argument is that the banking sector is going through a structural transformation and needs an orderly way for older staff to leave. The same logic applies well beyond banking: the car-parts manufacturer Schaeffler has announced it will cut 1,300 jobs in Germany through Altersteilzeit. The Left party has protested against the plan, and a Social Democratic pensions specialist has floated a long transition period rather than a clean cut.
Nothing has changed yet. This is a commission recommendation the government says it wants to adopt, not a law that has been passed, and no date has been set for when the block model would end.
If you are in Altersteilzeit already, or your employer has offered it to you as part of a restructuring, the sensible step now is to ask in writing which model your agreement is based on and whether it is protected if the rules change. Works councils are already asking that question. An agreement signed under the current rules is a far stronger position than one still being negotiated.