Caroline Baudry, edited by Alexandre Dalifard 6:40 a.m., January 23, 2023
The pension reform, with the postponement of the legal retirement age to 64, worries all the unions but not only.
This measure makes associations fear a significant loss of their volunteers.
The over 65s represent a third of the volunteers of French associations and four out of ten presidents of associations are seniors.
The sticking point is always the same.
Retirement at 64 is a starting age that tenses up all the unions but also the associative world with associations that are afraid of losing volunteers.
People over 65 represent a third of volunteers in French associations.
Four out of ten association presidents are also seniors.
The Saint-Vincent-de-Paul association, for example, fights against precariousness.
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"I arrived the day after my retirement", at 74, Anne-Marie has just been appointed president of the Morbihan branch of the Saint-Vincent-de-Paul association.
Glasses on her nose, impeccable wool vest, for almost 20 years this volunteer has been visiting families in precariousness and distributing food parcels.
"I already had to do something. I was very active, so I was not going to stay like that without doing anything. Our preferred recruitment target is young retirees," she says.
Two thirds of the association's 17,000 volunteers are retired.
The general secretary of the association, Patrick d'Hérouville, closely follows the news and this reform which would upset his ranks of seniors.
"They are the ones who bring the structure to life. That does not mean that we are not efficient or operational at 64 compared to 62. But it is true that de facto, it has been two years of availability for This age is very important for us because the younger we have a retiree, the more energy we have, the more ideas we have", he underlines.
A problem that has repercussions with another: for ten years, the number of retirees in associations has been decreasing.
France Bénévolat puts forward three hypotheses: the desire to travel, seniors who themselves have dependent parents and difficult career endings.