ORG.LAB.AUG.26
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The legislation allows eligible workers to choose to remain in employment beyond their contractual retirement age, where that age is below the State pension age of 66.
RETIREMENT AGE RIGHTS—New retirement age rights for employees have come into effect.
The legislation allows eligible workers to choose to remain in employment beyond their contractual retirement age, where that age is below the State pension age of 66.
Currently, thousands of employees are forced to retire at the traditional retirement age of 65, as stated in their employment contracts, one year before the State pension commences.
These new rules will give workers the option to work for an additional year to bridge that gap but there will be no requirement to do so.
The new rules do not apply to employees with a retirement age of 66 or higher, or if their retirement age is set by law: such as An Garda Síochána and the Defence Forces.
The compulsory retirement age for most public and civil servants increased to 70 in 2018.
The new right will allow employees to formally notify their employer that they do not consent to retire at their contractual retirement age.
To do so, they must provide at least three months’ notice, and no more than 12 months’ notice before the intended retirement date.
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SOCIAL WELFARE—Over 11,000 people in Ireland had their social welfare payments reduced in 2025 due to a crackdown on failing to engage with employment services, the Minister for Social Protection, Dara Calleary confirmed. (Irish Examiner-9.3.2026)
The cuts were applied to individuals who failed to attend mandatory meetings with the Department of Social Protection or did not engage with employment support schemes
Doubled Penalty: The penalty for non-engagement was increased to €90 per week from January 2025, doubled from the previous €44–€45 rate.
The Process: A reduced rate is the final step in a compliance process intended to encourage jobseekers to avail of supports.
Background: This enforcement measure was part of a broader “make work pay” strategy aimed at ensuring recipients engage with the labor market.
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CHANCELLOR FRIEDRICH MERZ said the number of sick days in Germany was “too high” (BBC,1.7.2026).
A row has broken out in Germany after the Coalition Government announced changes to sick-leave rules, requiring Germans to provide a doctor’s note to their employers on the first day of their illness.
The changes also mean workers will not be able to obtain the note by phone, scrapping a measure brought in due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“The number of sick days in Germany is too high”, said Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
Under the current rules, a certificate is only required if a person is unfit for work for more than three days – in other words, on the fourth day, although employers are entitled to request the sick note earlier.
The plans were agreed by Merz’s conservative Christian Democratic Party (CDU) and his coalition partner the Social Democrats (SPD).
“This is a tough decision”, the chancellor said. “But we can no longer afford this competitive disadvantage caused by long periods of absence from work.”
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TikTok is considering cutting about 300 jobs at its European hub in Dublin, following a similarly-sized round of lay-offs last year.
A spokesperson for TikTok said some at-risk staff would be offered other positions and that the proposed restructuring would also create new roles, leading to an overall headcount reduction of about 300.
Dublin, which is a major European hub for foreign tech companies, including TikTok, Meta Platforms Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., has been hit hard by staff cuts in recent years, as firms restructure to prioritise artificial intelligence [AI] investment.
That was the cause of another round of job cuts at Meta, affecting 20% of the Irish workforce, which is higher than the 10% global average. (Irish Examiner, 2.7.2026)
LAWRENCE TEXTILE STRIKE USA (1912)—Industrial action in the Massachusetts town of Lawrence.
Events during the Strike gripped the attention of the entire country, brought the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) to national prominence, and helped persuade Theodore Roosevelt to contest the U.S. Presidential Election of 1912.
Prompted by a two-hour pay cut, corresponding to a new law shortening the work-week for women, the Strike spread rapidly through the town, growing to more than twenty thousand workers and involving nearly every mill in Lawrence.
On 1st January 1912, the Massachusetts Government enforced a law that cut mill workers’ hours in a single work week from 56 hours, to 54 hours. Ten days later, the authorities found out that pay had been reduced along with the cut in hours!
The Strike united workers from more than 51 different nationalities. A large portion of the striking workers, including many of the leaders of the Strike, were Italian immigrants. Carried on throughout a brutally cold winter, the Strike lasted more than two months, from January to March, defying the assumptions of conservative Trade Unions within the American Federation of Labor (AFL) that immigrant, largely female and ethnically-divided workers, could not be organised!
In late January, when a striker, Anna LoPizzo, was killed by police during a protest, IWW organizers Joseph Ettor and Arturo Giovannittiwere framed and arrested on charges of being accessories to the murder!
IWW leaders Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn came to Lawrence to run the Strike. Together they master-minded its signature move—sending hundreds of the strikers’ hungry children to sympathetic families in New York, New Jersey, and Vermont.
The move drew widespread sympathy, especially after police stopped a further exodus, leading to violence at the Lawrence train station.
Congressional hearings followed, resulting in exposure of shocking conditions in the Lawrence mills and calls for investigation of the “wool trust”.
Mill owners soon decided to settle the Strike, giving workers in Lawrence and throughout New England rises of up to 20%.
Within a year, however, the IWW had largely collapsed in Lawrence.
Bill Haywood visited Dublin during the 1913 Strike and shared platforms in Ireland and Britain with Connolly and Larkin.
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