Pensioners feeling the squeeze

Rumours have been swirling for months about Austria reducing its already minimal social payments to Ukrainian pensioners in the amount of their tiny pensions in Ukraine. Now it has intensified.

Yesterday, early morning, I wrote this, in frustration and fury at what I was hearing.

This woman, a pensioner who is also handicapped and from a town near Bakhmut, recalls being left with €30 to survive an entire month after her pension payments in Ukraine were deducted from the amount of the social payment she received in Austria. The storyteller goes on (I have seen the granny’s registration documents for Vienna) to say that the employee tasked by Caritas to deliver this terrible (and one could argue, inhumane) news was herself in tears. It is very important to understand this is not Caritas decision — the NGO acts as a consultant hired by the city of Vienna to serve as an intermediary in the basic care payments. But these decisions are made by the state and the state alone. As always, it comes down to money. And one could argue, ruthlessness. And cutting funds from those who have not vote, no public voice, no influence over the situation.

What makes my blood boil in all of this, is I see how much the city wastes money in other areas. I still have not managed to take a photo, but please take my word for it that FSW (the Vienna Social Fund, a state entity which does a lot from managing housing for refugees to caring for handicapped and elderly) recently launched an advertising campaign across Vienna bus stops. Why a state agency needs to spend tax money to make paid advertisements is a question perhaps as old and philosophical as why abuse of power happens in positions of power.

As I said on a conference call with some government employees yesterday (federal, not city level), it breaks my heart and is also maddening because we fight for every €50 we raise via private donations to help Ukrainians in need, especially the elderly, and then to have the state rip away €50 from them just like that… No one can survive on €100-200 per month in Austria. So this means elderly will either go hungry, or leave. Those who stay will be those who have some other family members helping them. Others will take a read of the situation and go back to Ukraine. Which is I suppose what those who design the policies have in mind.

It is important to note, as I learned on a conference call yesterday with federal government employees, that the rules of Grundversorgung, basic payments, have not changed. Pensions, unlike small side-jobs, are counted 100% as income against any payments paid out in Austria. But there was perhaps never before a situation in which thousands of elderly people with no chance or health to take on any kind of part-time work arrived in Austria and asked the state for help. The law about pensions was always on the books. However, it was not enforced across the board until now. Certainly not in Vienna (other states such as Upper Austria have been squeezing pensioners for some time). Now, I am hearing this week many stories of pensioners and handicapped (who too receive small state payouts in Ukraine) being told all of a sudden, to their ears as if out of nowhere, that their payments, already barely enough to survive on Austria, and much lower than this country’s Mindestsicherung (minimum income level), will be slashed even further.

Most Ukrainian pensioners use their tiny pensions (usually less than $100 per month) to pay the utility bills on their homes in Ukraine. This money never even reaches Austria. In fact, as I learned yesterday from a Ukrainian on our conference call, the money cannot easily be transferred to Austria. The cards on which Ukrainians receive their pensions do not make simple transfers to EU IBAN bank accounts. In other words, when Ukrainian pensioners received €260 per month in Austria, prior to this change, that really was all most of them had each month to live off of. And now, some of them are being told they have accumulated pension “debts” for all the months they have lived here, and are being asked to pay those debts back in the amount of €50 per month. So suddenly €260 is reduced to €210 but that elderly person’s stomach did not shrink nor did they suddenly need to buy less medicine.

Most upsetting, several people told me that there are threats made by the social worker sitting in front of the elderly person that if they do not sign the piece of paper agreeing to the “debt” and the payment plan, that their social benefit payments would be entirely cut off with immediate effect.

Merry Christmas, indeed.

Below I would like to share with you translations of some of the messages I have received, so you can hear these stories first person.

A mother in Salzburg reached out to me about her neighbours, a deaf couple with two children (who are not hearing impaired). Both deaf parents had their payments reduced by the state of Salzburg. I texted with the mother yesterday, and sent the family two Hofer cards (keep reading for our Christmas miracle!).

“Hi Tanja. We had such a situation recently with my neighbour! A family lives in the room next door to us (this is a nursing home in Salzburg). They are four: husband, wife, and two kids. The parents are deaf. The wife needed to go to Ukraine, she was there for 9 days, and returned. It was at the end of October, early November of this year. Caritas was told of the trip ahead of time. After the trip, she reported back to Caritas (their main question is where did she get money for the journey from). They asked for her bank statement (i.e. to show that she bought a ticket). On the statement, they saw that she receives an handicapped pension in Ukraine. They saw also from the statement that she uses this money to pay her utilities in Ukraine (they have an apartment and the entire amount goes towards this). Caritas calculated a debt that she owes because of this pension and stopped paying her. Unfortunately, she cannot tell anyone about this herself (she hears badly and cannot speak much), But she has a paper which says she has a debt. Her husband is 90% deaf, with a hearing aid, and does not speak at all. She doesn’t even have a hearing aid, she cannot afford one. And these are the kind of people who have their benefits taken away and are slapped with a debt, I do not know the exact amount. She cried. When this month, Caritas paid out €40 of pocket money and €50 for winter clothing, they didn’t receive any (not the adults, not the kids). She also does not receive the daily food money. Her husband gets his.”

The neighbour writing me included a photo of the letter from Land Salzburg to the deaf woman. It cites a debt of €1,342 calculated for the period of June - November 2023. It threatens with a payment due date of 18 December 2023. This is surely a formality, after which a payment plan is forced upon the unlucky souls to receive such letters. The reference on the letter is “Cost of Housing and Care”. Indeed.

A pensioner in Vienna also wrote me yesterday.

“Hi, this has not happened to me personally yet, thank God, but I personally spoke with at least five pensioners and they told me about the pressure, how they begged the authorities not to reduce their payments, but did not succeed. They are very scared and may not want to tell me the details. This is not Diakonie, but in Austria Center this is what happens when Caritas calculates the payments. Ukrainian pensioners still pay their utility bills in Ukraine with their Ukrainian pensions, and nothing is left over.”

Another woman wrote me, as per my tweets above, about a pensioner from Bakhmut who is only in Austria one month. They left her €30 per month in social payment after calculating her Ukrainian pension. This woman also writes the exchange rate used to calculate the amount in Euros of the payments received in Ukraine is incorrect. She argues the de facto exchange rate of UAH to EUR is 40 or 41, and the authorities calculate with 38. She also asks me why able-bodied adults can work and earn €110 per month while still receiving payments, while pensioners immediately have some of their payments taken away from them when a Ukrainian pension is discovered?

There is no good answer. The answer is, per what we were told yesterday, is that is the law. But the real problem is this was never universally enforced, and now it hits after some folks have been year for more than a year and a half…it is a painful shock and I shudder to think about the penny pinching that will happen now.

Which brings me to our Christmas miracle. I woke up yesterday morning to 100 Hofer cards, totally unexpected, all from a single donor who has already been so incredibly generous to our program this year. I am delivering these as a first priority to pensioners affected by these new rules (across Austria), and to some needy families I have been put in contact with also via other volunteers whom I trust and have worked together with for some time.

I have already sent out a few dozen cards yesterday — 10 of which went directly to new arrivals. The messages keep arriving and I keep addressing envelopes. So grateful to be able to send this help off now, a week before the New Year’s holiday.

As one volunteer summed it up perfectly in our Telegram group chat yesterday:

“It is a horror for pensioners. They receive a pension of €120 in Ukraine, and immediately hand it over in its entirety to pay the utility bill for their home in Ukraine. Here they receive €260 per month to cover all their expenses. This is reduced by €120 and becomes €140 per month with which to eat. And that is in wealthy Austria, where politicians receive €20,000 per month 14 times a year (Tanja note — this might be a little on the high side but it is definitely a five-figure amount) and they have no shame, plus corruption, plus the financial ties here to the Russian Federation…”

Another Ukrainian, an economist by training, added:

“I am really shocked by the situation with reducing payments to Ukrainian pensioners. They are asked to honestly report if they receive any money in Ukraine. So of course they say yes, my pension is €100. Many were initially told not to worry, as it is a small amount and less than €110. Now I understand even this €110-can-be-earned-per-month rule does not apply to pensioners? Where can I read this law? If this is the authorities making it up as they go, we need to stand up for our rights.”

At this point I have to interject and explain, no, you cannot read the law anywhere because it is Grundversorgung and much of the rules are not publicly accessible (how convenient), but, unfortunately, it does seem, at least based on what we have been told, that the law sees Ukrainian pensions just like maternity leave money in Austria, something to be weighed against benefits and for benefits to be reduced 1:1 in this amount, in full, no exceptions. Not even the first €110 like for those who find minimal part-time work.

Another Ukrainian just texted me as I was writing me this, sending me a screenshot of her conversation with her social worker in Vienna. They write (in this case a representative of another NGO also contracted by the city) that “we paid you too much in 2022 so please go to ACV where they will calculate how much you owe us.”

And happy new year.

Unbelievable.

I feel it important to send this out into the world, even though it is a few days before Christmas and most people are already in full holiday mood.

This is really, really concerning, and makes our distribution of €50 supermarket gift cards feel like blowing against windmills. What is the point of our extra help when the state just rips €50 (and more) out of the hands of the poorest, most vulnerable.

A 75 year old Ukrainian refugee who speaks little German and may be already in poor health cannot get a job in Austria.

Have the authorities lost all their humanity? The least they could do is rip down the stupid posters saying how great they are at their jobs and stop wasting money on pointless advertising when they are working to save money by taking away from those who have the least to begin with. And if Austria is closed, as I have been saying for months, it should honestly come out and say it is closed. Say Ukrainians who cannot afford to live here should not come here. Make it crystal clear. But do not go after the poorest of the poor once they are already here. That is just ruthless.

Again, for the record, this is not the NGOs decision. This is a decision made by the federal states in Austria and federal government. They split the costs of basic care of people in Grundversorgung 60% federal 40% local state. When this starts to be tightly enforced, these are the Austrian states (e.g. city of Vienna as we hear now, or Land Salzburg in the other example, or Upper Austria which is actually not a new phenomenon) suddenly tightening their own budgets. The NGOs in these examples (and my heart truly goes out to their social workers having to execute these decisions and be on the receiving end of tears and exasperation) are simply the messengers.