Blow to veteran brickie's best laid retirement plans

That's the impression you get driving around the Reserve, a housing estate at Tarneit in Melbourne's outer west. Most of the tilers, chippies, brickies and plasterers working on the dozens of houses under construction around Watagan Street are in their 20s.

At 60, bricklayer Angelo Rendina is a dinosaur. And the old body's not what it used to be. Five years ago he had a triple heart bypass he has diabetes and a bung hip. He's looking forward to retirement, when he can spend time with his grandchildren and grow vegetables.

He's angry at Federal Government plans to shift the pension eligibility age from 65 to 67, in a bid to get Australians working longer, even if it won't affect him directly.

He said of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd: "He should let the young ones, not the old people work. There's a lot of young ones, they're on the dole, and us old people will have to work more, will have to work hard, which is not fair. You should retire and enjoy your last few days with your grandkids."

Mr Rendina's experience reinforces ACTU president Sharan Burrow's comment opposing the move because "people's bodies are broken often way before 65, let alone 67".

It was easier for a white-collar worker to work to 67 because they were often in better physical shape, Mr Rendina said. "This job, concreter, bricklayer, it's the worst job you'd ever see. It's hard like hell."

Although he reckons he has a "couple more years" in him, the 7am starts and muddy, heavy work in all weather is taking its toll. "You've got to struggle to keep going. You get very tired. At night time when you go home, you're buggered. You lie down on the couch ... that's it - goodbye Jack."

Working for himself, he mortars 500 to 600 bricks a day, "way less" than he did 30 years ago. "At least 30 per cent less ... you're sore, that's all."

Mr Rendina, from Foggia in southern Italy, left school when he was seven to help tend the family sheep. He came to Australia in 1966, aged 18, and his brother Louie got him a job within four days, as a labourer on a block of flats in Hawthorn.

He has built houses all over Melbourne and is proud of his work: he gestures to a nearby house, built swiftly by six young brickies, where bricks stick out from the wall and excess mortar hasn't been scraped off. His own bricks are carefully aligned, mortared and brushed.

He earns $300 a day, which he thinks is a fair wage. But he doesn't have superannuation and would have to go on the pension in retirement.