diff --git a/OCRmyPDF.sh b/OCRmyPDF.sh
index 14f9e063..090f3b62 100755
--- a/OCRmyPDF.sh
+++ b/OCRmyPDF.sh
@@ -163,7 +163,7 @@ tesstooold=$(echo "`echo $tessversion | sed s/[.]//2`-`echo $reqtessversion | se
 
 # ensure the right GNU parallel version is installed
 # older version do not support -q flag (required to escape special characters)
-reqparallelversion="20130222"
+reqparallelversion="20121122"
 parallelversion=`parallel --minversion 0`
 ! parallel --minversion "$reqparallelversion" > /dev/null \
 	&& echo "Please install GNU parallel ${reqparallelversion} or newer (currently installed version is ${parallelversion})" && exit $EXIT_MISSING_DEPENDENCY