TEXT OF THE SPEECH PERFORMED
By QUIM BOIX
In the ILO, on 06-14-2019
Ladies and Gentlemen:
This is the 5th time that I speak before this Plenary on behalf of Pensioners and Retirees (P&Rs) from all over the planet, but until today no one in the ILO leadership has heard or acted correctly, responding to what was raised by the P&Rs in this room.
The ILO is 100 years old but has basically and fundamentally been only used to defend the rights of the capitalists.
But the P&Rs exist, and we keep organizing, we have a lot of experience in struggle.
We are almost 20% of the world population and almost 30% of the voters. We work so that our votes are better and better directed and do not go to the pro-capitalists who attack our rights.
We have just done our Second World Congress in Bogotá, Colombia, a country where the capitalists maintain unemployment and poverty by killing popular and union leaders.
In this second Congress, of the only global organization of P&Rs that exists, 200 delegates from more than 80 countries of the 5 continents have participated.
In the Congress we have approved our flag, which has already been leading the struggles of the P&Rs in the streets of tens of countries on almost every continent, and which will emerge tomorrow in the Great General Strike to be held in Brazil to defend, among others just demands, quality public pensions.
With this flag we will continue to defend our slogan, which summarizes our demands:
<< LONG AND DIGNIFIED LIFE FOR THE P&Rs >>
That is, a life with:
1) Habitable housing
2) Drinking water in it
3) Proximity foods, healthy and in sufficient amount
4) Health, leisure, culture and transportation, public, free and of good quality
5) Social Security contributions paid by the capitalist states for all unemployed people
These conquests were already a reality on our planet. They were so thanks to the Great October Revolution in the former Soviet Union, and also in the countries that built Socialism, as they are now in Revolutionary Cuba, and are on their way to becoming so in Venezuela if the US does not invade it order to prevent it .
High levels of mass welfare were reached in many capitalist countries, thanks to the union struggles promoted by the class unions, grouped in the World Federation of Trade Unions.
But now the International Monetary Fund (IMF) works to wrest these rights and conquests.
The IMF wants to delay the retirement age until 70 or more years.
The IMF wants public pensions to be lower, as it has already happened in Chile due to the reform Pinochet did with the yellow unions (the CIOSL then, today CSI).
The IMF, which is our class enemy, the enemy of the working class, wants only private pensions.
And unfortunately it is supported (in order to receive millionaire subsidies) by the yellow unions, those of class conciliation, reformists, social democrats, that betray and deceive the workers.
Following the IMF's capitalist guidelines, the European Parliament approved, on 4th of April, the EPPP, the European Private Pension Program, that is, Private Pensions, which will be managed by the major European and world banks, in order to achieve ownership (as they did in Chile) of the large amounts of money that are now in public pension funds.
We, with the P&Rs J of the entire planet organized and with class positions, say NO to private pension plans, and therefore we say NO to EPPP.
Therefore, next Monday, June 17th, in most European countries, we will take to the streets.
In my country, in the Spanish state, promoted by COESPE (State Coordinator for the Defense of the Public Pension System), we will take to the streets in almost 300 towns.
We will go out into the streets and send the European Parliament our rejection of the EPPP, that is, our rejection of their proposal to privatize all pensions.
This action will be the first, but not the last, European action of the P&Rs, just as we have organized and will organize others in more regions of the planet.
The regional or continental actions of the P&Rs promoted by our TUI of the WFTU are complemented by the global actions we do every year on October 1st in order to claim our just demands and demonstrate that our advanced age does not stop our ability to fight, as a part that we are of the working class.
I insist, pensions must be public, and there is more than enough money on the planet for those pensions to allow a dignified life, as I defined earlier.
See only 2 examples that there is the money, although poorly distributed (as it will be while capitalism exists). To pay for fair public pensions, it would be enough:
1) To expropriate and nationalize all banks and private financiers, who currently steal from us every day, as before the usurers did.
2) To dissolve NATO, thus ending imperialism and the huge military expenditures that only serve, from genocide to genocide, to steal the riches of peoples who do not have enough weapons, as it has already happened in Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Mali, etc.
We clearly say that we must end the murderous capitalist system. We must end genocidal imperialism.
We must spread socialism all over the planet.
I finish this intervention by summarizing it in 4 sentences:
LONG LIVE THE WORKING CLASS!
LONG LIVE THE WORLD FEDERATION OF TRADE UNIONS!
LONG LIVE SOCIALISM!
LONG AND DIGNIFIED LIFE FOR PENSIONERS AND RETIRED!