THE PENSIONERS AND RETIREES PARTICIPATE AND WILL PARTICIPATE IN THE STRUGGLES OF THE WFTU
Comrades.
I speak on behalf of the new TUI (Trade Union International) of the WFTU. I mean that was created in Barcelona last February with the presence of some 100 union Pensioners and Retirees (P&R) from dozens of countries on five continents.
Is the tenth TUI of the WFTU, in order of creation, but the bringing together trade unionists with more years of experience of class struggle. A struggle in which we form this TUI wish to continue participating until we exhaust the strength to keep struggling.
We are Pensioners and Retirees, and we don’t depend on an employer, either public or private. We organize our time in terms of our personal objectives, and as members of the FSM these goals are the destruction of capitalism and end imperialism. We have struggled for decades to do.
October 3 this is the first in which we operate as TUI in actions Internationalist Struggle Day. From Australia; through India, Pakistan, Nepal and other countries in Asia; in Bahrain and elsewhere in the Middle East; through Greece, France and Spain in Europe; from Gabon, Democratic Republic of Congo and Senegal in Africa; passing many Latin American countries: Ecuador, Brazil, Mexico and Argentina; and more.
We demand an adequate pension enough to live with dignity. Claim public services (which generate stable jobs in health, education, leisure, transport, assistance to people with disabilities, etc.), we demand lower retirement age (for young now they can access unemployment jobs that occupy the elderly). This compares with the proposals of the Troika, here in Portugal, and in Europe, is showing that the IMF plus the EU, the European Central Bank more, just want to increase the benefits (that’s are astronomical) of multinationals while most populations are decreasing their quality of life.
The pursuit of claims that we adopted in our Founding Congress as TUI will not only result in better living conditions for P&R but will also help to target the WFTU that people who want to work have a job indefinitely, stable job and with proper working conditions.
Capitalism just like the existence of pensioners exists for private pension plans, and so makes them great benefits. I think I must denounce unions ITUC International Trade Union Confederation, which support the existence of these private pension plans, such as the CCOO and UGT in Spain (these unions have also signed several times, the last few years, repeated cuts in favor of the rights of pensioners).
For capitalism the P&R should live few years enjoying our retirement. We are no longer productive, and represent a significant expense in state budgets. So while the president of the IMF (International Monetary Fund) stated that P&R are no longer productive, labor minister of Japan said on TV that his country should commit hara-kiri P&R (not me making it up, but said so seem outrageous) to die with dignity and not be a burden or their families or for public finances. That's the vision that operators and managers of capitalism people who have worked ten years providing our effort to improve society.
The struggle of P&R has not started now, is long lasting and will be, as the examples of Greece and Argentina. In the first take more than 60 years in unions organizing the P&R (on June 19 carried 20,000 to the streets of Athens), while in the second the P&R already carry almost 1,200 followed Wednesday demanding better living conditions before Parliament Buenos Aires, led by union P&R who attended our founding congress.
We are achieving significant victories in our claim, as in the case of Bolivia, where the union struggle has helped to attain the right to retire at age 55 men and 49 women with 3 or more children. But in some cases these victories have played tough battles as that given 2004 in Guayaquil, Ecuador, where they killed 20 P&R they did a hunger strike with which they prevent to applying cutes in their right from the World Bank has impose to the president of the country.
We will continue to learn all the struggles, we will continue to strengthen the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist positions of the WFTU, and, until the last day of our lives, we will contribute to the struggle for socialism, which is the real goal for all those who live by their work.
LONG LIVE THE STRUGGLE TO THE P&R!
LONG LIVE TO THE CGTP-IN!
LONG LIVE TO THE WFTU!
Lisbon, 3 and 4 October 2014.
