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18 October, 2010
On 29 September, ten million bitter people demonstrated across Europe. They protested government imposed austerity measures brought on by a financial crisis not their fault, or the fault of those now feeling the pain from crisis-caused social cuts.
In the weeks since, that bitterness and anger has not gone away. In fact, it is manifesting itself day by day through differing circumstances in different countries. What the angst and anger have in common from one country to another is the feeling that those that caused the pain do not share in it now.
Perhaps nowhere is the anger more pronounced than in France, where last week’s strikes at refineries, pipelines, shipping, and transportation centres were compared to strikes in 2006. The country could be literally shut down this week if the strikes – focused on President Nicolas Sarkozy’s pension reforms – continue. Prior 24-hour strikes were extended to continuous strikes last week, and another mass day of action is set for tomorrow, 19 September.
The CFDT said 3.5 million workers taken to the streets by mid-week last. Although Sarkozy has pushed through portions of pension reform, he still seeks legislation to increase the minimum pension age from 60 to 62 and increase the age for a full retirement package from 65 to 67. As the strikes grew throughout last week, a poll showed 69% of French citizens support the strikes.
In Romania on 13 October, Finance Ministry workers stopped work in a spontaneous strike and occupied the Finance Ministry overnight. They were joined by public-sector workers from the Work, Heath, and Post Office, all protesting elimination of bonus payments from July, totaling between €100-150 per month. That accounts for up to 60% of public-sector salaries.
Continual protests in the Central European nation have now had an effect. Late in the week, the finance minister agreed to restore the bonuses for August and September. And a pension reform bill that would have lifted the retirement age for both men and women was sent back to Parliament for amendments because of “people mobilisation” and pressure from trade unions. The protests could become even bigger this week, since the menace behind Romania’s austerity cuts – the International Monetary Fund – is scheduled for an evaluation visit on 22 October.
In the Slovak Republic on 12 October, thousands of trade unions marched in Bratislava and assembled in the city’s SNP Square, protesting the government’s harsh reductions in the 2011 budget. The measures include cutting one-seventh of the entire state budget, including cutting the pay of all public-sector workers by 10%. The Confederation of Trade Unions (KOZ) said the average family of four throughout the country will see a reduction in income of €400 a year, and instead calls for higher taxation on dividend earnings and granting relief measures to ordinary citizens.
In the Czech Republic, trade unions are on strike alert today, anticipating the worst scenario on how a 10% pay cut in across the public sector will be implemented. A poll in the Czech Republic revealed that 58% of people polled believe the austerity measures will result in slower economic recovery. On 21 September, 40,000 Czech public-sector workers took to the streets because of the pay cuts.
In Athens, Greece, protesters that are owed up to two year’s back pay barricaded themselves inside the Acropolis and had to be removed by police force. Other tense confrontations appear to be hotting up for Slovenia, Portugal, and the UK.
Instead of pension reform, wage cuts, and budget curtailments, trade unions see jobs and economic growth as the catapult to recovery. Unions bear witness that most victims of austerity cuts are workers and the working poor, victims of an economic crisis set off by bankers and traders and aided then by the same neo-liberal governmental policies that now call out for social cuts.