UGT Lanzarote has requested that a brown ribbon be displayed on the balcony of all the town halls on the island until April 30, "which symbolizes the struggle of our retirees and pensioners, so that the Government changes its pension policy and begins to respond."
From UGT they state that the Government has sent letters to pensioners to tell them that this year their pensions will increase by 0.25%, less than two euros on average per month, but that "it has not given them any explanation in that letter as to why pensions are being cut now that GDP and the economy are growing at 3%". "A decision that has no justification whatsoever" for the union, which recalls that UJP-UGT has been "demanding the Government for two years, in social dialogue and in Parliament with various initiatives that have been supported by the parliamentary majority, to raise pensions with the CPI, as has been done until the 2013 reform"
"It cannot continue to maintain the policy of cutting pensions, because it is impoverishing nine million pensioners, who will soon be fifteen, and with this a society of poor people is being created", UGT points out, from where they consider that "if Social Security has been in deficit since the PP came to the Government six years ago, it is because of the labor reform" "Thus they must look for other solutions, which UJP-UGT has already offered, but that they do not continue to pay for it with the pensioners, who have contributed all their working lives to a surplus Social Security that financed the policies of the Governments with the contributions of the workers", point out from UGT Lanzarote.
A "cruel" policy
The union believes that this is "really a cruel policy, because it cuts the purchasing power, without prior notice, of nine million pensioners", but that "it is even worse because it practically freezes the pension again for five million people on the poverty line, who can no longer work or obtain income in another way to remedy a situation that deteriorates their lives and increases their poverty". "To some pensioners, who are responsible, with their work, for the level of development and wealth that our country currently has", he adds.
This is how the Government pays them. Making more than 400,000 pensioners have to abandon their treatments last year due to pharmaceutical co-payments", UGT denounces, pointing out that this is "doubly cruel", since "while the 0.25% increase in pensions means barely 313 million euros to the Government, it extracts up to 1,000 million annually from the pockets of pensioners through co-payment".
In UJP-UGT, giving continuity to the recent mobilizations in defense of Public pensions, the marches for #PensionesDignas that toured the entire country and in the face of the lack of responses from the Government, have made a call for everyone to use the brown ribbon "as a symbol of disagreement with this policy" and from UGT Lanzarote they now request that it be displayed in the town halls of the island until April 30, a symbol that the Teguise City Council already placed two days ago.
