Europe hit by strikes over pension cuts

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Europe hit by strikes over pension cuts

By Ian Traynor and David Hearst
The Guardian, May 13, 2003

Tens of thousands of Austrians are to converge on Vienna from all over the country today to protest at the centre-right government's plans to slash pensions and raise the retirement age.

The Vienna rallies coincide with a "Black Tuesday" of industrial action in France, also triggered by pension reforms, indicating a rising tide of popular anger in Europe over welfare, budget and pension cuts.

The Vienna demonstration, which is expected to be 200,000-strong, follows the country's biggest strike for decades last week.

In France, the 24-hour strike by transport and energy workers, which is expected to paralyse the country's rail network and severely disrupt air travel, is seen as the first major industrial test of the centre-right government of the French prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin.

Hundreds of thousands of protesters are expected on the streets of Paris today and 115 demonstrations are planned nationally.

The French government said yesterday it would not back down from its plans, already diluted by six months of negotiation, to reform a pension system it says the country can no longer afford.

Under the plans, state and private employees would have to work longer before they qualify for full pensions.

Union leaders have warned that the pension reforms are the thin end of a wedge to force public workers to supplement their state pensions with private schemes.

"To present this reform as a way of saving the system and ensuring a high standard of retirement is a beautiful lie," Bernard Thibault, the secretary general of the CGT, a major union, told Le Parisien newspaper.

For the government, the strikes have ominous shades of the devastating labour unrest of 1995, when protests about pension reforms forced the conservative prime minister, Alain Juppé, from office.

Mr Thibault said another strike was planned for May 25, and there would be more in June unless the proposals were dropped.

In Sweden, almost 50,000 public sector workers began a week of pay strikes yesterday, disrupting hospitals, rubbish collection and other services.

The protests and strikes in southern, central, and northern Europe indicate more trouble ahead as EU governments seek to get to grips with the demographic timebomb represented by a low birthrate and a longer-living population. Under proposals from Brussels, all EU states are to raise the retirement age by up to five years by 2010.

The centre-right government of the Austrian chancellor, Wolfgang Schüssel, is proposing to raise the retirement age in stages and to slash state pensions - by more than 30% in some cases - to keep the system affordable. It currently devours 15% of Austria's gross domestic product.

But the government's proposals have angered the trade unions, upsetting half a century of cosy consensus decision-taking in Austria.

Tens of thousands staged strikes last week. The unions have organised trains and buses to ferry protesters to Vienna today, where they will march through the city centre and demonstrate outside government offices.

Austria enjoys one of the most generous pension systems in Europe, with the average retirement age being 58 for men and 57 for women. While 54% of people in Britain in the 55 to 64 age group are at work, the figure sinks to under 30% in Austria.

The far-right leader Jörg Haider is exploiting the dispute to make a political comeback and threaten, for the second time in less than a year, to bring down the government, in which his Freedom party is a junior coalition member, and trigger early elections.