Unions plan more protests this month

Some 8,000 workers representing the country’s three largest unions demonstrated yesterday on Muntplein in central Brussels in protest at the government’s proposed pension reforms.

Union leaders said that further protests were planned this month to show their opposition to government measures such as forcing those who take early retirement when they become unemployed to continue searching for work.

Unions recently agreed to suspend industrial action after holding a series of crippling strikes at the end of 2014. But Rudy De Leeuw, president of the socialist union, insisted yesterday that they would continue to protest against the government’s “neoliberal and anti-social policies”.

The protestors are also upset at cuts in the public sector and the wage index freeze. They have called on the government to implement a so-called “tax shift” to move tax from labour to capital gains.

The Christian union held a further demonstration yesterday in Brussels’ main shopping street, Nieuwstraat, calling for an increase in spending power to reinvigorate the retail sector. But they criticised proposals for more student jobs and more flexible opening hours to allow Sunday shopping.

Public sector unions plan further action on 19 and 29 March involving demonstrations, leafleting and petitions. But they are not planning any actual strikes at this point, unions confirmed yesterday.

photo by Aurore Belot/Demotix/Corbis