Prime Minister Announces a Bleak Year for the Working World and New Gifts for Businesses
With his announcements, the Prime Minister has just opened a project as brutal as it is ideological. This is not an austerity plan; it is a declaration of war on the rights of working women and men. The government, responsible for the country’s economic situation, never questions itself, especially its supply-side policy.
Instead of opening its eyes to social urgencies – wages, working conditions, health, education, climate – the government chooses to once again make workers pay, especially the unemployed, and stigmatizes public service agents. Instead of holding accountable those responsible for the deficit, the richest and large corporations who have benefited from 73 billion in tax cuts each year and receive 211 billion in public aid, the government once again makes working women and men, retirees, and precarious workers foot the bill.
On the menu: an unprecedented austerity cure for the working world:
- A « blank year, » meaning the freezing of retiree pensions, social benefits (housing aid, disability allowance for adults, family allowances…), public service budgets, civil servants’ salaries, and an increase in taxes and CSG (General Social Contribution). This will therefore result in an impoverishment of each and every person by several hundred euros each year;
- After stealing 2 years of our lives, the government wants to impose 2 days of free labor by stealing 2 public holidays, including May 8th, Victory Day against Nazism!
- Delisting of medications and consultations from reimbursement, especially for patients with long-term conditions;
- Abolition of 3,000 civil servant positions and numerous state agencies, and non-replacement of one in three civil servants. This means fewer firefighters, nurses, teachers…
- Selling off state assets and privatizations;
- A new, most violent squeeze for the unemployed, whose rights have already been halved since Emmanuel Macron became President of the Republic;
- The desire to impose an across-the-board challenge to employees’ rights with measures that could be taken by ordinance as early as autumn.
On the other hand, the necessary tax justice is once again postponed indefinitely.
The CGT firmly denounces this austerity-driven headlong rush.
The Prime Minister dares to explain to working women and men that they must work more, without saying a word about the hundreds of thousands of ongoing layoffs and the shipwreck of the supply-side policy that has sunk our public finances without reindustrializing the country.
These announcements are as unfair as they are ineffective. They will have a violent recessionary impact and will only amplify the country’s economic difficulties. They will plunge thousands of families into poverty, which has already reached a record level, particularly among women and young people. We don’t fix public finances by bleeding social rights and public services!
These announcements, made in the middle of summer, while millions of working people cannot go on vacation, are completely out of touch with the expectations of the working world. They are selling off our future by turning their back on essential investments for ecological transition, research and education, health, and industry.
The Prime Minister himself admits that he is not in a position to impose his austerity and impoverishment cure.
Nothing is set in stone! It’s time to prepare for mobilization.
The CGT will do everything possible to prevent these violent social setbacks.
See you in September!
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