100,000 march in Belgium general strike

Workers in Belgium held their second general strike in a month on Oct. 28. In a land of 10.4 million people, 100,000 striking workers marched in Brussels to say no to a government plan to raise the earliest retirement age, when pensions are paid, from 58 to 60.

According to reports of worker organizers from Brussels, this was the largest outpouring of laboring people in the streets of the Belgian capital since 1986. “More than a demonstration, it is the beginning of a major social movement.” (Solidaire, weekly newspaper of the Belgian Workers Party, Oct. 28)

The government, which is a broad coalition of rightist and social democratic parties, calls its plans to cut pensions “a pact of generations.” The workers answer that 19 percent of young people are unemployed, and half the workers over 55 have chronic ailments, many arising from high-stress jobs. It would be more reasonable, they argue, to let the older workers retire and give younger workers the jobs.

As Solidaire put it, “the true pact of solidarity between generations is being built in the streets.”

So far the government has refused to back down on its plan to raise retirement age. Like U.S. President George W. Bush with Social Security, the Belgian government is trying to cut pensions costs as part of an overall assault on concessions West European workers won during the Cold War period.

Unions in Belgium, which include many immigrant workers from North Africa, plan another general strike for Nov. 21. By all indications, they are in no mood to give in.

—John Catalinotto